WotC Hasbro Bets Big on D&D

During today's 'Hasbro Fireside Chat', Hasbro's Chris Cocks, chief executive officer, and Cynthia Williams, president of Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming mentioned D&D, and about betting big on its name. This was in addition to the Magic: The Gathering discussion they held on the same call.

The following are rough notes on what they said.

D&D Beyond

• Leaning heavily on D&D Beyond
• 13 million registered users
• Give them more ways to express their fandom
• Hired 350 people last year
• Low attrition

What’s next for D&D

• Never been more popular
• Brand under-monetized
• Excited about D&D Beyond possibilities
• Empower accessibility and development of the user base.
• Data driven insight
• Window into how players are playing
• Companion app on their phone
• Start future monetization starting with D&D Beyond
• DMs are 20% of the audience but lions share of purchases
• Digital game recurrent spending for post sale revenue.
• Speed of digital can expand, yearly book model to include current digital style models.
• Reach highly engaged multigenerational fans.
• Dungeons and Dragons has recognition, 10 out of 10
• Cultural phenomenon right now.
• DND strategy is a broad four quadrant strategy
• Like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or Marvel
• New books and accessories, licensed game stuff, and D&D Beyond
• Huge hopes for D&D

What is success for the D&D Movie

• First big light up oppourtunity for 4th quadrant
• Significant marketing
• They think it’ll have significant box office
• It has second most viewed trailer at Paramount, only eclipsed by Transformers
• Will be licensed video games, some on movies
• Then follow up other media, TV, other movies, etc.
• Bullish on D&D.

 

[Oofta]

Or are just working in big corporations themselves and know that CEOs lie. They lie when the adress the personel in a townhall and they lie even more when they adress customers.

I don't automatically assume the worst of everyone and everything they say unless they've proven themselves to be untrustworthy. Life is too short to think so little of everyone else.

 

[MNblockhead]

Well, disposable income is a consideration and the older you are, the more you tend to have. Not a lot of young 20 somethings have a good amount of disposable income to spend relative to the folks like you and me.

I expect tweens and teens will see a high spend because of parents and other relatives giving books and subscriptions then a dropoff as people start new careers and families and then pick up again when people are settled into their careers and their kids are older. The 20s is hard for me to guess about. One the one hand, 20-somethings may have less income but if they are not married, rooming with friends, etc., the amount of that money that is disposable may be higher. They should be investing and saving rather than buying games and collectibles, but that's a topic for another thread.

I do feel that folks in their 40s and 50s may be the biggest whales. Not just because of more disposable income, but I know in my case I'm buy games and entertainment not just for myself, but my sons, my nephews and nices, for my son's friend's birthdays, etc.

 

[Zardnaar]

Lying to investors is a good way to find yourself in a federally funded country club for four years.

Fraud yes spin no.

 

[Clint_L]

I'm not quite understanding all of the hostility towards Hasbro wanting to make money from D&D. We all understand that D&D is and always has been a for-profit business, yes? Gygax wasn't giving it away (well, not on purpose). From what I took out of that conversation, their main goal isn't to try to squeeze more out of their most ardent customers (us); in fact, they allude to the fact that that may be a counterproductive strategy. Instead, they are trying to grow the D&D pie and get a bigger slice of it - see my previous post on how little of my D&D spending actually goes to the people who own and produce D&D.

 

[payn]

I'll certainly admit that there's a large degree of difference between very basic VTTs like Roll20 (which is essentially a digital piece of graph paper, dice roller, and filed character sheets; I know there's more to it than that, but I'm generalizing) and the sort of 3D quasi-video game environment like what was in WotC's recent showcase. As such, I think we need better verbiage than just "VTT" and "3D VTT" to talk about this, though we don't have said verbiage yet...though I suspect we will once 3D VTTs start to become more and more of a realty.

But a lot of that is because the VTTs of today are third-party creations meant to work with a variety of systems in order to draw in the largest customer base. That won't be the case with one owned and operated by the same company that makes the RPGs. Especially if it has bells and whistles, to say nothing of content support, that the third-party VTTs don't have. That's aside from the fact that I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that, when the graphics get better, it offloads the need for theater of the mind, and when that happens if can be difficult to go the other way. In that case, I don't think people will go to other VTTs, especially if they've purchased a lot of assets on WotC's. I think they'll be more likely to simply constrict their play-style rather than dump everything to try it again elsewhere.

I just dont see WotC being the only company making the RPGs. I think that ship has long sailed. Are they the biggest dog in the park? Yeah, likely will be for who knows how long, however plenty of RPGs are being made today. If WotC VTT is really difficult to customize, folks will stick and go to others if for no other reason than they are cheap. The new whizbang 3DVTT is not going to take the world by storm, even if it is very popular.

 

[MNblockhead]

I think that this is a key factor.

So many companies want to move their products to a subscription model. Which makes sense, individually. Think about it from the perspective of both the consumer and company-
Company- Why get $50 now, when I can get $8 every month for years?
Consumer- Why spend $50 to buy a single product, when I can pay $8 and access lots of products?

So far, so good, right? But we rapidly get into a "tragedy of the commons" type of issue (well, if consumers were a common good ... it's not a perfect analogy!). As more companies switch to this model, the individual subscriptions which may not amount to much individually collectively amount to a huge figure.

And as the model spreads, we see more and more companies adopting it even in areas that traditionally wouldn't have it (such as, most recently, the spread into automobiles where you pay a subscription to access your cars features).

If you have a few recurring subscriptions, that's not a problem. But you can quickly end up with hundreds of dollars of these recurring fees- and more and more companies are switching to this model.

Yeah. It'll be interesting how competition among streaming services evolves. I am curious to see the numbers. I feel like (though have no numbers to back it up) that many companies made more money when I could just buy/rent their shows on Netflix or Amazon. Now, if I really want to see a show, I may only pay for a month or two or maybe a season. So far it has been rare for most streaming services to have enough compelling content to lock me in and I just play the subscription merry go round. Even then, more and more, I just decide to skip a show, put it on a list to maybe check out a year or so later when it becomes available on other services.

There are so many other ways to spend my time, that it just doesn't make sense to pay for a lot of streaming services. I would predict that their will be a move back to more aggregated platforms like Amazon Prime and Netflix or streaming services will start giving the option to just buy one show. Lock-in attempts just don't seem to work for most--well, at least not for me.

 

[MNblockhead]

Other franchises, Gamma World or Star Frontiers, could return before as videogames than TTRPG. I imagine Gamma World videogame with the style of the saga Fallout.

Gamma World PLEASE! I'm a fan of Star Frontiers (despite the nuTSR nonsense) , but that's mostly nolstalgia. I don't know that it would be a particularly stand out property for translating into a series or movie. But Gamma World could be a great setting for a show if they invested enough in good writers, actors, and special effects.

 

[Alzrius]

I just dont see WotC being the only company making the RPGs. I think that ship has long sailed. Are they the biggest dog in the park? Yeah, likely will be for who knows how long, however plenty of RPGs are being made today. If WotC VTT is really difficult to customize, folks will stick and go to others if for no other reason than they are cheap. The new whizbang 3DVTT is not going to take the world by storm, even if it is very popular.

In terms of the entire RPG community? Sure. In terms of the D&D community? I'm less convinced. I mean, there'll certainly be people who don't go in for a more-expensive, more-bells-and-whistles VTT, or who don't go for a VTT at all, but if things keep trending younger and more plugged-in (the way we keep being told they are), then as far as D&D goes, that has the potential to become what people think of as the standard D&D experience.

 

[MNblockhead]

I just dont see WotC being the only company making the RPGs. I think that ship has long sailed. Are they the biggest dog in the park? Yeah, likely will be for who knows how long, however plenty of RPGs are being made today. If WotC VTT is really difficult to customize, folks will stick and go to others if for no other reason than they are cheap. The new whizbang 3DVTT is not going to take the world by storm, even if it is very popular.

Personally, I hope that they don't make it system neutral. I want a VTT fully customized for DnD that finally makes the more cumbersome elements of the came, such as applying area of effect damage, tracking conditions, etc. automated and simple. I'll always have Foundry for other games. The only think that would get me to buy into the WotC VTT, no matter how impressive the special effects, is if it makes my job as a DM easy. The only way to make it as easy as I want to it to be laser focused on the DnD system.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There are so many other ways to spend my time, that it just doesn't make sense to pay for a lot of streaming services. I would predict that their will be a move back to more aggregated platforms like Amazon Prime and Netflix or streaming services will start giving the option to just buy one show. Lock-in attempts just don't seem to work for most--well, at least not for me.

We've bought seasons of shows from iTunes for years (we use an Apple TV streaming box). Much cheaper than fooling around with Peacock, Paramount+, etc.