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.

 

[R_J_K75]

Be upset about things that actually happen, not about nightmare scenarios you invent.

I'm not upset about things that have happened. So, an opinion translates to a nightmare scenario of doom I've invented?

 

[Oofta]

There. is. a. waterdeep blanket.

I did not need to know this. Now I feel compelled as a consumerist drone to purchase one!

 

[Scribe]

You buy Magic Cards!?!

No, not for years, since they completely jumped the shark just trying to squeeze blood from the stone.

 

[Mistwell]

Dungeons And Dragons - Beholder Mask

Dungeons And Dragons - Beholder Mask

www.trickortreatstudios.com

Dungeons And Dragons - MindFlayer Mask

Dungeons And Dragons - MindFlayer Mask

www.trickortreatstudios.com

Dungeons And Dragons - Venger Mask

Dungeons And Dragons - Venger Mask

www.trickortreatstudios.com

Oh yeah lots of third parties do small runs of stuff, where is the official stuff though from WOTC?

 

[Maxperson]

Well, you have to see how much it would cost to toss everyone into a volcano. There's transportation and catapult costs to consider.

I'm sure Amazon and Cosco can negotiate some really good bulk discounts.

 

[MichaelSomething]

There are folks on this thread who have previously posted on this site that they'd like WotC to go broke and just let D&D go out of print rather than WotC do things they don't like with it. It's a head-scratcher.

Wait a minute...

If by "dying" you mean "no longer controlled by a megacorp" then let death come!

The sooner that happens, the sooner the game becomes driven by the gamers instead of the stock holders. We'll say what goes on at table without some new "product" contradicting us. No longer will professional designers tell us how to run our games. We can mold new players into our ways of playing without mainstream culture polluting their mindsets.

I though people don't want to game under the heel of WOTC?? What if they want to impose marking 2.0 on us???

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You are a moderate compared to some, @MichaelSomething.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Hilariously, the hoopak cannot be purchased separately from D&D Beyond, I'm discovering. You can get everything else piecemeal for $1.99 a pop, but the hoopak, of all things, is gonna cost you $29.99.

It's either an oversight (it's an oversight) or they believe the hoopak will drive full-book sales where Lord Soth cannot.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I can't help myself . . . . .

HERETIC!!!!

The TSR/WotC D&D novel business, at its height, was BIG. It didn't get that way because most of the novels were crap. Cheese and crackers . . . .

Most of the novels were pretty good, some were amazingly good. Some were crap. Roughly the same percentage as the general fantasy/sci-fi novel landscape. And the D&D novel line was in no way a "vanity press". I'm rolling my eyes right out of my head over this one. A "vanity press" is when an author pays the publisher to publish their work, because no one will otherwise. TSR/WotC worked with a variety of professional writers and paid them . . . many were well established and well liked writers, others were in the game design industry. Many went on to decent careers as writers post-D&D novels.

I find it ironic in a thread where some folks are pushing back against the negative, toxic, "sky-is-falling" types, that you would bring up these overwrought, unfair, and inaccurate criticisms of the D&D novel line.

There. I'm done. Whew.

This. I read dozens of those novels back in the 90s, and enjoyed the heck out of most of them.

 

[FrogReaver]

The monetization of D&D seems to be video games, movies, D&D Beyond subs, micro trans, branded merchandise, etc. In general I'm not too worried about monetization when the strategy is soo multifaceted and so much of that fails if the brand isn't healthy.

That said there are some forms of monetization that are consumer unfriendly. Things like making you pay for the same content twice (they already do this for paper and any digital content they sale). Or increasing subscription price after you have enough sunk cost into the ecosystem. Or sale VTT features as micro transactions. Want dynamic lighting then pay an extra dollar a month? Want a measurement tool? Another dollar please! Or how about making it as hard as possible to play D&D on any other VTT so that there's will be where people come. I fully expect this last one to happen.

It's not that I don't want them to make money. I do. Hand over foot. I hope the movie makes them billions! I hope the videogames do the same. But when it comes to monetization there are always consumer unfriendly ways to accomplish that and IMO we are likely to see at least a few.