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.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Enjoyment != quality

The folks behind Hostess Twinkies can tell you that.

enjoyment matters more to me than quality.

 

[darjr]

Eh. I'm glad they did what they did. Loved 2e content!

I do too, but it lead directly to where we are now.

 

[MGibster]

Factoring was also a major part of what did them in, as Ben Riggs pointed out in Slaying the Dragon. That was where TSR essentially took out a loan against a forthcoming year's products from a bank, getting something like 83% of the total annual revenue all at once. But that locked them in for the entire year, allowing for no flexibility in their schedule.

Yeah. There was a point where everyone at TSR, including Lorraine Williams, knew they weren't going to be able to sell all the Dragon Dice that were slated for production, but becuase of that yearly loan, they had no choice but to continue with production.

The folks behind Hostess Twinkies can tell you that.

A lot of people don't fully appreciate just how difficult it is to produce a consistant product over the course of a year let alone over the course of many years. Hostess puts in a lot of effort into making sure the Twinkie you ate in February is just as good, in fact, identical, to the one you will eat in May, August, or in November. If you tell a Hostess food engineer (or scientist or whatever they call themselves) that they don't care about quality they'll probably be offended.

Everyone is borrowing trouble here. Surely there are enough upsetting things actually happening in the world that people don't need to conjure up imaginary ones.

Oh, come on, let's not go down the "there are more important things to worry about" path. Yes, there are more important things to worry about, but for people who like D&D, they can worry about this and those other more important thigns simultaneously. It's not an either/or proposition here. Second, with the monetization we've seen in other industries, video games in particular, but automobile makers who want me to buy a subscription to use the #%#%# heated seats in the car I bought from them, concerns over what WotC might do to monetize D&D are valid. And finally, we're talking about our magical pretend elf games here, if you want to go down the "aren't there more important things to worry about," yes, you're right, but there's much more important things we could be doing but that doesn't invalidate the conversation.

 

[mamba]

Corporations, on the other hand, are explicitly money-making machines. They are expected to maximize shareholder value.

which in and of itself is not evil, contrary to what you wrote in the post I replied to

I largely agree with what you wrote here, but I do not see corporations behaving that way as evil, let alone inherently evil

If anything corporations are inherently rational, that is they try to maximize their benefits as much as possible within the confines imposed on them by society.

 

[mamba]

I do too, but it lead directly to where we are now.

not sure I see anything wrong with where we are now

 

[darjr]

not sure I see anything wrong with where we are now

I don’t either, but see the posting history of who I was responding too.

 

[Maxperson]

I get that corporations are lawful neutral. They don't really "care" about me as a customer as long as I'm happy to buy their product. But they've also learned what doesn't work, such as over-publication and diluting the brand.

Corporations are LE. They'll happily kill you within the law so long as the amount they make is a lot more than the lawsuits and fines they'll ultimately have to pay.

 

[Alzrius]

Actually no it wasn't. The fireside chat wasn't just about the future but about what they are currently trying to do. And no they didn't specifically say that.

If they say that the brand has been under-monetized, and just recently showcased how they wanted to put out a high-end 3D VTT, then while I'll admit that there's nothing directly connecting the two, it doesn't seem like a stretch to suggest that the point of intersection is (increased) micro-transactions.

 

[darjr]

edit:

Never mind. I didn’t need to respond I guess.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I do too, but it lead directly to where we are now.

Worth it to me. I'd rather have what we got.