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]

No there not! That’s just plain against any sense.

They sell at target and Amazon and stores around the country.

Online content. Not physical content.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Why wouldn't they terminate the licenses? If the only place you can buy official D&D online content is DDB, guess where people will go? Brand identity will draw them like a moth to a flame.

Terminating the licenses makes little sense. It pointlessly antagonizes tons of people. Not giving them the new License for One D&D works much better for the same gain.

 

[Jaeger]

Terminating the licenses makes little sense. It pointlessly antagonizes tons of people. Not giving them the new License for One D&D works much better for the same gain.

Letting the licenses lapse and not renewing them when they come up is also another tactic I see WotC using.

I do not believe that people previous purchases will be deleted from FG or R20. But eventually, access to DnD Beyond stuff will be cut off unless you are on the OneVTT.

I expect any other VTT 'porting over' data from DnD beyond to make 5eDnDone compatible material will run into ye ol' cease and desist lawfare sooner rather than later, post 2024.

If the One VTT is successful at launch I see a big shake up with the other VTT's - not all of them will survive.

 

[mamba]

Why wouldn't they terminate the licenses?

because people would be unhappy... whether that stops them or not remains to be seen, but it is something worth considering when making the decision

 

[TheSword]

D&D as a brand is definitely under-monatized. I’ve only bought one product that WOC would have seen a dime from in the last two years and that was the roll20 version Monsters of the Multiverse. So they got whatever proportion of £30 they get from that transaction… despite that I usually play 6-7 sessions of D&D a month on average.

I spend lots of money on D&D, miniatures, patreons for battlemaps, 3pp adventures, roll20 tokens, roll20 subscription. Probably at least £50 per month, oftentimes much more (Damn you Kingmaker)… it’s just that WOC doesn’t see any of it. They just either don’t offer the things I want at all, or more likely don’t offer them at a good enough quality/value for money. (Adventures, minis, maps etc)

I agree that the brand is under-monatized - I’m not sure loading extra charges into D&D beyond will be enough to fix the issue though. If they want to make more money from individual users - rather than just increase the user base - then they need to start producing the products people are spending their money on elsewhere better than the competition does.

 

[Hussar]

So ... it's bad for MMOs so it's bad for a VTT? The VTT is not D&D. I see no reason why the VTT side of things would harm the publishing side or affect it in any significant way.

They could f*** up the VTT side I suppose, but it's not like Crawford is suddenly going to be assigned to the art department. The IT and publishing side of things are not going to merge. It would be too bad if DDB doesn't get some of the updates it probably needs. But if the folks behind the VTT focus on artwork, so what? Once the have a stable platform in place, that's kind of what their job will be. The VTT does not have to enforce rules, will not be running the game. There will still be a DM. The VTT? It's all about visual assets and looking good, so I don't see how spending resources on making it look cooler is a bad thing.

People have been predicting the imminent demise of D&D for decades. Anything could happen. HASBRO could go bankrupt. Maxperson could be forced to argue with his phone's insurance company about whether the fire that destroyed his phone was caused directly by the nuclear blast or the ensuing fire. Elon Musk could take over WOTC.

But WOTC trying to put a positive spin on their plans for the VTT? Hardly cause for panic.

@Oofta, dammit, stop saying things that make perfect sense and I keep agreeing with. It makes me very uncomfortable.

But, yeah, it's pretty clear that a lot of people who are predicting doom and gloom for the hobby because of what video games do have not spent much, if any, time actually playing online with the existing tools.

 

[Hussar]

Beyond20 Chrome extension.

When I play using Roll20, I have one tab open to the Roll20 and a 2nd tab open with my DDB character sheet. This allows me to click to roll dice directly on my DDB character sheet and have the results show up in Roll20. I'm currently playing a sorcerer, so when I use polymorph to take on the form of a huge giant crab, I can still click directly on the DDB entry for that monster and have the results show up in Roll20 same as my spells or other actions. You can also click spell descriptions in the DDB character sheet and have the description show up in Roll20's chat. It really works great imo!

If it's so great, why doesn't Roll20 do it natively? I mean, a simple extension allows for this. You'd think that it would be a no-brainer to include in Roll20.

Oh, right, because it's a violation of DDB's TOS.

 

[Velderan]

If it's so great, why doesn't Roll20 do it natively? I mean, a simple extension allows for this. You'd think that it would be a no-brainer to include in Roll20.

Oh, right, because it's a violation of DDB's TOS.

I imagine Roll20's desire to sell you books might have something to do with not natively wanting to direct you to a competitor.

 

[Hussar]

This itself is kind of crazy to me. So if you buy all those books on fantasy grounds you're sort of stuck on that platform? And what if wotc says they only want to sell through dnd beyond?

Yup. Them's the breaks. If I want to use, say, Storm King's Thunder on a VTT, I have to either do everything 100% by hand, or I buy it through the VTT and it's all done for me - line of sight, encounter placement and whatnot - but, nope, I can't move it to another platform.

And, again, this has been the way it's been since 2002. I couldn't take my campaign files from, say, OpenRPG and import them into Maptool or Fantasy Grounds.

It's no different from buying a video game for your PS5 and then trying to import it onto your Windows machine.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yup. Them's the breaks. If I want to use, say, Storm King's Thunder on a VTT, I have to either do everything 100% by hand, or I buy it through the VTT and it's all done for me - line of sight, encounter placement and whatnot - but, nope, I can't move it to another platform.

And, again, this has been the way it's been since 2002. I couldn't take my campaign files from, say, OpenRPG and import them into Maptool or Fantasy Grounds.

It's no different from buying a video game for your PS5 and then trying to import it onto your Windows machine.

Except no one can just take your PS5 away from you with notice and nothing you can do about it.