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.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

We don't know what "undermonetized" means, other than D&D in general. All assumptions, on  both sides, are speculative.

I don't think you understand how 45-page threads work. We can't end on a reasonable note, Micah.

 

[Dire Bare]

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.

If you purchase Storm King's Thunder on any VTT to run with friends . . . . how often will you go back and run it again? Certainly, some do. And there is the cost of the core books and any supplements you want to use with SKT and other adventures.

The "sunk costs" into a VTT are real, but not as great as some make them out to be. There are already plenty of gamers who switch VTTs all the time depending on who they are playing with, what they are playing, and, well, wanting to try out the new shiny . . . .

 

[Dire Bare]

What I really want to see WotC do . . . . is to start a service similar to "Movies Anywhere" that the movie industry uses for streaming purchases. If you purchase a movie from a participating studio on Amazon . . . it will also show up in your library on Vudu and other platforms.

Imagine purchasing a D&D book digitally once, maybe as part of a print/digital bundle, and then having it available on all participating VTT platforms . . . .

 

[Clint_L]

What I really want to see WotC do . . . . is to start a service similar to "Movies Anywhere" that the movie industry uses for streaming purchases. If you purchase a movie from a participating studio on Amazon . . . it will also show up in your library on Vudu and other platforms.

Imagine purchasing a D&D book digitally once, maybe as part of a print/digital bundle, and then having it available on all participating VTT platforms . . . .

Hard to imagine why WotC would do that, though. With movies it works because lots of different studios are making movies, so there's reciprocal benefit in letting purchases stream on different platforms. But there's only one company making official D&D books, so why would they want to give them to other platforms? What do they get out of it, other than enabling competitors to their own VTT?

I think it's much more likely that they would let other companies make assets compatible with WotC's VTT. For example, Dwarven Forge is moving towards making digital dungeon tiles, and given their sterling reputation, I could see why WotC might welcome them onto their platform. For a cut.

 

[Dire Bare]

Hard to imagine why WotC would do that, though. With movies it works because lots of different studios are making movies, so there's reciprocal benefit in letting purchases stream on different platforms. But there's only one company making official D&D books, so why would they want to give them to other platforms? What do they get out of it, other than enabling competitors to their own VTT?

I think it's much more likely that they would let other companies make assets compatible with WotC's VTT. For example, Dwarven Forge is moving towards making digital dungeon tiles, and given their sterling reputation, I could see why WotC might welcome them onto their platform. For a fee.

Same reasons why the movie industry does it.

Movie studios want you to purchase their films, and you're more likely to do so if your investment unlocks the film on all of the major online streaming platforms.

The various streaming platforms like Amazon and Vudu agree to it because, 1) they are pressured to by the studios as the cost of doing business, AND 2) if you can purchase your next movie anywhere, it's easy for you to switch from, say, Amazon over to Vudu. Sucks for Amazon, right? But, the reverse is true too, it's easy to switch from Vudu to Amazon.

WotC wants you to purchase their next book, ideally on their own platform, but . . . they make money off you either way if you purchase it on Fantasy Grounds or Roll20. And if WotC leads, other publishers will likely follow. Especially if WotC builds and shares the infrastructure to support such a program. Which would be to their benefit, much in the same way the OGL benefits WotC, even when they don't make money directly off of it.

VTT and other RPG retailers benefit the same way streaming platforms benefit. It makes it easy to switch from Fantasy Grounds to Roll20 . . . and vice versa.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If you purchase Storm King's Thunder on any VTT to run with friends . . . . how often will you go back and run it again? Certainly, some do. And there is the cost of the core books and any supplements you want to use with SKT and other adventures.

The "sunk costs" into a VTT are real, but not as great as some make them out to be. There are already plenty of gamers who switch VTTs all the time depending on who they are playing with, what they are playing, and, well, wanting to try out the new shiny . . . .

If anything, VTT miniatures associated with an adventure are more likely to have a second life in future adventures. A bunch of giants and their minions can show up everywhere.

 

[Dire Bare]

If anything, VTT miniatures associated with an adventure are more likely to have a second life in future adventures. A bunch of giants and their minions can show up everywhere.

Sure. If miniatures, tokens, maps, etc are walled into a specific platform, that increases the sunk costs. But if those assets are portable between platforms . . . .

HeroForge is already working with RPG software developers to use their 3D models . . . .

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If I ran WotC, after buying TaleSpire (instead of developing my own VTT from scratch), I'd grab HeroForge.

 

[Hussar]

If you purchase Storm King's Thunder on any VTT to run with friends . . . . how often will you go back and run it again? Certainly, some do. And there is the cost of the core books and any supplements you want to use with SKT and other adventures.

The "sunk costs" into a VTT are real, but not as great as some make them out to be. There are already plenty of gamers who switch VTTs all the time depending on who they are playing with, what they are playing, and, well, wanting to try out the new shiny . . . .

Oh I get that. My point was that it has been standard that things that work on one VTT never work on another - other than base image files I suppose. If you go through the whole process of doing lighting and line of sight stuff for one VTT, that's can't be exported to another vtt. So, it's not like WotC making their VTT stuff not portable to other VTT's is anything different.

Again, I can't play my PS5 games on my Xbox, even if it's the same title. That's the point I was responding to. The idea that it's somehow strange that if you purchase Xanathar's on Fantasy Grounds, it's not accessible through Roll20 or DDB.

While it would be great if they did something like you are talking about - making stuff available on different platforms I imagine there would be some pretty serious technical issues involved. Unlike movies which will play on anything (excepting region locking) and a streamed movie on any platform is still just an mpeg file, every VTT uses a different set up that isn't compatible.

 

[Hussar]

Sure. If miniatures, tokens, maps, etc are walled into a specific platform, that increases the sunk costs. But if those assets are portable between platforms . . . .

HeroForge is already working with RPG software developers to use their 3D models . . . .

But image files are just the base. There's all sorts of stuff that goes with that image file that isn't portable between platforms. Line of Sight and Fog of War - especially for terrain - does not translate between platforms.