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.

 

[Matthan]

I’m just jumping to the end to throw this out there (so maybe someone else already has), but recurrent revenue could simply be a more robust subscription service similar to what they attempted to 4e (which in retrospect, it looks like they were ahead of the curve).

Would you be willing to pay $10-15 a month to have access to a VTT and all the digital content for 5e? It would be like what game pass is for Microsoft or just streaming in general. They can sell a product for $50 or offer up the cheaper barrier to entry of a monthly subscription where you don’t permanently own the material. As the material on Beyond grows, the subscription would look more and more attractive.

As long as they keep providing the other methods to purchase the material (which they won’t get rid of), I don’t really think there is any reason to think the sky is falling.

 

[Rabulias]

The big one being how it sounds like micro-transactions on the D&D Beyond VTT are now in the works.

As long as the microtransactions are optional and completely non-essential to playing the game (and I believe they will be), I will be fine with it. I have been able to use D&D Beyond to fill needs for me and my game. I see their ads for custom dice, token frames, and character sheet backgrounds, but I do not use those, so I can ignore them. Just because they sell it does not mean I have to buy it.

I think many of these doom-and-gloomers see the following happening:

DM: After the red-robed figure completes his arcane mutterings and gestures, a tiny glowing dot speeds toward your group and blossoms into a massive ball of fire! Roll Dexterity saving throws!
Player: Uh, I don't see my Dex save...
DM: Did you buy the Dexterity saving throw yet? I told you you would need it.
Player: Hey man, I wanted to buy some Doritos today, so I skipped it!
DM: OK, I guess you fail the save then. Take full damage!

Which is absurd of course.

 

[Greg Benage]

Nope. Not in corporate speak.

Yep. "Monetization" is extracting (more) revenue from something that isn't producing (enough) revenue. What I described is a bread-and-butter value-based growth strategy.

 

[Velderan]

I have an idea. Open up dndbeyond to third parties. Not just game products but character portraits and cartography and when the vtt is open 3d assets. (oh especially dice). Boom, recurring revenue.

I would LOVE to see an easy way to take DM's Guild purchases and import that content into DDB.

 

[Velderan]

I’m just jumping to the end to throw this out there (so maybe someone else already has), but recurrent revenue could simply be a more robust subscription service similar to what they attempted to 4e (which in retrospect, it looks like they were ahead of the curve).

Would you be willing to pay $10-15 a month to have access to a VTT and all the digital content for 5e? It would be like what game pass is for Microsoft or just streaming in general. They can sell a product for $50 or offer up the cheaper barrier to entry of a monthly subscription where you don’t permanently own the material. As the material on Beyond grows, the subscription would look more and more attractive.

As long as they keep providing the other methods to purchase the material (which they won’t get rid of), I don’t really think there is any reason to think the sky is falling.

I could see them offering an additional subscription tier above the current Master tier to allow access to the VTT with some free assets added to your library monthly. As long as you keep your subscription current, you keep those items but if you let your subscription expire you lose those items. Similar to Playstation Network's monthly free games basically.

 

[Stormonu]

I think they’re putting too much faith in the returns from D&D. It’s very likely they’ll strangle their golden goose in spectacular fashion by annoying their customers as they pull an EA and dole out inferior product in annoyingly expensive dollops.

Hasbro really needs to step back and have a serious analysis of their business. The world isn’t like it was even 20 years ago, and they are trying to survive on nostalgia of a time that’s past. If they don’t get into gear, they’re going to end up as another Sears, Blockbuster or Radio Shack.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I have an idea. Open up dndbeyond to third parties. Not just game products but character portraits and cartography and when the vtt is open 3d assets. (oh especially dice). Boom, recurring revenue.

"Give me a report by end of next week, complete with data model projections, which shows how this will positively impact on revenue while not leading to higher churn ratios that send whales off to other game systems -- and product lines -- sooner than they otherwise would."

Of course there is no way to model this reliably, but the concern the above quote reveals will still be there. My strong belief is that WotC will want to preserve that technological advantage - they will not want to share that tech advantage with anybody when they paid the money to develop it. They will say instead, "this will slow down churn".

That will be the moment where the BILLIONS in World of Warcraft subscription money that they have been masturbating to since ~2005 FINALLY rolls in (like they always knew it would!).

 

[Rabulias]

The trouble is what they'll have to do to other VTTs to get people to use theirs. They will quickly tire of the competition and pull whatever licenses are in place and force people to use OGL only content or do it themselves by hand. It's not going to be pretty.

I used D&D Beyond (DDB) by manually copying and pasting info into Word documents and into Foundry VTT, no license required to revoke. If DDB wants to hinder copy and paste on their site, they would be shooting themselves in the foot.

I do know for Foundry VTT there are (free, with additional features for modest Patreon support) add-on modules that allow you to pull your DDB purchases and materials into Foundry VTT, and they utilize the DDB API to do this. This is a possible avenue that DDB could put behind a paywall, but I think it would generate a lot of ill will in the community, as well as make digital partnerships more difficult going forward.

 

[Greg Benage]

My strong belief is that WotC will want to preserve that technological advantage - they will not want to share that tech advantage with anybody when they paid the money to develop it.

I'm fairly heavily invested in Roll20 and even in my most wishful dreams I don't imagine that Roll20 will have a license to support D&D once Wizards rolls out a competing product.

 

[darjr]

The model is already there with DMSGuild.
There is already an interface to enter this data.

Do a trial balloon with a trusted partner like Kobold Press.

fix/modify that interface based upon lessons learned.