WotC Hasbro gains big time from D&D, Magic, Monopoly, and Baldur's Gate 3

[darjr]

Considering the plans Paizo has announced for replacing their backend financial system, upgrading their online store, replacing their forums, and improving their warehouse situation I'd say the number of people that stuck with them is a good amount. Morrus has said on this forum sales of EN Publishing games has continued to do better than they were before the OGL situation. That doesn't mean WotC has seen much if any impact and that's pretty easy to rationalize IMO.

Despite not making the money they wanted in the theater, I'd argue the brand awareness boost of the D&D movie did a lot to bring new folks into the D&D game which ended up still being growth for WotC despite whatever customers they lost to Paizo, Goodman Games, EN Publishing, and so on. Look at the surge in Google searches related to D&D around the time of the movie. They continue to pull in new players and honestly it's pretty impressive.

I wasn’t saying anything about continuing success.

 

[Velderan]

I wasn’t saying anything about continuing success.

My comment was adding my thoughts on to your comment, not arguing against it.

 

[darjr]

My comment was adding my thoughts on to your comment, not arguing against it.

Ah. I was kinda confused. I will say I agree.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

My point was those folks glom on to popular things to troll about.

It’s gotta be tantamount to a meme. An easily and widely understood one.

Again, though, I don't think that just because something is popular in certain online communities, it necessarily means that it has a widespread mindshare in the overall population.

That doesn't mean that it isn't somewhat important. But I think that people overrate the importance of on-line discourse to a certain extent. After all, if you believed the memes and the discourse, Morbius would have have been the top movie of 2022. It's Morbin' time!

 

[darjr]

Again, though, I don't think that just because something is popular in certain online communities, it necessarily means that it has a widespread mindshare in the overall population.

That doesn't mean that it isn't somewhat important. But I think that people overrate the importance of on-line discourse to a certain extent. After all, if you believed the memes and the discourse, Morbius would have have been the top movie of 2022. It's Morbin' time!

Well note it wasn’t my only argument. The fact stores across the country experienced a run on sales of “not D&D” being another. Sales that by many accounts are still elevated.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Well note it wasn’t my only argument. The fact stores across the country experienced a run on sales of “not D&D” being another. Sales that by many accounts are still elevated.

Sure. But they are a very small part of the market- while I don't know the exact market share of Level Up, it's not even a rounding error compared to D&D. And we don't know yet how much of those sales consists of people that are moving their sales forward in time.

In other words, the fact that Hasbro's financials did not seem to be affected appears to be better evidence of the overall effect on the market.

Again, that doesn't mean it was a good thing. Or that some members of the community were rightfully outraged. But I think that people overestimate the impact based upon their own predilections and their own communities of interest.

 

[TwoSix]

That doesn't mean that it isn't somewhat important. But I think that people overrate the importance of on-line discourse to a certain extent. After all, if you believed the memes and the discourse, Morbius would have have been the top movie of 2022. It's Morbin' time!

I feel like it's more that older people looking at memes or internet "buzz" from the outside simply correlate virality with actual popularity, and don't do the required deep dives to understand the narrative driving the memes. I mean, it was fairly obvious the Morbius "hype" wasn't being driven by actual excitement over the content of the movie, unlike the "Barbiheimer" hype of this summer.

Internet excitement can help turn something quality into more of a must-see event, or can drive a smaller number of people to spectacle watch something otherwise unappealing, but it's really a terrible predictor of actual financial success.

 

[TwoSix]

Again, that doesn't mean it was a good thing. Or that some members of the community were rightfully outraged. But I think that people overestimate the impact based upon their own predilections and their own communities of interest.

I think it's just that the impact is non-symmetric. If 10K people, to make up a number, were outraged enough to switch from D&D to "other not-D&D TTRPG", that would have a dramatic impact on the smaller brand while being only a minor blip for WotC/Hasbro.

So the narrative that the OGL fiasco is a "huge deal" is both right and wrong depending on the perspective of who it's a big deal for. And it's certainly a huge deal for the person who's no longer using a product line that they were attached to because of the emotional sense of being transgressed against.

 

[darjr]

Sure. But they are a very small part of the market- while I don't know the exact market share of Level Up, it's not even a rounding error compared to D&D. And we don't know yet how much of those sales consists of people that are moving their sales forward in time.

In other words, the fact that Hasbro's financials did not seem to be affected appears to be better evidence of the overall effect on the market.

Again, that doesn't mean it was a good thing. Or that some members of the community were rightfully outraged. But I think that people overestimate the impact based upon their own predilections and their own communities of interest.

Not just level up. And at FLGS, in person retail across the country. Even some stores running out of stock of pathfinder and the distribution having issues getting more in a timely manner.

But also DCC and even smaller “not D&D” games.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I feel like it's more that older people looking at memes or internet "buzz" from the outside simply correlate virality with actual popularity, and don't do the required deep dives to understand the narrative driving the memes. I mean, it was fairly obvious the Morbius "hype" wasn't being driven by actual excitement over the content of the movie, unlike the "Barbiheimer" hype of this summer.

Internet excitement can help turn something quality into more of a must-see event, or can drive a smaller number of people to spectacle watch something otherwise unappealing, but it's really a terrible predictor of actual financial success.

No. I think it's more than that, honestly.

Take The Super Mario Bros. Movie. In the months leading up to the release, the majority of on-line discourse about it was primarily a vocal number of people complaining about Chris Pratt.

Or Barbenheimer; the fact that it ended up getting so meme'd was primarily because of the playful juxtaposition of those two movies being released at the same time.* Not because of the content. Which ended up getting real-world coverage. Even so, that just increased real-world awareness; many of the people I know weren't aware of the meme, but were really excited for the Barbie movie. For that matter, I posted about the Barbie movie long before the meme (because of the director and stars) and no one here was that interested.

Yes, movie studios (for example) very much want internet virality ... see, e.g., M3gan. But the reason that they want it is because it increases overall awareness of the property; it is just a ton of free advertising, and does the most important thing of all for a movie; tells people that it will be out at a certain time. But the origins of the virality rarely, if ever, have anything to do with the actual quality of the product.


*And they were only released at the same time because Warner Bros. was being petty after Nolan left.