WotC Hasbro Gaming Down 17% But D&D Remains 'Bright Spot'

ICv2 reports on Hasbro's latest quarterly report, noting that "Wizards of the Coast’s Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons were two bright spots in Hasbro’s Q3, an otherwise tough quarter with sales and earnings both hit by actual and threatened tariffs on goods from China".

Other notes from ICv2:

• Hasbro Gaming, which does not include franchise brands Monopoly and Magic: The Gathering, was down 17%
• Total gaming sales, including Magic and Monopoly, were roughly flat, a big change from the 26% growth in Q2
• WotC has close to a dozen [digital] games in development for delivery over the next five to six years
• Hasbro believes that WotC sales can be doubled over the next five years, “…as we’ve accomplished over the past five years.”

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm not saying they'll pull it off, but it is a possibility...and Marvel pulling it off seemed unlikely until very recently. The previous attempts were not serious, the way that Paramont seems to be now. Never say never.

There's a few things that make marvel's success less surprising

1. CGI and graphics are now able to adequately visually produce the worlds and abilities we are expecting to see.
2. Super hero fantasy for kids and up has been very prevalent for decades now. Mostly in cartoons and toys etc. The basis is set and now we want to see more adult versions of them.
3. The stories told in marvel universes tend to be simple and fun with easily identifiable villains and a few higher morale statements. It's honestly a great combination to base a movie on as long as your audiences are open to super power stuff - which younger audiences tend to really enjoy.

So while it could have flopped, it's not really surprising that it didn't. Keep in mind these aren't just hindsight points, these are all reasons the initial risk on super hero movies were taken to begin with - because these things mitigated some of the risk otherwise present in the uncertain endeavor.

 

[FrogReaver]

A D&D cinematic universe would be very cool. Several stories could be told.

Yes but, I think they are lacking the particularly good already established stories to tell in it.

 

[Parmandur]

There's a few things that make marvel's success less surprising

1. CGI and graphics are now able to adequately visually produce the worlds and abilities we are expecting to see.
2. Super hero fantasy for kids and up has been very prevalent for decades now. Mostly in cartoons and toys etc. The basis is set and now we want to see more adult versions of them.
3. The stories told in marvel universes tend to be simple and fun with easily identifiable villains and a few higher morale statements. It's honestly a great combination to base a movie on as long as your audiences are open to super power stuff - which younger audiences tend to really enjoy.

So while it could have flopped, it's not really surprising that it didn't. Keep in mind these aren't just hindsight points, these are all reasons the initial risk on super hero movies were taken to begin with - because these things mitigated some of the risk otherwise present in the uncertain endeavor.

True enough, but it was still a gamble, and all three points could easily apply to D&D as well (the DMG making an adventure section could serve as a generic fantasy film script generator, practically speaking).

 

[Parmandur]

Yes but, I think they are lacking the particularly good already established stories to tell in it.

They have something even better than stories, they have story building blocks. Done right, it is the perfect property to spin on endlessly.

 

[FrogReaver]

True enough, but it was still a gamble, and all three points could easily apply to D&D as well (the DMG making an adventure section could serve as a generic fantasy film script generator, practically speaking).

Not really. Marvel is a character centered universe. D&D is just a bunch of mechanics - with a few settings and no good well known characters that have a story to tell - thus the reason it always comes off more as generic fantasy than as D&D. There's no personal investment in those characters for anyone.

Though now that we are talking about it - if they were to make a group of characters with backstories people could personally relate to - then maybe - just maybe they could pull it off.

 

[Parmandur]

Not really. Marvel is a character centered universe. D&D is just a bunch of mechanics - with a few settings and no good well known characters that have a story to tell - thus the reason it always comes off more as generic fantasy than as D&D. There's no personal investment in those characters for anyone.

Though now that we are talking about it - if they were to make a group of characters with backstories people could personally relate to - then maybe - just maybe they could pull it off.

Well, they could use the PHB to build a few, or some of the better among the seven billion novels they have.

 

[FrogReaver]

They have something even better than stories, they have story building blocks. Done right, it is the perfect property to spin on endlessly.

But not good ones for movies. Without some kind of established fictional characters then all they are is one of many generic fantasy settings at this time. Heck, for movies or TV series their fantasy world is probably one of the worst to try and write content for. Literally the only thing it has going for it when it comes to movies (at least at this time) is the D&D name.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

You should remember D&D cartoon for children has became one of the icons of the 80's years, and Hasbro has to thank Michael Bay because he resurrected the Transformers franchise. The media is a too good advertising.

There is a section of the market, the teenages who don't play with action figures anymore, and the products for these are the TTRPG, wargames and board games.

* I imagine WotC working in secret projects like a mass battle wargame with d20 system, looking for the balance of power between spellcasters and firearms, or a reboot of Gamma World where the PCs have to save ammo for the worst menaces.

Maybe we can create a RPG set in the future, but D&D and d20 Future aren't ready for the crossover and this is the challenge and headache for the game designers. What if the DM has read the comic "Warlord Mars Attacks" and this has inspired to him ideas for the new campaign?

If Hasbro sells toys of characters from movies or videogames, why not also TTRPGs? But a d20 superheroes with class levels is complicated. Hawkeye, Black Widow in the same group than Iron Man and Thor fighting against an army of super-skrull invaders or ultron bots is a serious challenge when the Game Master wants to find the right balance of power. In the MMO "Champions Online" your PC can be a martial artist who fights street gangs, military forces and alien invaders, but here the realism is sacrificed for the gameplay. You can create a d20 version of Street Fighters or Starcraft but you can't mix both in the same story because the level of power will be broken.

Mutants & Masterminds doesn't use the same system than D&D or d20 Modern. You can't do a crossover with both lines. The attributes are different, and the levels of power. And the item (gadgets, armored suit..) counts as innate powers.

* Thinking about adding new abilities scores my opinion is we could add two more: Courage and Acuity. This last one would mean the perception to discover little details as clues for a investigation, but also astuteness for social manipulation, subterfuge, a fast mind to be creative inventing a lie to hide the truth. Other traits could work as "sub-abilities", like a bonus feat, f.e. agility or precision. This could be presented as an optional rule for an Unearthed Arcana article and also this could be used by 3rd party publishers for dark urban fantasy settings where PCs need more work of investigation, for example to hunt vampires and other gothic monsters.

 

[Hussar]

There is a big difference between the OGL, which mostly relies on purchasing the PHB, and building some system that makes it easier to play completely different systems like Cuthulhu.

Umm, no?

Look at all those games that came out of the 2000's - Mutants and Masterminds, Pathfinder, Blue Rose, and a bajillion others - they were all built on the d20 OGL. Which isn't particularly any different than the 5e OGL.

The difference is that today, people have learned that banging out yet another d20 game isn't really what the market is wanting. We've GOT a million d20 games out there. d20 became the GURPS of gaming with a d20 version of virtually every IP out there plus, many, many more. It's just that in these days, most of those games have faded into obscurity and it's become a lot more common for new games to come with their own set of mechanics.

Or, they are borrowing from the OGL clones like FATE and whatnot which have released their own versions of OGL for their own systems, allowing for familial groups of games which fit a given genre better than the D20 system does.

I mean you mention Cthulhu. Do you mean D20 Cthulhu? Classic? Trail of Cthulhu? I'm sure there's a Savage Worlds Cthulhu out there. Or maybe one of the fifteen other versions?

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

There is a big difference between the OGL, which mostly relies on purchasing the PHB, and building some system that makes it easier to play completely different systems like Cuthulhu.

There are full games that use the 5E OGL/SRD that do not also require the purchase of the D&D core books, such as Adventures in Middle-Earth or Esper Genesis. Both work quite well. And I am sure there are others out there by now that I do not know the names of.

Besides, if a company really wanted to use the 3E OGL/SRD, they still could. WotC did not, or could not, cancel it, or Paizo would be out of business, since Pathfinder still uses it, even with all the changes they have made, and Green Ronin would have had to stop making Mutants & Masterminds.