Hasbro Opens New Wizards of the Coast Video Game Studio in Montreal to Support D&D Franchise

Hasbro has announced a new video game studio in Montreal, with a new focus on supporting D&D video games. The new studio, called Wizards of the Coast Studios Inc. will focus on developing new content for the Dungeons & Dragons franchise and expanding Hasbro's lineup of digital games. The studio is expected to support 200 jobs. Dan Ayoub, the head of the D&D franchise, will also run the new studio. Ayoub, you may recall, has a long pedigree in video game development.

The new studio will not replace Invoke Studios, Hasbro's other studio located in Montreal. The new office for Wizards of the Coast Studios Inc. will be located next to Invoke Studios.

Hasbro has big aspirations for expanding the D&D franchise via video games. Several D&D video games are in development at third party studios and now we're seeing an in-house expansion of the D&D digital portfolio. One obvious speculation is that the new studio will work on a Baldur's Gate 4, which Hasbro has promised will eventually be released following the mammoth success of Baldur's Gate 3.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

I live in Montreal. The employees of studios are bilingual but we prefer to work in French. There is no bogging down. We get the work done.

Why would a Portuguese studio in Portugal work in English instead of using their native tongue? It makes no sense.

I mean we are born, grow up, f@ck, marry, have children, become grand parents and die in French. It makes no sense to work in English when our native tongue is French.

I was born in, raised in and went to university in Montreal (technically I grew up in Brossard but that was a PQ and very French place when I grew up). I moved away for career reasons in my mid-20’s but I am still bilingual. Just completed an extremely technical ethics update in French to maintain my CPA.

My point stands. Hasbro is an American company and dealing with a subsidiary in Montreal is an extra hassle. If they want to import talent that has school aged kids, they are forced to go to school in French. The working environment will be French.

The Quebec government has been pouring money into movies and video games and Ubisoft has made a big investment into Montreal (they are a French company) quite a while ago so there are actually a good amount of trained and qualified people there, but ignoring the barriers it presents and the extra friction is not a great business plan.

 

[doctorhook]

4 books a year is ideal: any more than that really starts to be too much.

This is such a subjective thing, but you’ve presented it as objective fact. Why is four books per year the best number? Best for you, or best for everyone?

 

[Dire Bare]

Its 30 years later so maybe not? Im more curious why 4 is the magic number?

4, 5, 6 . . . we can quibble over the exact number. But fewer, higher quality releases as opposed to more frequent, lower quality releases . . . seems to be working for WotC for the past decade.

 

[Azzy]

This is such a subjective thing, but you’ve presented it as objective fact. Why is four books per year the best number? Best for you, or best for everyone?

In this economy?

 

[TheAlkaizer]

My point stands. Hasbro is an American company and dealing with a subsidiary in Montreal is an extra hassle. If they want to import talent that has school aged kids, they are forced to go to school in French. The working environment will be French.

The Quebec government has been pouring money into movies and video games and Ubisoft has made a big investment into Montreal (they are a French company) quite a while ago so there are actually a good amount of trained and qualified people there, but ignoring the barriers it presents and the extra friction is not a great business plan.

There's ton of Canadian (as in anglophone) and American companies with subsidiaries or infrastructures in Montreal. As with any other non-speaking region of the world. They manage.

And in video games the working environment is generally not French, it's bilingual. So yeah, your HR will have to send emails in both languages and other things like that. But on the floor, people swap languages all the time. It's a challenge mostly for administrative resources, not development team. And that's the talent pool that matters. There's definitely some companies where it's only french, but drawing from the talent pool will not be an issue. A sizeable portion of the talent pool (I'd guess half from my experience) is either bilingual or have English as their mother tongue.

As for your last paragraph, you seem to suggest that the government has recently poured money in? If so, that's not the case. Quite the opposite, there's been changes to the way that most video game studios publically finance and the generous tax returns are getting slashed.

 

[Dire Bare]

I'm rather surprised at the number of posters here who say they DON'T want to see WotC print D&D books at a faster rate than they currently are.

Because we don't want WotC to go under like TSR and for the D&D product line to die?

And, as others have already pointed out . . . very few of us actually managed to collect all of that wonderful stuff from the 80s and 90s. We appreciate being able to keep up with the current release schedule.

 

[Incenjucar]

I was born in, raised in and went to university in Montreal (technically I grew up in Brossard but that was a PQ and very French place when I grew up). I moved away for career reasons in my mid-20’s but I am still bilingual. Just completed an extremely technical ethics update in French to maintain my CPA.

My point stands. Hasbro is an American company and dealing with a subsidiary in Montreal is an extra hassle. If they want to import talent that has school aged kids, they are forced to go to school in French. The working environment will be French.

The Quebec government has been pouring money into movies and video games and Ubisoft has made a big investment into Montreal (they are a French company) quite a while ago so there are actually a good amount of trained and qualified people there, but ignoring the barriers it presents and the extra friction is not a great business plan.

What barriers do you imagine exist? We Americans work internationally just fine. I've trained people in China, Japan, and India without issue. Why is talking to default bilingual people who are closer to the US than North California is to South California a barrier?

 

[Parmandur]

For you or for everybody?

Nothing is for "everybody". But for most, yes, anything over 4 big products a year is a strain.

that probably assumes that you buy all of them, I assume most people are not collectors that compulsively buy everything. For the non-collectors who only buy what piqued their interest, the average year probably gets between 0 and 2 purchases. Having a wider array of offerings might change that

No, not necessarily. Too many products, which WotC has pushed towards a few times like in 2023, come close to bring overwhelming even for people who wouldn't buy every book. 3E's prisuct schedule was insane.

Its 30 years later so maybe not? Im more curious why 4 is the magic number?

This is such a subjective thing, but you’ve presented it as objective fact. Why is four books per year the best number? Best for you, or best for everyone?

The "hype cycle" for a product is about 3 months (that's across the board).

There are 12 months in the year, which divided by 3 is 4.

One D&D product a fiscal Quarter, ergo, allows for said product to be the focus of a full hype cycle before passing that baton on to the next product.

 

[Dire Bare]

Nothing is for "everybody". But for most, yes, anything over 4 big products a year is a strain.

No, not necessarily. Too many products, which WotC has pushed towards a few times like in 2023, come close to bring overwhelming even for people who wouldn't buy every book. 3E's prisuct schedule was insane.


The "hype cycle" for a product is about 3 months (that's across the board).

There are 12 months in the year, which divided by 3 is 4.

One D&D product a fiscal Quarter, ergo, allows for said product to be the focus of a full hype cycle before passing that baton on to the next product.

This is a problem within the Magic community also . . . the current pace of releases is intense, and many fans are feeling left behind. So far, this has been profitable for WotC, but a lot of folks feel like this is due to speculators buying up the cards hoping they will increase in value.

D&D doesn't have much of a secondary market like that. If WotC increases their D&D release schedule and isn't able to adequately put in the time and manpower to create the products in the first place, but also market them effectively . . .

Personally, I would love 10 high-quality D&D books each year . . . but I strongly doubt WotC would be able to do that and maintain the quality of releases. And it would leave a lot of fans behind.

But whatever . . . we're all armchair quarterbacking here.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

At the current rate of publication I may buy 2 to 4 books per year and if I really like or want to use something another version of that for a VTT (sometimes I want to use it and it is VTT only). Ramp up the production rate and I will pay less attention to any given product and analysis paralysis will creep in. So, I am more likely to hold off purchasing because something better may be in the pipeline. Overall effect for any given edition I am very likely to buy books early in the cycle but one I have 4 or 5 books and there are a lot out there I am very prone to lose interest.