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.

 

[Hussar]

huh, you wrote 2.5 to 5%, not 50

@Myrdin Potter wrote 25 to 50 percent. That was the point I was challenging.

 

[mamba]

@Myrdin Potter wrote 25 to 50 percent. That was the point I was challenging.

ok, I agree that that one is hard to reach, but you wrote that ‘2.5-5% increase would be considered a phenomenal success’ and I very much doubt that one

Heck, that low a bar is something the FR DLCs could accomplish, and they fill half a book

 

[Hussar]

ok, I agree that that one is hard to reach, but you wrote that ‘2.5-5% increase would be considered a phenomenal success’ and I very much doubt that one

Heck, that low a bar is something the FR DLCs could accomplish, and they fill half a book

A 5% growth, year on year on revenue? That's freaking fantastic growth for a company that size. But, meh, I get the feeling we're just dueling semantics here. If you honestly believe that FR DLC's would generate 50 MILLION dollars in increased revenue for WotC, year on year, I'm not really sure that's terribly realistic. The point I was making is that 25-50% growth is entirely unrealistic.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

25 to 50%? That's not even remotely realistic. 2.5-5% increase would be considered a phenomenal success and probably unsustainable over the long run.


They tried that. That's what 4e was. They got resolutely spanked. 4e is, objectively, a better designed game than 5e. It is. Mechanically anyway. It runs easier, it's easier to design for, it has far fewer problems. 4e is a much better mechanically designed game.

People hated it.

So, we get this. This is what people want from WotC. You can dislike it, disbelieve it all you like, but, this is the fact of the situation.

If they put out 4 books a year and the demand really is for 5, then one extra book could be up to 25% more demand and 2 is 50%.

The low rate of releases compared to the past was done in the very early days of 5e because they had been pared down to a bare bones staff and they were all scarred from over production in the past.

One reseller here was said that the pace actually works well in their shop and actually most years they did put out an extra box or book or two.

I personally don’t think they have enough staff and think they have done a poorer and poorer job of producing good adventures over the 2014 era and I have stopped buying 2024 after the core books because I think it went down even further in quality / interest for me.

So I don’t think that they could sell 20 books and get 5x demand.

I do think that they wasted 3-5 years of potential higher revenue and profits by sticking to a slow a steady release schedule when the game proved to be a much bigger hit then they expected. There were enough good quality ex-WoTC and Paizo staff out there to take assignments of additional adventures.

Today, I think they have growth headwinds and that is why they are turning to digital products - they need top line growth even if the bottom line is really no better than a good royalty program.

 

[mamba]

A 5% growth, year on year on revenue? That's freaking fantastic growth for a company that size.

D&D, not Hasbro, and I feel they have exceeded that for most of the past 10 years, so maybe not that impressive after all. Certainly not out of reach for one new book

If you honestly believe that FR DLC's would generate 50 MILLION dollars in increased revenue for WotC

no, but then D&D’s revenue is not 1 Billion, so I have no idea how you arrived there

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

For leadership positions like that? There were competitive for those types of positions in a large company like WotC, but not particularly high in general.

The comparison was to other TTRPG companies. I think they look much better in that light, but I could be wrong.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

D&D is the big fish, the leviathan, in the TTRPG industry but if we talk with the number of the videogame industry then the franchise is only a little fish that is growing.

D&D is living its second golden age, or we could say its platinum age because never it has been so popular but for Hasbro it is not yet one of the franchise stars of the company.

Hasbro dreams with a new title like BG3 but producing something like this is not easy. It needs a good team, money and time. If it was easy then others would follow the same path. Bloodlines 2 is going to be released soon but we have almost forgotten soon, when Paradox Interactive isn't a little fish in the videogame industry.

 

[Zardnaar]

D&D is the big fish, the leviathan, in the TTRPG industry but if we talk with the number of the videogame industry then the franchise is only a little fish that is growing.

D&D is living its second golden age, or we could say its platinum age because never it has been so popular but for Hasbro it is not yet one of the franchise stars of the company.

Hasbro dreams with a new title like BG3 but producing something like this is not easy. It needs a good team, money and time. If it was easy then others would follow the same path. Bloodlines 2 is going to be released soon but we have almost forgotten soon, when Paradox Interactive isn't a little fish in the videogame industry.

Started playing Paradox Interactive games with HoI2.

20 years maybe 19.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

This is a little off-topic but it is about the path the videogame industry should follow.

"Genuinely what this industry needs is not more mathematically produced, psychologically trained gameplay loops, rather more expressions of worlds that folks are engaged with, or want to engage with. AI has its place as a tool, but we have all the tools in the world and they aren't compensating for the incredible lack of cogent direction. AI isn't going to solve the big problem of the industry, which is leadership & vision".

Michael Douse, Larian Studios (BG3) publishing director.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Oh, I will not deny that there's a marketing aspect.
I merely deny that it is "performative playtesting" which would mean that the playtesting aspect is only a show -- we know it's real

Is it?

Like seriously, is it?

They trashed several things with no actual testing, just "it didn't hit the arbitrary 70% threshold, destroy it forever". But then they kept Mearls' darling Proficiency Dice for like four or five packets running before finally, finally killing it and replacing it with Proficiency Bonus, because people hated the flat chance of getting a +1 bonus regardless of whether it meant they could theoretically potentially get a 2x bonus.

That, to me, looks VERY much like performative testing. Is it 100%, top-to-bottom, exclusively performative testing? No. They clearly do a modicum of actual, legit testing, meaning, they analyze data, check to see if things are meeting their targets, and reconfigure to address issues, or roll back and start over if something has genuinely hit a dead end. But the overwhelming majority is marketing and performative acts, nothing serious.

That's why Specialties took so long to die, despite being unpopular, ineffective, and problematic. That's why they promised, up and down, that we'd get outright actual martial healing...and then it became pure vaporware. That's why they dithered and dallied just trying to nail down the Fighter, and then had to save a third of the classes for after the public playtesting ended...leaving most of those abandoned classes poorly designed (Ranger, Sorcerer, Warlock, and to a lesser extent Monk being the top offenders).

I wish to heaven that more than a slim minority of the playtesting had been actually serious. We'd have gotten a much, much better game if it had.