Wizards of the Coast Head Explains Benefits to D&D Franchise Model

The move will allow for better cross-platform integration.
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The head of Wizards of the Coast believes that moving to a franchise model will allow for more alignment between D&D multimedia and the core D&D tabletop game. Recently, Wizards of the Coast president John Hight spoke with GameIndustry.biz in a wide-ranging interview about the gaming company. Much of the interview was spent on Wizards' digital gaming ambitions, but Hight did speak about the realignment of the company to a franchise model.

Under the franchise model, all D&D-related operations now run through Dan Ayoub as opposed to having different arms for entertainment, video games, and tabletop. In the interview, Hight stated that the franchise model would allow for better coordination - specifically between different aspects of the franchise. One example was the D&D movie, which had relatively limited crossover with the D&D tabletop game. "We'd love to have had a D&D book or campaign a part and parcel with the movie," he says.
He also noted that Stranger Things - which is receiving a new tie-in project next month - could be integrated more with the game. "It'd be nice to have that all lined up, so when this thing rolls out, we've got a campaign for you to enjoy that's something you saw on the show, or the characters in the show."

Additionally, Hight noted that another side to the franchise model is to fully align the digital and physical sides of play, which he hopes will lead to in-person play. "Unfortunately, because of COVID, there's a whole generation of gamers that has spent a good deal of their time playing only online," he said. "And they're re-discovering the joy of being able to play together. What I want us to be able to do is have players move fairly seamlessly between in person play and online play."

Elsewhere in the interview, Hight hinted at a new D&D MMORPG, stating that he has encouraged development of a new MMO but stopped shy of saying a project was officially in the works.
 

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Christian Hoffer

Christian Hoffer

MMOs as a category are pretty much dead, at least when it comes to launching new ones. Even Star Wars' second (and much more commercial) one is kind of just hanging around as a free to play game, rather than being the big WoW-killing moneymaker it was envisioned as.

Unless something drastic changes in the marketplace, I think we'll see more games like Sea of Thieves or Fortnite, where lots of people can play together, but which don't require the kind of expensive content creation we saw during the heyday of MMOs.


I likely play too many video games but MMOs have never really been my thing. I've tried a few and I do play some online competitive racing games but the game play loop of the MMOs I've tried just doesn't have much appeal.
 

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I have friends that still play DDO every thursday night. And Neverwinter gets regular updates to keep it in line with the book releases. What does a new MMO offer?
 

I like the idea of returning to the table more... But they just spend the last couple years telling me that online microtransactions were the future.
Can you source that? What I recall is one instance of a WotC representative using the word "monetization", which some interpreted without evidence to be about online microtransactions, in an address to investors. No customer-directed communication about it, and nothing specifically about microtransactions. Did I miss or forget something?
 

I have friends that still play DDO every thursday night. And Neverwinter gets regular updates to keep it in line with the book releases. What does a new MMO offer?
The money goes to a different group of people.

A new MMO, of course, has to compete with decades of pre-existing content in EverQuest, World of Warcraft, DDO, SWTOR and Final Fantasy, which means the bar gets raised ever higher for a genre where all the most recent games have failed to break through.

And you can get most of the other benefits of an MMO, like being able to play 24/7 with strangers or friends, in live-service games like Sea of Thieves.

That said, once AI is able to crank out tons of content, especially on the fly, things might change. But thankfully, we're not there yet.
 

Can you source that? What I recall is one instance of a WotC representative using the word "monetization", which some interpreted without evidence to be about online microtransactions, in an address to investors. No customer-directed communication about it, and nothing specifically about microtransactions. Did I miss or forget something?
Right before it crashed, didn't we see minis for sale for Sigil? Or am I misremembering?
 




This all makes sense to me. I would love to see a broader level of synergy across the brand, but not at the expense of any one part of it and definitely not at the expense of the tabletop game itself.

Pokemon is a good example of a franchise that often self-sabotages it's video game development, cutting it short, in order to ensure that all the product divisions line up with each other like the TCG, the animated series, and the video games.
 

of course that was after they had given up on Sigil, so there was no point in charging for it

Even if they did have plans to make custom minis, so what? I buy minis now for my game, why should a digital mini be any different?

Micro-transactions always struck me as the mythical boogie-man hiding under the bed to destroy D&D. You could never buy anything that would make your character more powerful, there was always going to be a DM running the game. Want a little bling? That's nothing new.
 

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