Scribe
Legend
Throwing cash at cardboard, is relatively much cheaper than any number of other hobbies.
WotC Wizards owns SIX video game studios and other business of WotC
- Thread starter bedir than
- Start date
Throwing cash at cardboard, is relatively much cheaper than any number of other hobbies.
Desdichado
Hero
This feels like a damage control article, where she refuses to answer any straight questions with anything other than corporate non-answers, and a continued focus on treating D&D and Magic players like Xbox consumers. It's clear GeekWire was trying to pin her down on things that have caused a lot of backlash not just with fans but in financial publications like Market Watch. She's dancing a careful line, because as we see Hasbro bosses and the board unhappy with Wizards performance, her job may well be one of those most on the line as they're looking for someone to blame for the stock price collapse.
Either way, it's clear that reading between the lines that Wizards is going to ignore the backlash and double down on what they were going to do anyway.
Either way, it's clear that reading between the lines that Wizards is going to ignore the backlash and double down on what they were going to do anyway.
What I mean is a turned-based D&D game with actual rules from actual rule books, letting you develop characters, following actual combat rules, action economy, and spell and monster rules - and showing the dice results for combat.
Examples would be Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which was real PF1, and Temple of Elemental Evi, which was real D&D 3e.
Solasta appears to be D&D 5e, but I have not played enough to be sure. I checked and it mentions OGL 1.0, so I suspect it may be “sort of 5e”, but maybe not completely, as it doesn’t seem in any way affiliated with WotC. Could be ersatz, intimated vaguely with “house rules” built on 3e or 4e OGL.
Examples of “not useful for learning an edition’s rules” include games like “D&D Dark Alliance” which is real time and not using D&D rules.
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Desdichado
Hero
You're probably on to something (I am a trained, although not practicing economist. That's what one of my degrees is in, anyway. Not that that makes my opinion any more relevant here than yours.) Streaming services are absolutely NOT doing well. If you were paying attention to the news coming out of Netflix and Disney, specifically about the literal billions of dollars lost on Disney+, and the stock price tanking of both companies, you'd recognize that that hasn't been true since the "halcyon" days of the lockdown. The future of the streaming market is very much in doubt. I don't think it'll go away, of course, but I think that the whole industry has to restructure itself somehow, and nobody's figured out the silver bullet that will make it work.
Actually, that's not entirely true. Maybe nobody's figured out how to make it work, but it's no secret why it's NOT working. There's tons of data suggesting that customers don't like the product that the streaming services offer—it's overly corporatized, it's made by committee, it's made by people who don't like the source material that they're adapting and who insult the fans who don't want things adapted in a way that doesn't resemble the source material, and it's ESG friendly, which makes Blackrock and Vanguard happy but makes customers very unhappy. On top of that, there's the attempt to over monetize customers, like Netflix's plan to crack down on password sharing if your kids go away to college, and stuff like that, and people are realizing that they can cut the streaming cord just as easily as they cut the cable cord a few years earlier.
But that's what NOT to do, which all of the streaming services are still doing. What exactly they SHOULD do is still TBD. But for my money, I'd guess that Zazlav and WB-Discovery are probably on their way to getting closer to that than anyone else right now.
Benjamin Olson
Hero
The natural life-cycle of a small video games studio seems to be to bet big on a few games then get bought up by a conglomerate, for a lot if those games were successful, for a song if those games were unsuccessful. They are often bought up to be "stripped for parts" on one level or another, including human resource parts.
So while owning multiple studios is a sign that WotC and Hasbro are, were, or will be making a big move into some sort of videogame and videogame adjacent products, having six studios is less likely to mean that they have projects in the works for six different studios than it is that they are assembling their video games (and probably VTT building) division out of the carcasses of multiple failed studios they bought on the cheap. The ones they don't bother to name are presumably the ones with the least impressive resumes. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them quietly disappear and get merged with others; in fact I would expect that.
So while owning multiple studios is a sign that WotC and Hasbro are, were, or will be making a big move into some sort of videogame and videogame adjacent products, having six studios is less likely to mean that they have projects in the works for six different studios than it is that they are assembling their video games (and probably VTT building) division out of the carcasses of multiple failed studios they bought on the cheap. The ones they don't bother to name are presumably the ones with the least impressive resumes. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them quietly disappear and get merged with others; in fact I would expect that.
bedir than
Hero
Not only are they all listed in this thread, they also weren't purchased (except Tuque)
Hasbro's aggressive plan to make a lot more video games
Games featuring G.I. Joe, D&D, and some original worlds, too
www.axios.com
Henadic Theologian
Hero
So far very true. They should have bought the studio behind Solasta instead of Toque (now Invoke) hopefully their next game is better then Dark Alliance and turn based.
Solasta uses the 5E SRD as its foundation but all new subclasses, feats, etc. But it is a very close take on the rules, certainly closer than BG3.
Given how much new 5E material they made for Solasta, I keep expecting them to put out a Solasta Advenures or whatever hardcover.
Henadic Theologian
Hero
Not all new subclasses, all the SRD subclasses are in the Solasta (with class DLC expansions) except Evoker.
I mean, obviously.
Thanks. It seemed "close but not exact".
MonsterEnvy
Legend
Only one D&D game from them has come out, too early to say that.
bedir than
Hero
Now down to FOUR studios, and they lost two of the three that were working on D&D projects?
comicbook.com
Wizards of the Coast Reportedly Cancels Five Video Game Projects
Wizards of the Coast has reportedly cancelled a number of upcoming video game projects. Bloomberg [...]
mamba
Hero
not sure how you arrive at four studios. Sounds like the ones mentioned were independent and lost their WotC project, they should not count towards the six from my understandingNow down to FOUR studios, and they lost two of the three that were working on D&D projects?
Wizards of the Coast Reportedly Cancels Five Video Game Projects
Wizards of the Coast has reportedly cancelled a number of upcoming video game projects. Bloomberg [...]
LuisCarlos17f
Legend
Blizzard Entertaiment lost the licence for Warcraft and then they created a new project with the title "Warcraft".
Videogames could be the test field for other forgotten franchises, for example Gamma World.
D&D is the supreme master of the TTRPG industry, but the videogames are different. Even Disney has created two collectable cards videogames.
If you are still a "little fish" then I don't advice the risk of online multiplayer videogames because here you have to earn enough money every month to keep the servers.
Other points is about licences in videogames in other companies, for example Snake-Eyes as skin in Fortnite.
Videogames could be the test field for other forgotten franchises, for example Gamma World.
D&D is the supreme master of the TTRPG industry, but the videogames are different. Even Disney has created two collectable cards videogames.
If you are still a "little fish" then I don't advice the risk of online multiplayer videogames because here you have to earn enough money every month to keep the servers.
Other points is about licences in videogames in other companies, for example Snake-Eyes as skin in Fortnite.
Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
What's ESG?
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Ummm, I think what you're trying to say is that the lost the licence to WarHAMMER, then created Warcraft, and that's sorta right, but not quite. The actual sequence of events, according to Blizzard, which has talked about this a fair bit in the last few years, with only slightly conflicting accounts is:
1) Blizzard started working on an RTS that was extremely heavily inspired by/beholden to Warhammer.
2) Blizzard attempted to get an official Warhammer Fantasy licence from GW. GW were extremely difficult to deal with, had a lot of conditions, and eventually negotiations broke down.*
3) Blizzard then just made Warcraft, which was "legally distinct" from Warhammer despite having originally been intended to be a Warhammer game. GW did come after them, at least according to some Blizzard versions of the story, but it seems like either GW gave up or it was resolved out of court.
So to be clear they never actually had the licence to lose.
*= This is unsurprising, because GW in the '90s and '00s were known for being spectacularly painful to work with, extremely demanding, and the studios that put out GW-licenced games in that era did so more because they could "manage" GW than because they had exceptional games or the like. A lot of this was because of the 1994 IPO and inept and greedy attempts to extract value from GW's IP, which calmed down a bit later on (though still flares up occasionally). In the very late '90s/early '00s GW for example managed to kill off both a massive, online Warhammer Fantasy battle game, and Warhammer Fantasy MMORPG, both quite far along in production. The battle game was basically an online version of WHFB, and they decided it would compete with tabletop, so stopped it (which I suspect was very short-sighted). With the MMORPG, rather unusually they were actually funding it in part (this is the only GW video game I'm aware of where they did this), and decided it was going to cost too much to market and release. Eventually Mythic got the licence, and made Warhammer: Age of Reckoning with both their own money, investors, and eventually Electronic Arts bought them and funded it. But GW had only agreed to five-year licence and chose not to renew it, killing off that was well!
bedir than
Hero
Ah, yes. Those two lost licenses and were not owned, correct
Ruin Explorer
Legend
ESG-friendly is a corporate term meaning Environment, Social and Governance, as in corporate governance. Normally it means stuff like, using green energy where possible, or green-washing via carbon credits (unfashionable now as even the public is catching on that they're a fraud), avoiding working with suppliers who don't have good social policies*, and ensuring the company itself has good hiring practices, doesn't discriminate on race, gender, sexuality, etc. @Desdichado seems to be using it a sort of derogatory way, which is kind of weird, especially as the only part which could really apply to Netflix's output is "social" and on the contrary, Netflix have actually been somewhat méchant as the French say, on that front.
I'm also rather confused by his claim below:
I'm looking at Netflix's history of adaptions, and I'm not seeing a pattern of that at all.
The only obvious example is Cowboy Bebop. Basically no-one asked for a live-action version of an ultra-stylized anime classic from the '90s, but they gave it to us anyway, with a 50-year-old with almost no martial arts experience playing a character intended to be 29 to 32 who is a Bruce Lee-level (and style) martial artist. It didn't seem "made by committee" though - god if anything a committee might have helped! It's a singular vision, just a bad one.
Most other Netflix adaptions either improved on the source material (Altered Carbon), or made fans extremely happy with it despite changes (Shadow and Bone). I think he's trying to talk about The Witcher, but any "fan complaints" (which seem to be extremely sketchy and vague) are meaningless there, because The Witcher has been an absolutely huge success for Netflix, and the idea it's demonstrating a problem is just a bad joke.
Netflix's problems seem to stem from other areas, one of which @Deschaido mentions - the insanely foolish decision to reduce real consumer value by cracking down on password sharing. Netflix is already overpriced relative to other streaming services (esp. as you can't get 4K outside the most overpriced package - something competing streamers like Disney, Apple+ or Prime simply make part of the package), so lowering the perception of value even further is absolute insanity. There's no doubt it'll backfire. The only question is how hard.
Another major issue, and real issue unlike the "disrespectful adaptation" stuff is that Netflix cancels shows willy-nilly. It used to be Netflix, by design, waited until a show had two seasons before cancelling, because their metrics showed that a show with two seasons got viewed vastly more than one with just one. However, that's gone entirely out the window, and now Netflix cancels shows after one season constantly. It also cancels shows extremely quickly after release, which is perhaps a kindness on a certain level, but also means nobody is going to watch that 1-season show that had its cancellation announced like two weeks after it came out.
On top of that they have a bizarre release schedule where they very frequently run over one show's release with another show. 1899 is a good example - I didn't like it much personally, but a lot of people did, and it looked like it had potential. However it didn't get a lot of views because it came out a week before a new season of Stranger Things.
* = The social bit can be a major issue for companies which are primarily supplying large corporations and the like, because in order to get a lot of big contracts today (and even some small ones) in the US, you often have to provide details of what your company policies are on things like hiring, discrimination and so on, what the actual make-up of your company is in term of race, gender, disability, and the like. In theory this is a good thing but certainly causes a lot of sweating for SMEs trying to ensure they meet the requirements, especially those in the Midwest and the like, but that's a whole other discussion.
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