WotC Wizards owns SIX video game studios and other business of WotC

[Scribe]

WTF is this money coming for this at this point, I don't know, especially in this economy.

Throwing cash at cardboard, is relatively much cheaper than any number of other hobbies.

 

[Desdichado]

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.

 

[haakon1]

I'm confused as to how a video game would teach 5e. I don't remember any video game ever being instructional towards what tabletop rpgs can do

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.

 

[Desdichado]

So yes, the economy is bad. But it's also different. And some parts of the economy are doing quite well, all things considered (streaming services, video games, video conferencing...). The pandemic not only taught people how to entertain themselves by staying home, it normalized it.

(I'm not an economist, though. Perhaps one could weigh in?)

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]

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.

 

[Zardnaar]

And none of them seem capable of making a good D&D game.

 

[bedir than]

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.

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]

And none of them seem capable of making a good D&D game.

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.

 

[Reynard]

Solasta appears to be D&D 5e, but I have played enough to be sure.

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]

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.

Not all new subclasses, all the SRD subclasses are in the Solasta (with class DLC expansions) except Evoker.