WotC WotC Cancels 5 Video Games

While D&D itself seems to be still growing rapidly nearly 10 years after the launch of 5th Edition, WotC has recently scaled back its video game plans, costing up to 15 people their jobs, although they may be able to relocate within the company. WotC spoke to Bloomberg and told the site that they were "still committed to using digital games" and that the change in plans was designed to focus on "games which are strategically aligned with developing our existing brands and those which show promise in expanding or engaging our audience in new ways."

Studios working on games for WotC include Otherside Entertainment and Hidden Path Entertainment. WotC owns 6 video game studios in various cities according to CEO Cynthia Williams in an interview with GeekWire.

We’ve announced six different studios that are first-party and owned. There’s Archetype in Austin that’s working on a sci-fi game that we’re really excited about. It’s a new IP.

You’ve got Atomic Arcade in Raleigh-Durham, that’s working on a very mature G.I. Joe game, and then, Invoke is working on a D&D game. The key piece I’d tell you is that we have been really fortunate to hire some amazing industry veterans, who have a passion for the brands and games that they’re building.

The Bloomberg article also mentions an internal cancelled project code-named 'Jabberwocky', but does not say what that was.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Hopefully, it's just a consolidation of attention around a better (classic) CRPG style game.

I won't mourn for a bunch of games I likely wouldn't have played, just like all the GW games I pass on.

I always shake my head when great IPs can't figure it out for a PC version.

I've heard that the one thing GW won't approve is any video game that fully reproduces one of the tabletop wargames. They want people to have to buy miniatures to play Warhammer, so cheaper electronic replicas are right out.

 

[SteveC]

This is really interesting given how important video games just were in recent discussions. I expect hiring 350 people for the new VTT must have something to do with it, but it is a shame that there isn't a fully realized 5E game out there. Honestly, it's more of a shame that there was no 4E game, since I think that would have been killer.

If you haven't checked out Solasta, I recommend it. It's definitely not an AAA game, but it is surprisingly accurate to 5E. I think it's still on sale through Steam at the moment.

 

[grimslade]

Games take a while to produce. Any game developing now would be better focused on Next Gen systems, so Playstation 6 rather than 5. I wonder if the development timeline was looking poor for these 5 games. So far we only have the new Dark Alliance as an example of what WotC digital efforts are like and that is not a good look.

 

[Mistwell]

AAA is just a buzzword. It's usually applied to actual successful games/franchises something they haven't achieved yet.

I mean, no? It's a word defined as "games produced and distributed by major publishers which typically have higher development and marketing budgets than other tiers of games."

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Sadly, this might be the best course, given how catastrophic Wizard's forays into computer games have been.

I found the recent Dark Alliance game to be quite terrible, so if they were aiming for more of that, I'm glad they reconsidered. The obscure Tuque studios (a Hasbro subsidiary) was clearly not the right choice.

Where they have had some success is in licensing to an established company capable of making a AAA product, such as with Bioware/Obsidian (Neverwinter Nights) and Baldur's Gate (Bioware/Black Isle and now Larian).

As far as I can tell 5 of the 6 cancelled games were with external studios with the 6th was I think code named Jabberwacky and I suspect that one was the one that was being developed by Archetype studios, the new transmedia sci fi IP.

Neither of us are fans of Dark Alliance, but for all the slams from us and critics and gamer community it still made alot of money, enough that not releasing one this year had a very noticable effect on the bottom line for Hasbro.

Again I'm no DA fan, but Drizzt has a huge fan base.

And Tuque Studios is now Invoke studios (can't sound too Canadian Ah), it's still around.

Honestly I think some of these games were either duds or WotC raised it's embarrassingly low standards and decided to stop allowing the IP to be used for cheap goofy games.

For others they said they wanted to focus on it's existing brands, so that would exclude Archetypes attempt to create a Sci Fi brand.

Chris Cox's vision is to focus on core brands, not create new ones, and jettison all the stuff that Hasbro has that doesn't serve the core brands.

I also wonder if the current head of Archetype will stick around if his hard work got cancelled abd they are redirecting Archetype away from innovating new IPs, towards say D&D games instead.

I'd be very suprised if there is no D&D game in development tied into Honor Among Thieves (BG3 does have 1 tie in, Druids can now turn into Owlbears).

 

[bedir than]

Turns out Hidden Path is still working on, and hiring for, their D&D MMORPG

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Turns out Hidden Path is still working on, and hiring for, their D&D MMORPG

Are they, though? What's your evidence here? Just that they haven't yet taken down the info? If they still are that's pretty interesting. The last Tweet from their main account is Oct. 1.

 

[BovineofWar]

This definitely feels like a casualty of the new 4 quarter plan.

If there's one obvious area of growth for D&D, it's the video game area. Wizards has completely missed the whole isometric RPG revival (Obsidians's Pillars of Eternity, Larians's Divinity, InExile's Wasteland and Torment, Owlcat's Pathfinder series) which shows there is still a market there.

Like people have mentioned, software isn't easy. Amazon and Google have both shown that gobs of money isn't enough to get a good development team together by itself. I thought licensing Larian to do Baldur's Gate 3 was a great step, since they clearly have the know how to do a good RPG. I just hope they have a good plan for the internal teams.

 

[Scribe]

If there's one obvious area of growth for D&D, it's the video game area. Wizards has completely missed the whole isometric RPG revival (Obsidians's Pillars of Eternity, Larians's Divinity, InExile's Wasteland and Torment, Owlcat's Pathfinder series) which shows there is still a market there.

It never went away! The will just wasnt there.

These types of games, are fantastic, and this space just isnt explored nearly enough.

 

[mcmillan]

Are they, though? What's your evidence here? Just that they haven't yet taken down the info? If they still are that's pretty interesting. The last Tweet from their main account is Oct. 1.

The narrative director for the game just posted a link to the hiring page today which suggests it's still being worked on

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The narrative director for the game just posted a link to the hiring page today which suggests it's still being worked on

Aha thank you! That is interesting. Usually Jason Schrier doesn't get stuff wrong, so I wonder what's happening here.

I think it's particularly unlike Strix would post anything that wasn't valid, though, so I think we have to consider Hidden Path as still working on a D&D game unless bloody WotC just haven't told people!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It never went away! The will just wasnt there.

These types of games, are fantastic, and this space just isnt explored nearly enough.

What I think hasn't helped is that several games which were otherwise pretty good kind of distracted from their "core competencies" with subgames/minigames which were theoretically cool but not actually that interesting. Kingmaker had the abysmal kingdom-management stuff which was largely a matter of either RNG or min-maxing, Wrath of the Righteous has the world's worst-designed and most annoying Might & Magic rip-off, and Deadfire had a lot of stuff with your ship which honestly, I get the concept, but never amounted to much and most ended up feeling like a waste of time, and like the game could have worked better without it - I know JE Sawyer who designed it kind of felt similarly in his post-mortem.

I think the same games but focused more on encounters and isometric exploration would have all done a bit better. Well, Kingmaker would also need to have not been the second-buggiest game ever released (after The Temple of Elemental Evil), too, but Wrath showed they could learn from that.

 

[Zardnaar]

I mean, no? It's a word defined as "games produced and distributed by major publishers which typically have higher development and marketing budgets than other tiers of games."

Hasbro isn't a major video games publisher though.

They're not even on the level Paradox Interactive which tends to release quality games that are reasonably cheap.

 

[Jimmy Dick]

Can you explain that?

How will the movie connect to D&D? What recognizable elements of the fantasy TTRPG are going to be in the movie? The first D&D movie was a flop for multiple reasons. It had next to no connections to D&D. Any one of numerous fantasy movies in the 70s, 80, or 90s could have been labelled a D&D movie just as easily.

What setting does the movie use? To me, that's the first issue. If the story has no connection to anything in any D&D setting, then WotC needs to put out product to support this new setting or run the risk that there will be a very large disassociation between the viewers and the story. If that happens, I expect the movie to have limited success or possibly even fail at the box office.

 

[Xethreau]

"DnD so undermonetized."

Well how about make and sell products?

This approach just leaves me so confused.

 

[SteveC]

How will the movie connect to D&D? What recognizable elements of the fantasy TTRPG are going to be in the movie? The first D&D movie was a flop for multiple reasons. It had next to no connections to D&D. Any one of numerous fantasy movies in the 70s, 80, or 90s could have been labelled a D&D movie just as easily.

It looks like the movie is set in the Forgotten Realms and they are using a lot of recognizable D&Disms. We don't know in that much detail, but it looks like they are trying to make something of a tie-in there.

 

[Micah Sweet]

How will the movie connect to D&D? What recognizable elements of the fantasy TTRPG are going to be in the movie? The first D&D movie was a flop for multiple reasons. It had next to no connections to D&D. Any one of numerous fantasy movies in the 70s, 80, or 90s could have been labelled a D&D movie just as easily.

What setting does the movie use? To me, that's the first issue. If the story has no connection to anything in any D&D setting, then WotC needs to put out product to support this new setting or run the risk that there will be a very large disassociation between the viewers and the story. If that happens, I expect the movie to have limited success or possibly even fail at the box office.

It has an owlbear in it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Hasbro isn't a major video games publisher though.

They're not even on the level Paradox Interactive which tends to release quality games that are reasonably cheap.

You're fundamentally misunderstanding why things are called AAA.

It's not about how good they are, in real terms. It's about the budget (which reflects the team size) and they level of quality they're aiming at (which is not always achieved in terms of gameplay and sometimes not even technical aspects, though that is rarer).

A company can come out of nowhere and just make an AAA game, if they're just given enough budget, and can hire the right people. It doesn't matter at all if the developer or publisher has a "track record" of making "major video games". That's just a common association, that's all he's saying.

Take God of War, for example, just off the top of my head. The rather generically-named "Santa Monica Studio" released one game before, which was a moderate success. Then they just came flying out of the gate with God of War back in 2005, which absolutely an AAA game for the era, hugely polished and impressive, almost no-one saw it coming.

None of that prevents it being AAA. Do we need to go through hundreds of boring examples? I feel like we don't.

Paradox releases primarily AA games, which is to say games with decent budgets and team sizes, but which aren't even intended to be AAA, though I would personally say CK3 is definitely pushing the edge there.

 

[Zardnaar]

You're fundamentally misunderstanding why things are called AAA.

It's not about how good they are, in real terms. It's about the budget (which reflects the team size) and they level of quality they're aiming at (which is not always achieved in terms of gameplay and sometimes not even technical aspects, though that is rarer).

A company can come out of nowhere and just make an AAA game, if they're just given enough budget, and can hire the right people. It doesn't matter at all if the developer or publisher has a "track record" of making "major video games". That's just a common association, that's all he's saying.

Take God of War, for example, just off the top of my head. The rather generically-named "Santa Monica Studio" released one game before, which was a moderate success. Then they just came flying out of the gate with God of War back in 2005, which absolutely an AAA game for the era, hugely polished and impressive, almost no-one saw it coming.

None of that prevents it being AAA. Do we need to go through hundreds of boring examples? I feel like we don't.

Paradox releases primarily AA games, which is to say games with decent budgets and team sizes, but which aren't even intended to be AAA, though I would personally say CK3 is definitely pushing the edge there.

God of War blew up and would have to look into things in more detail.

WotC has only done one D&D game and it was a turkey.

Budget doesn't matter to much Anthem anyone?

What actually counts is a games reception.

And yeah PI is a AA publisher I've been a fan since EUIII and HoI2. They're a problem me example of building on quality and word if mouth. They were an indie game.

CK2 was their breakthrough title IMHO.

50 million is about the bare minimum imho for a AAA titles and that's if you're based in Eastern Europe eg Witcher3 which is a "cheap" AAA title.

If your games a turkey it's not AAA regardless of it's budget. Until they produce something's it's premature to call any of their games AAA as even EA/Bioware are producing Turkeys with AAA budgets.

 

[bedir than]

Aha thank you! That is interesting. Usually Jason Schrier doesn't get stuff wrong, so I wonder what's happening here.

I think it's particularly unlike Strix would post anything that wasn't valid, though, so I think we have to consider Hidden Path as still working on a D&D game unless bloody WotC just haven't told people!

Or they had a second game in dev and it was cancelled