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.

 

[MNblockhead]

and the turn-based patch for Kingmaker made it a lot more popular

Funny, I friend recently gifted me Kingmaker. After playing for a bit, I dug through the settings and found and enabled turn-based. I don't think I would have continued playing it with RtwP. RtwP is one of the main things that kept me from completing Planescape Torment. I just tired of it.

 

[Incenjucar]

D&D needs to embrace multiple game types to really flex the brand, as fans have a range of tastes.
Hasbro should be in the license-and-review business, however, in most cases. Toy companies are notorious for stereotyping their audience into oblivion and losing tons of money by doing so.

 

[MNblockhead]

D&D needs to embrace multiple game types to really flex the brand, as fans have a range of tastes.
Hasbro should be in the license-and-review business, however, in most cases. Toy companies are notorious for stereotyping their audience into oblivion and losing tons of money by doing so.

Yeah, where are the DnD Duplo blocks! I mean the simple rules I came up with for the epic dinosaurs vs. circus animals battles years ago when my kids were in preschool created many fond memories, but some dragon and beholder Kre-O's would have been awesomer!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It would just be a different set of people complaining if it was RtwP only.

Sure, but it would be a much larger set of people, and ones who are more representative of the people who buy the bulk of CRPGs today, who would be complaining.

You've got to realize the average CRPG gamer now has not actually played BG1/2/IWD/PST, or if they did play them, bounced off them. For a lot of people out there, DOS1 and DOS2 were their BG1 and BG2.

BioWare took the RtwP to a more action focus direction with their later games (e.g. Jade Empire, Dragon Age: Origins) before progressing into full-on Action RPGs.

Correct and this is part of why there's now a split and RtwP is just in a really weird place in the middle, with basically turn-based rules, just running them in a way that kinda looks not turn-based, but that also has none of the fun and immediacy of action RPGs (where when you press a button, a thing happens), and also tends to lack the fine control and detailed tactical decisions of games designed for turn-based.

You do have to pick one to be good at. No game is good at both RtwP and turn-based. You'll be designed for one, typically, and that'll work better. Pathfinder always had kind of "fake RtwP" in that it was essentially running turn-based "under the hood", and when it got turn-based, it worked a lot better. Whereas Deadfire had a system custom-designed for a true RtwP, with no "secret rounds", and monsters and encounters were designed and scaled for RtwP, so making it turn-based was interesting but ultimately contributed to tedium.

Given the larger share of the audience, especially the younger part, is much happier with either turn-based or action-based, and that even a significant proportion of older gamers like RtwP, they'll grudgingly accept turn-based, I think the decision is fairly obvious.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, microtransactions...

I don't mind microtransactions (I don't use then) as long as I don't feel ripped off in the base game or they have held stuff back from the base game to sell to you later (if the base game is free that's a bit different).

So I got Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Origins ultimate editions (all dlc plus other stuff) for 75% off.

Now there a heap of legendary items they sell you but the best stuff is still found in game and the custom equipment fully trucked out is better than any legendary items.

Additionally you can aquire all the stuff in game as well so the microtransactions are pay for convenience. The skins as such are legendary armor.

So the only stuff I bought was with the helix points that came in the original Ultimate/,gold editions.

I got hundreds of hours of gaming out if those titles for something like $50 one had a great story both were beautiful looking and one raisedmy graphical expectations to new levels (AC:Odyssey ancient Greece was beautiful). So was Egypt but it's very desert based.

 

[Zardnaar]

OK Zard. I think you know what we're all talking about here, and that it's about money and prestige.

So if I somehow aquired $100 Million dollars and made a game called Kenderdoom that makes it a AAA title? I'll call my studio Zards Backyard Drunken Kiwi productions ZBDK for short. I'll head into central Otago from my backyard and take a photo of "Rohan" for the games case.I hire a guy I know who liked his drugs a bit to much as lead developer. I'll use NZ green as marketing material.

Kenderdoom is basically an HD update of the old NES game Duckhunt but instead if Ducks you shoot Kender with a variety of ACME inspired weapons. This actually sounds like an awesome pitch.

Anyway I blow the $109 million dollars while paying myself a generous salary that was like spending on booze and my friends product.

Anyway ZBDK does release something but let's assume it sucks hard because of obvious reasons.

Kenderdoom is a triple AAA title because I blew $100 million dollars on it? At least you'll get a nice picture of the Southern Alps that's an actual improvement over the last D&D game.

New idea mux a bit if angry birds into it. You catapult the Kender over the Southern Alps while blowing a horn to summon drunk kiwis riding horses from "Rohan" and ......

 

[Incenjucar]

AAA is indeed basically just a reflection of the resources put into a project and the visual fidelity that implies.

This is games industry standard stuff. Per Wikipedia: "In the video game industry, AAA is an informal classification used to categorise games produced and distributed by a mid-sized or major publisher, which typically have higher development and marketing budgets than other tiers of games."
While companies will try to not set fire to money, a game being high-budget and high-profile brings no guarantee of quality or popularity.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Anyway I blow the $109 million dollars while paying myself a generous salary that was like spending on booze and my friends product.

You're just describing the development of Star Citizen (budget $405m and rising) now.

 

[BrokenTwin]

Yeah, AAA is mostly just marketing buzzwords used by big-brand publishers to give their products prestige. It's like products that are made of "genuine leather", or "organic" produce.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

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.

I'm wow, I guess you haven't seen the Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves trailer yet, because it answers most of your questions, like for example it's set in the Forgotten Realms.