Rumours, speculation and hearsay? “Interesting” at least.
Not a chance. It’s one of only two properties Hasbro has that makes any money at all.
Edit: not to mention that the article only refers to “DND” which is only used colloquially and never by the company itself. It’s either D&D or Dungeons (and|&) Dragons
It could be that Hadbro only licence the “video game” part or all dynamic electronic content (beyond, vtts etc). But I’m not sure how much of a cash influx that would give Hasbro.
Does D&D make them a lot of money, though? I know the movie did well and licensing fees gained from BG3 must be pretty good, but those aren’t really the norm exactly. WoTC makes good money as a whole but I honestly figured that was mostly MTG, cardboard and ink is dirt cheap compared to how much a booster pack costs lmao
Actually I believe the movie did pretty badly. It was reviewed fairly well by critics and fans who actually went to go see it, but unfortunately it was squeezed between a couple of other popular IP’s at the time (I think it was John Wick and the Mario movie). But hopefully it helped them with streaming or something.
I think I ended up watching it on Paramount+ in the hopes that it’ll encourage them to make more in the future. Plus it was wholesome enough I thought it might be able to go into my comfort movie rotation with Princess Bride and Stardust. (Although now that I think about it, I should just buy a physical copy.)
I would have seen it by now if Hasbro had not made me viscerally hate the idea of supporting them in any way.
it was squeezed between a couple of other popular IP’s at the time
That, plus coming immediately after the whole licencing debacle. Many have speculated that part of the reason they were so quick (in the end) to capitulate and throw out the Creative Commons licence as haphazardly as they did is that they wanted to get fans back onside so they wouldn’t boycott or review bomb the movie.
Hollywood accounting is weird as fuck, but the general ballpark is that a movie needs to make double its budget at the box office to break even.
On a budget of $150 million, D&D made $93.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $114.9 million in the rest of the world, for a worldwide total of $208.2 million.
Now, because of the complicated relationship between WotC/Hasbro and Paramount, some have speculated these numbers may not be as dire as they would be in an original IP. And of course the home viewing market is a huge part of the equation these days. So it’s entirely possible the film did break even or even make a small profit. But sadly, it was not a commercial success.
Which is a shame, because it was so good. As a fantasy movie fan. As a D&D fan. And even as a Forgotten Realms fan.
It’s one of only two properties Hasbro has that makes any money at all.
How comes that Hasbro can make money with D&D ? We know that most of the RPG end-up costing money to their author or bringing them a revenue way under the hourly minimal wage. I know D&D is big and expensive compared to other RPG, so hopefully they bring money. But basically with the 3 base books, you have a few 100 hours of play for 5 persons. So doesn’t look like a good investment for a large company.
I mean, yes there is Baldur’s gate and the movie. but looks like the kind of IP which can be worth nothing in a decade if you don’t keep the game alive
You wouldn’t think DnD would be that expensive to make. It’s just printing books with a couple game designer authors and game testers involved. But selling books also doesn’t make much money.
I think the trick to making money is definitely the licensing. It’s an IP everyone’s knows and lots of nerds love. Whenever someone doesn’t know what to buy me for a birthday or Christmas present they get me some DnD crap and honestly, I usually appreciate it lol. I love my dumb DnD dice ice tray, pajama pants, cool looking minis I pretend I’ll one day paint, or beholder waffle iron. It’s stupid shit I’ll never buy myself but makes a good gift. A good VTT will also help and I know they’re working on that, but software devs are expensive so that feels like more of a gamble. Especially if it only works DnD 5e while the others in the market can work with any game.
Maybe Hasbro is finally realizing that they never understood why D&D is valuable, and are coming to the conclusion that they’ll never be able to monetize it properly.
With seemingly-comparable game franchises, a lot of the value is in either a business model that’s good at generating consistent sales (selling cards or miniatures) and/or the setting and characters that can be used to sell merchandise. D&D has neither. No one really cares that much about the D&D lore, and the business model is selling books that aren’t even that necessary to play the game.
The value in the D&D franchise is that the game mechanics (which aren’t protected by IP laws) are well-known by a large user base, plus there’s a lot of existing material that is compatible with that system. People play D&D because lots of people already know how to play, and it’s easy to find material to play with. Stuff like Baldur’s Gate is popular incidentally, mostly because the developers have been good at making games, but no one is going to get excited about a mediocre D&D game in the same way that people would for a 40k game.
Hasbro has shown that they don’t understand this dynamic. When they tried to monetize the game system itself with the OGL nonsense, people just said “Okay, I guess I’ll just switch to a different RPG system” because of course that’s what you’d do. The community is interested in the hobby, not the franchise, and if the franchise is going to make it difficult to engage with the hobby, then the hobbyists, including content creators who do a lot of the heavy lifting to keep the franchise relevant, will go elsewhere.
Hasbro likely thought they could take D&D and do the usual “we have this user base and we can get X amount from merch, Y amount from video games, Z amount from some sort of subscription service, etc.” not realizing that no one actually cares that much about D&D as a franchise, at least not in the same way as with stuff like Warhammer or Star Wars. It’s a hobbyists hobby, and the hobbyists aren’t going to go full “consooom!” on D&D lunchboxes and funko pops.
TTRPGs are, to their credit, extremely difficult to monetize. It’s hard to squeeze money out of a game when the players can buy a couple of PDFs and then play for years, only buying new material when there’s an update or a setting book that looks interesting to them. It’s a bad business, which makes it a terrific hobby, and I wish Hasbro a very lmao get owned if they do try to pass it along to someone else.
No one really cares that much about the D&D lore
You uh … might want to walk that back a little before they show up.
The keyword here is the. Lots of folks care about D&D lore, but the official cannon is not sacred. It’s nice to have, but it’s a starting point, a framework, an inspiration.
No, they’re right. The Forgotten Realms novels have been incredibly popular for decades. Sure they might not be pulling in Brandon Sanderson money, but they were absolutely popular in their own right and were profitable until WotC unceremoniously decided to shut them down right at their peak so soon after the Second Sundering.
So excited for DnD fans to get even more racist
Hasbro has no clue what to do with the game since their games-as-service, closed ecosystem plan went kaput after they backed down on the OGL revision (which would have been necessary to shut out other VTTs and ensure player & DM subscriptions). I think the recent lay offs of senior people in the D&D related teams suggests this as well. This article doesn’t seem well sourced at all, but a shake-up would be very interesting at this point.
Side-stepping some of the speculation and impact on the traditional market/fanbase, I am curious about the interest in D&D in China, as a Tencent acquisition would presumably make it much easier to market the game there. From the searching I’ve done, there doesn’t seem to be a ton of interest in D&D, and there’s no official translation into Mandarin. The movie didn’t do great at the Chinese box office, although Baldur’s Gate 3 did fine? Obviously, if Tencent does put together a subsidiary to design a version for the Chinese market, I’m not sure if they’d want to start by translating/adapting existing books or using the ruleset to design a bespoke version (either with a fantasy setting or based on relevant Chinese IP.)
I was in China for two years and not once ever found anything related to actual role playing games ever. Anywhere. And I really looked. There is a market there, waiting to be created, and I’m not surprised one bit that Tencent would be interested in that. But as other people have mentioned, monetizing that stuff is gonna be a challenge. I sure am looking forward to it, though. Especially once I get good enough at Chinese. I dream of the day I have a level strong enough to help translating games there…
Haha, I may have exaggerated a bit for effect ;) I was on Taobao and found myself some reliable suppliers of dice and minis, which made sense since China produces everything for the rest of the world. I found some board games imports. There were a good few card games, too. But i dont recall finding any RPG boss in Chinese. This is very cool! I ended up finding gaming partners through the grapevine, but even they had difficulty finding suppliers and confirmed my suspicion that the hobby is still tiny. Nobody has any idea when I asked about rpg, boardgames, etc. Apart from a few card games board games. I found one gaming shop in the whole of Wuhan and it turns out it was a mini shop (again, no surprise when the manufacturing is all made in China). Anyway, it was 8 years ago, so it’s no surprise things have changed. They do tend to do so very quickly, over there. Seeing translated versions is super encouraging! Thanks for taking the time, though.
Larian Studios (30% owned by Tencent) was attempting to buy D&D. They weren’t able to afford it, and to they pulled Tencent into the negotiation. I don’t know if that means Hasbro actually is interested in selling - though it’s hard to see a world where they’re not. https://massivelyop.com/2024/01/31/hasbro-is-selling-the-dungeons-and-dragons-ip-and-tencent-is-the-potential-buyer/
However, Wizards of the Coast is saying that they don’t intend to sell, as of an hour ago: https://www.pcgamer.com/wizards-of-the-coast-dispels-rumours-that-tencent-wants-to-gobble-up-dandd-like-a-tarrasque-to-be-clear-we-are-not-looking-to-sell-our-dandd-ip/