Hasbro Earnings Call – D&D Beyond May Bring More IPs To Dungeons & Dragons
Does WotC plan to bring more IPs to the D&D ruleset? The Hasbro earnings call seems to indicate that. What universes are in store?
In the latest earnings call, Hasbro revealed some of their plans for D&D and Magic: the Gathering. And their plans may include “Universes Beyond” for both MTG and D&D.
The bulk of the idea seems to come from Hasbro/WotC envisioning D&D as a “play system” which can handle “outside brands.” Which is nothing new – we’ve seen people make all sorts of attempts to bring other games into 5th Edition. Steamforged Games’ recent Dark Souls entry is a perfect example.
The game brings the brand awareness of Dark Souls to the ruleset of D&D. To mixed results right now – after all, they are reissuing their rulebooks. But with Hasbro recently acquiring D&D Beyond, the door seems to be open for expanding the D&D “play system” into other IPs.
Hasbro Earnings Call Q1 And D&D – The Future
It all starts with the Hasbro Q1 earnings call. There, new WotC president Cynthia Williams outlined plans for the future of D&D:
“[Y]ou’ll see us continue to expand the number of formats and reach new customer segments by expanding our Universes Beyond initiatives, which brings IP from outside of Magic into the Magic play system.”
And shortly thereafter, Hasbro executives outlined their plans for D&D Beyond. WotC’s parent company, as you know, recently acquired D&D Beyond from Fandom to the tune of $146.3 million. An acquisition that looks like a huge opportunity for WotC:
“[D&D Beyond] will become the digital hub of Dungeons & Dragons play that our brand blueprint will enhance and accelerate. Multigenerational play is a significant growth opportunity for us.”
That’s Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks explaining how D&D Beyond fits into the company’s plans. He also talked about how Hasbro’s profits are mostly among consumers over 13 – and that one of their big goals in the future is to embrace the “agelessness of play.”
Which seems like a nice way to tell Millennials and Gen Zers staring down the long cold barrel of their 30s and 40s that it’s okay that they don’t own a house or have kids or a job that most people would consider a career, it’s not weird that they’re finding happiness in playing because that’s one of the few luxuries any of us can afford these days. Who isn’t in a hopeless state of arrested development these days? You’ll never be able to retire, but at least Hasbro won’t look down on you for playing with toys.
Anyway, Cocks went on to talk about how Hasbro plans to capitalize on D&D Beyond’s potential:
“We’ve talked a lot about universes beyond in Magic, which is this concept of thinking about Magic as a play system and bringing in outside brands or outside IP into that play system. We see potential for that with D&D as well, and we think D&D Beyond can be a primary hub for that.”
Cocks also mentioned the e-commerce opportunities that D&D Beyond might bring along with it, including an opportunity to model the platform after MTG Arena with its custom skins and dice and so on.
We don’t yet know how this might play out in terms of tabletop RPGs. My guess is, it would probably look more like Curriculum of Chaos than the Dark Souls 5E book. Especially if the idea is to keep the focus on 3rd party IP in a system that’s identifiable both distinctively and rules-wise as D&D.
What would this mean for the Open Gaming License? That’s an interesting question. Especially for fan-made hacks of 5E and other licensed IPs, like D & Destiny which brings the Destiny video game to 5E, or Star Wars 5E, which is exactly what you think.
What do you think this means for D&D?
