A year after the release of Baldur's Gate 3, Hasbro and its subsidiary Wizards of the Coast are leaning even more heavily into video games — and both companies believe there's room for their wealth of IP in almost every genre.
talk to GamesIndustry.biz at Gamescom in Cologne, Senior Vice President of Digital Licensing Eugene Evans said that while Larian Studios' RPG has been a huge boost for the company, the IP owner is looking to Dungeons & Dragons and Magic The Gathering — Hasbro's biggest IP by revenue — beyond licensing other AAA games .
“We have AAA games that are in development,” he says. “We've announced some partnerships we have with companies like Starbreeze and Gameloft to make D&D games. I'll leave it to your imagination where they can take it.
“But we think there are a lot of ways to express D&D and magic outside of RPGs. We're just at the very beginning of exploring what digital expressions of magic can be.”
As an example, he points to Magic: The Gathering Arena, a free-to-play PC and mobile recreation of the trading card game, as well as the company's collaborations with established games.
The company has already done a number of brand collaborations with popular titles to celebrate Dungeons & Dragons' 50th anniversary this year, including cosmetics and armor in Bungie's Destiny 2 and the use of iconic villain Vecna as an assassin in Behavior Interactive's Dead By Daylight. And Evans says there are “more surprises to come in the next six to eight weeks.”
The exec tells us that Hasbro has 80 live games and/or active contracts in the game market, with 40 games or collaborations currently in development with partners. All are currently scheduled to ship within the next two to three years, with 18 arriving during 2024.
Of course, that's not too surprising considering that CEO Chris Cocks said alongside the company's latest financials that Hasbro is “going all out to become a digital gaming company.”
Evans says future releases range from mobile games like the hit Monopoly Go, which has now grossed more than $3 billion, to larger PC and console titles. More importantly, he says it applies to almost the entire range of IP owned by Hasbro, which includes D&D, Magic: The Gathering, Transformers, Mr Potato Head, Monopoly, Sorry!, Clue and more.
“If you played a game as a kid, there's a 50-50 chance we own it,” he laughs. “We seem to be signing new deals to bring in new partners as fast as we can deliver games. There's almost no IP we're not talking about or already have a product in development.”
This is in no small part responsible for the success of Baldur's Gate 3 and Monopoly Go. Since both of these games launched, Evans reports that developer suggestions and meeting requests have been “off the charts.”
It's not just up-and-coming developers looking to create the next hit with Hasbro. Evans believes that in these turbulent times in the games business, more and more studios are looking to improve their chances of success through “absolute embarrassment of riches” when it comes to IP.
“Nowadays, with a lot of risk and concern within the industry as a whole, people are trying to find ways to mitigate that risk, and bringing established IP to market is a very effective way to do that,” he says. “You'll lower your marketing costs and maybe give you a better chance of making a successful game.”