Sunday, 16 April 2023

2023 is not D&D's Year

There is still a long way to go, but right now it is looking like 2023 is not to be D&D's year. The year started with comments from within Hasbro that the brand was under-monetized (meaning they wanted more money for no more investment), coupled with other statements that they were "betting big" on the brand.

WotC then promptly declared war on their own consumer base with the OGL fiasco, leading to an humiliating defeat, a complete reversal, and indeed the release of key parts of their IP under a Creative Commons license.

The second part of their big bets was the D&D movie which, despite positive reviews, appears to have made a fairly sizeable loss. So that's not looking too healthy. (Still, at least it's not the toxic bin fire that was the older movies!)

The upcoming slate of products for 2023 is, frankly, anemic and unimpressive. There's only one that is of even marginal interest... and that interest drops with every etail they reveal.

Meanwhile, the final strand of their big bets are the development of "One D&D" - a massive investment into a Virtual Tabletop just as the end of the pandemic removes the demand for such a thing, and a new version of the game that is looking more and more like "D&D 5e 2nd Edition" - a version of the game that changes a load of mechanics that people were mostly happy with, fails to tackle the underlying issues in a creaking system, and makes a whole bunch of lore changes to pacify people who largely don't play the game, will be mostly oblivious to them, and anyway have no real intention of being appeased.

Frankly, at this point if I were a Hasbro exec, I would be taking a really close look at it, with a view to trying to cut my losses. Because 2023 isn't likely to be a success for the brand, and 2024 ain't looking too hot either.

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