# WotC WotC Cancels 5 Video Games



## Ruin Explorer

This link should be to a non-paywalled version of the article:









						Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast Cancels Video Game Projects -  BNN Bloomberg
					

Hasbro Inc.’s Wizards of the Coast, best known for the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop games, has cancelled at least five video game projects as it scales back its ambitions in the industry.




					www.bnnbloomberg.ca
				




Five videogames being cancelled, when they have six studios, might mean all but one of the studios had the game they were currently working on cancelled. If so, I'm praying the one that didn't was Archetype Entertainment's sci-fi CRPG, but given their failure to up the number of people working on it, I suspect that it's one of the ones that got the chop.

From the article, they're just massively scaling back their video game approach, which is interesting, given mere months or even weeks ago it was seen as a priority.

Also interesting they're aiming for only 15 people to lose their jobs entirely, by letting people change roles. One wonders if this ties in with the 350 people they're getting to work on the 3D VTT.


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## Scribe

Oof.


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## Ruin Explorer

Yeah it's not great. Together with their troubles with MtG (still making a lot of money, but also a lot of people somewhat annoyed), getting downgraded by BoA, and selling eOne despite it apparently being important to getting D&D:HAT made, and falling toy product sales, it looks like D&D maybe Hasbro's shining star here. Which puts a lot of pressure on D&D to make them a lot of money. It is particularly surprising given a while back they implied the only way they'd make big money longer-term was through videogames. That said another source suggested Archetype Entertainment might indeed be safe, so there is that.


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## doctorbadwolf

That is truly bizarre news. Seemingly a 180 from just a few months ago, with no clear reason to make such a change in focus.

EDIT: A 180 from _last month_ in fact.


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## JEB

doctorbadwolf said:


> That is truly bizarre news. Seemingly a 180 from just a few months ago, with no clear reason to make such a change in focus.
> 
> EDIT: A 180 from _last month_ in fact.



I wonder if their fourth-quarter financials aren't looking so hot.


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## mamba

Ruin Explorer said:


> Also interesting they're aiming for only 15 people to lose their jobs entirely, by letting people change roles. One wonders if this ties in with the 350 people they're getting to work on the 3D VTT.



this seems to have a lot to do with the fact that at least some of the projects they cancelled were outsourced to independent studios

"Fewer than 15 people at Wizards of the Coast will lose their jobs due to the shift and will be given a chance to apply to new roles within the company, the spokesman said.

But *the reorganization will land hard for several independent studios* such as Boston-based Otherside Entertainment and Bellevue, Washington-based Hidden Path Entertainment, both of which were working on games for Wizards of the Coast."


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## Ruin Explorer

mamba said:


> this seems to have a lot to do with the fact that at least some of the projects they cancelled were outsourced to independent studios
> 
> "Fewer than 15 people at Wizards of the Coast will lose their jobs due to the shift and will be given a chance to apply to new roles within the company, the spokesman said.
> 
> But *the reorganization will land hard for several independent studios* such as Boston-based Otherside Entertainment and Bellevue, Washington-based Hidden Path Entertainment, both of which were working on games for Wizards of the Coast."



Good point.

Otherside are Warren Spector's guys (one of the first names I remember from a game's credits, back in Worlds of Ultima: Savage Empire which I played in like 1991!), and Hidden Path are the Counter Strike: Global Offensive and Defense Grid people. Both didn't seem to be developing any games but their D&D games.


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## Umbran

Ruin Explorer said:


> From the article, they're just massively scaling back their video game approach, which is interesting, given mere months or even weeks ago it was seen as a priority.




So, if you want to make big money in videogames, quantity may not beat quality.  If the cancelled games were some combination of behind on schedule, over on budget, or not seeming like they'd be _good_, cancelling them and putting folks on other projects may make a lot of sense.


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## Micah Sweet

Ruin Explorer said:


> Good point.
> 
> Otherside are Warren Spector's guys (one of the first names I remember from a game's credits, back in Worlds of Ultima: Savage Empire which I played in like 1991!), and Hidden Path are the Counter Strike: Global Offensive and Defense Grid people. Both didn't seem to be developing any games but their D&D games.



I loved Savage Empire!  One of my all-time favorites.  Martian Dreams was pretty good too.


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## Micah Sweet

Umbran said:


> So, if you want to make big money in videogames, quantity may not beat quality.  If the cancelled games were some combination of behind on schedule, over on budget, or not seeming like they'd be _good_, cancelling them and putting folks on other projects may make a lot of sense.



Sure, but 5 out of 6 falling to those issues is pretty rough.


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## Deset Gled

Ruin Explorer said:


> Also interesting they're aiming for only 15 people to lose their jobs entirely, by letting people change roles. One wonders if this ties in with the 350 people they're getting to work on the 3D VTT.




I don't know how many people they're keeping, but losing only 15 people sounds like it could be a surprisingly positive sign, IMNSHO.  Well, maybe not really positive, but at least not as negative as some may think.  Assuming they're keeping a good number of people, that may just be restructuring.  "Restructuring" in the real sense, as opposed to all the times corporations use the term "restructuring" to mean "we're firing 80% of the division".


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## Jaeger

mamba said:


> this seems to have a lot to do with the fact that at least *some of the projects they cancelled were outsourced to independent studios*




Hasbro/WotC are just trimming the fat imho.

In the investor call Cocks said that on the hasbro side they were trimming everything down to just 8 profitable core brands, and focusing on them.

Letting go of e-one and trimming the video game side just seem to be part of that. They don't really need their own movie studio anymore now that they seemingly have sorted out the rights for D&D films, and have gotten one made. They can outsource that going forward using the connections they made doing Honor among thieves.

More of the same for the videogames side. 

They have spent tens of millions acquiring these studios - they need to start paying off at some point. Hasbro/WotC is just trimming down and focusing on high percentage money makers.

Come 2023-2024 WotC is going to unload a lot of digital, film, and tv content for D&D. 

And they really need it all to stick the landing and make money.


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## Umbran

Micah Sweet said:


> Sure, but 5 out of 6 falling to those issues is pretty rough.




Software projects dying is rough, but it also happens a lot.  Good software is _hard_ to do.


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## FrogReaver

My take.  More limited cashflow than expected means there are going to be cuts.  On the bright side, the most likely games to be cut would be the ones that have been in development the least.  Games are usually expensive to make so it makes sense they would have been one of the first things cut.


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## MonsterEnvy

Lots of things depend on the movie I would say. If the movie does well things will probably expand, if it does not they will probably shrink.


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## Zardnaar

I don't think they had much idea on how to make a game. They throw around buzzwords like AAA+ titles but that's usually applied to games that are you know actually successful. 

  They bought a heap of no name studios with minimal product or reputation. 

  I've been playing Assassin's Creed. Ubisoft has 7 studios working on a single game each one is north of 100 million. 

  I suspect it's a few tens of millions of dollars that will end up sprayed against a wall. You can make cheap games but you normally need passion and vision from a dedicated group/creator to do it.


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## DarkCrisis

There always the Baldurs Gate, ivewind Dales and Plansescape games…

Not to mention the gold box games.


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## Mistwell

I assume it's because they are focused on making AAA games now and these were more middling projects?


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## Scribe

DarkCrisis said:


> There always the Baldurs Gate, ivewind Dales and Plansescape games…
> 
> Not to mention the gold box games.




And the closest thing to those glory days is....

A Pathfinder game!


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## Zardnaar

Mistwell said:


> I assume it's because they are focused on making AAA games now and these were more middling projects?




AAA is just a buzzword. It's usually applied to actual successful games/franchises something they haven't achieved yet.


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## humble minion

It may also herald a change of strategy when it comes to WotC videogames under WotCs new management.  If the cancelled games were, for example, all relatively cheap (but highly microtransaction-intensive) formulaic mobile games with graphic swaps (like so many Warhammer shovelware games have been over the years), it might make sense to kill those.  You have the D&D movie coming out this year, with a big budget and high production values.  If a handful of crummy licenced tower defence games pop up at the same time then it probably doesn't do the value of your IP much good.  With the movie and with BGIII on the horizon, WotC could have decided that 2023 is a year to focus their licenced material on quality rather than quantity.


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## Ruin Explorer

humble minion said:


> It may also herald a change of strategy when it comes to WotC videogames under WotCs new management.  If the cancelled games were, for example, all relatively cheap (but highly microtransaction-intensive) formulaic mobile games with graphic swaps (like so many Warhammer shovelware games have been over the years), it might make sense to kill those.  You have the D&D movie coming out this year, with a big budget and high production values.  If a handful of crummy licenced tower defence games pop up at the same time then it probably doesn't do the value of your IP much good.  With the movie and with BGIII on the horizon, WotC could have decided that 2023 is a year to focus their licenced material on quality rather than quantity.



We can safely say this doesn't apply to the known studios here for two reasons:

1) Neither company was making a cheap mobile game or the like. We don't know the specifics, but we know Hidden Path was making an AAA open-world RPG D&D game, and it appears from hiring that Otherside was making an immersive-sim-type D&D-based game (unsurprising given their history).

2) Neither game was due out in 2023.

Also, re: "new management", no this videogames-heavy strategy was itself a result of WotC's "new management". That management hasn't changed in the last two months, but the strategy has. Chris Cocks has been in place since 2016. Cynthia Williams since Feb. last year, and she praised the videogame-heavy strategy extremely recently (last month maybe?).

So this is a very recent change in strategy, and a fairly dramatic one.


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## Ruin Explorer

Zardnaar said:


> AAA is just a buzzword. It's usually applied to actual successful games/franchises something they haven't achieved yet.



This is, just as a matter of fact, not true.









						AAA (video game industry) - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org
				




It certainly began as a buzzword, but eventually acquired more of a meaning. Typically at the very least it means you're talking about about a game with a development budget in excess of $30-40m, and probably at least 100 developers, at this point in history. Often a lot more.

The idea that it's "usually applied to successful games" is just wrong though, that's never been the case, let alone "usually". AAAA is however, as yet a buzzword. Every game that's been called that has either never been released (lol) or was released and was just a slightly higher-budget-than-average AAA game.


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## Ruin Explorer

Umbran said:


> So, if you want to make big money in videogames, quantity may not beat quality.  If the cancelled games were some combination of behind on schedule, over on budget, or not seeming like they'd be _good_, cancelling them and putting folks on other projects may make a lot of sense.



For sure, though the reporting so far suggests these games are simply cancelled, not that the studios are working on different WotC games. Given they're mostly (all?) independent studios, this presumably means they'll need to find entirely new projects. This is interesting on another level because the fact WotC was able to cancel them like this strongly suggests WotC was funding the development of the games, which is very unlike the strategies typically employed by IP holders. Games Workshop, for example don't typically fund the development of games by independent studios at all - rather they licence their IP. This seems like it was a different arrangement.

Cancelling five at the exact same time means it's not really plausible, imho, that _all five_ were behind schedule, over budget, or looking bad. Especially given that WotC has been highlighting how important videogames are to its strategy for much of 2022. That said, I'm sure at least a couple of them "had it coming"!

However even if the games were on-schedule, looking decent, etc., it may have made sense to WotC to have a more focused portfolio of D&D products that directs people more to the lifestyle/tabletop aspects of D&D. 

In the end, given they hired 350 people to work on the 3D VTT, this may simply have been a matter of finances. 350 people is basically a "full-size" AAA studio, particularly if working on one product, and it ain't cheap. At all. In fact, it probably costs about as much as funding the development of several smaller AAA or AA games.


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## Bedrockgames

I didn't even know they had video games planned, but I will say one thing that would get my interest are some turn based RPG video games like the old gold boxes from back in the day (I found when they switched to non-turn based games it didn't feel as D&D to me)


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## Ruin Explorer

Bedrockgames said:


> I didn't even know they had video games planned, but I will say one thing that would get my interest are some turn based RPG video games like the old gold boxes from back in the day (I found when they switched to non-turn based games it didn't feel as D&D to me)



Sadly it seems like the closest we're going to get is BG3 and Solasta. I'd love to see an indie or AA company do something that was maybe 2D, sprite-based, and just really focused on providing a fun D&D experience, but it seems like that either isn't something anyone wants to make, or I think more likely, that isn't something WotC wants to even licence, let alone fund.


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## Umbran

Ruin Explorer said:


> Cancelling five at the exact same time means it's not really plausible, imho, that _all five_ were behind schedule, over budget, or looking bad.




The percentage of major software projects that deliver on-time and on-budget is _low_.  Humans are really bad at estimating how long things will take, or what resources are required.  Generally, time and budgets are still managed with methods built for late-18th century manual labor, rather than 21st century intellectual labor.



Ruin Explorer said:


> However even if the games were on-schedule, looking decent, etc., it may have made sense to WotC to have a more focused portfolio of D&D products that directs people more to the lifestyle/tabletop aspects of D&D.




Fair point.  Either way, I don't find it terribly surprising.  



Ruin Explorer said:


> In the end, given they hired 350 people to work on the 3D VTT, this may simply have been a matter of finances. 350 people is basically a "full-size" AAA studio, particularly if working on one product, and it ain't cheap.




Definitely.  A good rule of thumb would be that each employee is at least $100K a year (between salary and benefits), and possibly much more.  So, that's $35 million we are talking - not chump change.


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## aco175

Feels like the old 2e days when there was several worlds that TSR was trying to make modules and supplements for.  It just split the pie of gold up and people only bought the line they liked instead of buying all of them.  They pared it down to just FR and was/is doing great.  The last couple years of expanding lines may start to show sometime soon.


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## Ruin Explorer

Umbran said:


> Definitely. A good rule of thumb would be that each employee is at least $100K a year (between salary and benefits), and possibly much more. So, that's $35 million we are talking - not chump change.



I'd agree with that as a good rule of thumb for cost these days in software, esp. games. And $35m is nearly the entire dev budget of a lot of lower-end AAA games (most have fewer employees and work for more years). Even if WotC just employs all 350 for a couple of years the costs could easily be $70m which would put the 3D VTT up with a lot of more serious AAA games in dev cost (rather than dev + marketing - depending on the game marketing can be anything from about 20% to 200% of the dev cost). It's a hell of a thing and I'd be a liar if I said I wasn't interested in seeing the results, even if them announcing microtransactions as one of the first features was a tad concerning!


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## sevenbastard

Ruin Explorer said:


> $70m which would put the 3D VTT up with a lot of more serious AAA games in dev cost (rather than dev + marketing - depending on the game marketing can be anything from about 20% to 200% of the dev cost)




The marketing should be on the low side. Each D&D product has a full page and the url.


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## Vincent55

sounds like, they are wanting to hold all the cards, and bring home many things they have lent out to other companies, same with the new rules for 3rd parties using the 5e rules set and going after people making money off their basic rule set. This just tells me that like many companies are out to get money and care very little as to who they hurt, even their own customers.


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## Ruin Explorer

sevenbastard said:


> The marketing should be on the low side. Each D&D product has a full page and the url.



Any marketing for the 3D VTT is going to be about the 3D VTT, not extant D&D products. It's hard to say how much WotC will spend on it, but given how much they're investing in it, I'd be surprised if it wasn't significantly/aggressively marketed across multiple channels, including probably getting various podcasts and so on to do adventures in it.

This all rather assumes they get it done fairly promptly though, and as @Umbran points out, with software projects (or projects in general) that is very far from guaranteed.


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## ad_hoc

Bedrockgames said:


> I didn't even know they had video games planned, but I will say one thing that would get my interest are some turn based RPG video games like the old gold boxes from back in the day (I found when they switched to non-turn based games it didn't feel as D&D to me)



You will probably like Baldur's Gate 3.

I haven't played it yet but I understand it is similar to Divinity which was turn based.


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## Hurin88

Sadly, this might be the best course, given how catastrophic Wizard's forays into computer games have been.

I found the recent Dark Alliance game to be quite terrible, so if they were aiming for more of that, I'm glad they reconsidered. The obscure Tuque studios (a Hasbro subsidiary) was clearly not the right choice.

Where they have had some success is in licensing to an _established_ company capable of making a AAA product, such as with Bioware/Obsidian (Neverwinter Nights) and Baldur's Gate (Bioware/Black Isle and now Larian).


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## mamba

sevenbastard said:


> The marketing should be on the low side. Each D&D product has a full page and the url.



the games also aren’t (close to being) released yet, that is when marketing would have gone up


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## Jimmy Dick

This makes me suspect they are not so enamored with the upcoming release of the D&D movie.


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## UngeheuerLich

Vincent55 said:


> sounds like, they are wanting to hold all the cards, and bring home many things they have lent out to other companies, same with the new rules for 3rd parties using the 5e rules set and going after people making money off their basic rule set. This just tells me that like many companies are out to get money and care very little as to who they hurt, even their own customers.




How did you come to this conclusion?


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## UngeheuerLich

Jimmy Dick said:


> This makes me suspect they are not so enamored with the upcoming release of the D&D movie.




Can you explain that?


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## Scribe

Hopefully,  it's just a consolidation of attention around a better (classic) CRPG style game.

I won't mourn for a bunch of games I likely wouldn't have played, just like all the GW games I pass on.

I always shake my head when great IPs can't figure it out for a PC version.


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## Sorcerers Apprentice

Scribe said:


> Hopefully,  it's just a consolidation of attention around a better (classic) CRPG style game.
> 
> I won't mourn for a bunch of games I likely wouldn't have played, just like all the GW games I pass on.
> 
> I always shake my head when great IPs can't figure it out for a PC version.



I've heard that the one thing GW won't approve is any video game that fully reproduces one of the tabletop wargames. They want people to have to buy miniatures to play Warhammer, so cheaper electronic replicas are right out.


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## SteveC

This is really interesting given how important video games just were in recent discussions. I expect hiring 350 people for the new VTT must have something to do with it, but it is a shame that there isn't a fully realized 5E game out there. Honestly, it's more of a shame that there was no 4E game, since I think that would have been killer.

If you haven't checked out Solasta, I recommend it. It's definitely not an AAA game, but it is surprisingly accurate to 5E. I think it's still on sale through Steam at the moment.


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## grimslade

Games take a while to produce. Any game developing now would be better focused on Next Gen systems, so Playstation 6 rather than 5. I wonder if the development timeline was looking poor for these 5 games. So far we only have the new Dark Alliance as an example of what WotC digital efforts are like and that is not a good look.


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## Mistwell

Zardnaar said:


> AAA is just a buzzword. It's usually applied to actual successful games/franchises something they haven't achieved yet.



I mean, no? It's a word defined as "games produced and distributed by major publishers which typically have higher development and marketing budgets than other tiers of games."


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## Henadic Theologian

Hurin88 said:


> Sadly, this might be the best course, given how catastrophic Wizard's forays into computer games have been.
> 
> I found the recent Dark Alliance game to be quite terrible, so if they were aiming for more of that, I'm glad they reconsidered. The obscure Tuque studios (a Hasbro subsidiary) was clearly not the right choice.
> 
> Where they have had some success is in licensing to an _established_ company capable of making a AAA product, such as with Bioware/Obsidian (Neverwinter Nights) and Baldur's Gate (Bioware/Black Isle and now Larian).




 As far as I can tell 5 of the 6 cancelled games were with external studios with the 6th was I think code named Jabberwacky and I suspect that one was the one that was being developed by Archetype studios, the new transmedia sci fi IP.

 Neither of us are fans of Dark Alliance, but for all the slams from us and critics and gamer community it still made alot of money, enough that not releasing one this year had a very noticable effect on the bottom line for Hasbro.

  Again I'm no DA fan, but Drizzt has a huge fan base.

 And Tuque Studios is now Invoke studios (can't sound too Canadian Ah), it's still around.

 Honestly I think some of these games were either duds or WotC raised it's embarrassingly low standards and decided to stop allowing the IP to be used for cheap goofy games.

 For others they said they wanted to focus on it's existing brands, so that would exclude Archetypes attempt to create a Sci Fi brand.

 Chris Cox's vision is to focus on core brands, not create new ones, and jettison all the stuff that Hasbro has that doesn't serve the core brands.

 I also wonder if the current head of Archetype will stick around if his hard work got cancelled abd they are redirecting Archetype away from innovating new IPs, towards say D&D games instead.

 I'd be very suprised if there is no D&D game in development tied into Honor Among Thieves (BG3 does have 1 tie in, Druids can now turn into Owlbears).


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## bedir than

Turns out Hidden Path is still working on, and hiring for, their D&D MMORPG


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## Ruin Explorer

bedir than said:


> Turns out Hidden Path is still working on, and hiring for, their D&D MMORPG



Are they, though? What's your evidence here? Just that they haven't yet taken down the info? If they still are that's pretty interesting. The last Tweet from their main account is Oct. 1.


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## BovineofWar

This definitely feels like a casualty of the new 4 quarter plan. 

If there's one obvious area of growth for D&D, it's the video game area. Wizards has completely missed the whole isometric RPG revival (Obsidians's Pillars of Eternity, Larians's Divinity, InExile's Wasteland and Torment, Owlcat's Pathfinder series) which shows there is still a market there. 

Like people have mentioned, software isn't easy. Amazon and Google have both shown that gobs of money isn't enough to get a good development team together by itself. I thought licensing Larian to do Baldur's Gate 3 was a great step, since they clearly have the know how to do a good RPG. I just hope they have a good plan for the internal teams.


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## Scribe

BovineofWar said:


> If there's one obvious area of growth for D&D, it's the video game area. Wizards has completely missed the whole isometric RPG revival (Obsidians's Pillars of Eternity, Larians's Divinity, InExile's Wasteland and Torment, Owlcat's Pathfinder series) which shows there is still a market there.




It never went away! The will just wasnt there.

These types of games, are fantastic, and this space just isnt explored nearly enough.


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## mcmillan

Ruin Explorer said:


> Are they, though? What's your evidence here? Just that they haven't yet taken down the info? If they still are that's pretty interesting. The last Tweet from their main account is Oct. 1.



The narrative director for the game just posted a link to the hiring page today which suggests it's still being worked on


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## Ruin Explorer

mcmillan said:


> The narrative director for the game just posted a link to the hiring page today which suggests it's still being worked on



Aha thank you! That is interesting. _Usually_ Jason Schrier doesn't get stuff wrong, so I wonder what's happening here.

I think it's particularly unlike Strix would post anything that wasn't valid, though, so I think we have to consider Hidden Path as still working on a D&D game unless bloody WotC just haven't told people!


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## Ruin Explorer

Scribe said:


> It never went away! The will just wasnt there.
> 
> These types of games, are fantastic, and this space just isnt explored nearly enough.



What I think hasn't helped is that several games which were otherwise pretty good kind of distracted from their "core competencies" with subgames/minigames which were theoretically cool but not actually that interesting. Kingmaker had the abysmal kingdom-management stuff which was largely a matter of either RNG or min-maxing, Wrath of the Righteous has the world's worst-designed and most annoying Might & Magic rip-off, and Deadfire had a lot of stuff with your ship which honestly, I get the concept, but never amounted to much and most ended up feeling like a waste of time, and like the game could have worked better without it - I know JE Sawyer who designed it kind of felt similarly in his post-mortem.

I think the same games but focused more on encounters and isometric exploration would have all done a bit better. Well, Kingmaker would also need to have not been the second-buggiest game ever released (after The Temple of Elemental Evil), too, but Wrath showed they could learn from that.


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## Zardnaar

Mistwell said:


> I mean, no? It's a word defined as "games produced and distributed by major publishers which typically have higher development and marketing budgets than other tiers of games."




 Hasbro isn't a major video games publisher though.

 They're not even on the level Paradox Interactive which tends to release quality games that are reasonably cheap.


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## Jimmy Dick

UngeheuerLich said:


> Can you explain that?



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.


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## Xethreau

"DnD so undermonetized."

Well how about make and sell products?

This approach just leaves me so confused.


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## SteveC

Jimmy Dick said:


> 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.



It looks like the movie is set in the Forgotten Realms and they are using a lot of recognizable D&Disms. We don't know in that much detail, but it looks like they are trying to make something of a tie-in there.


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## Micah Sweet

Jimmy Dick said:


> 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.



It has an owlbear in it.


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## Ruin Explorer

Zardnaar said:


> Hasbro isn't a major video games publisher though.
> 
> They're not even on the level Paradox Interactive which tends to release quality games that are reasonably cheap.



You're _fundamentally_ misunderstanding why things are called AAA.

It's not about how good they are, in real terms. It's about the budget (which reflects the team size) and they level of quality they're aiming at (which is not always achieved in terms of gameplay and sometimes not even technical aspects, though that is rarer).

A company can come out of nowhere and just make an AAA game, if they're just given enough budget, and can hire the right people. It doesn't matter at all if the developer or publisher has a "track record" of making "major video games". That's just a common association, that's all he's saying.

Take God of War, for example, just off the top of my head. The rather generically-named "Santa Monica Studio" released one game before, which was a moderate success. Then they just came flying out of the gate with God of War back in 2005, which absolutely an AAA game for the era, hugely polished and impressive, almost no-one saw it coming.

None of that prevents it being AAA. Do we need to go through hundreds of boring examples? I feel like we don't.

Paradox releases primarily AA games, which is to say games with decent budgets and team sizes, but which aren't even intended to be AAA, though I would personally say CK3 is definitely pushing the edge there.


----------



## Zardnaar

Ruin Explorer said:


> You're _fundamentally_ misunderstanding why things are called AAA.
> 
> It's not about how good they are, in real terms. It's about the budget (which reflects the team size) and they level of quality they're aiming at (which is not always achieved in terms of gameplay and sometimes not even technical aspects, though that is rarer).
> 
> A company can come out of nowhere and just make an AAA game, if they're just given enough budget, and can hire the right people. It doesn't matter at all if the developer or publisher has a "track record" of making "major video games". That's just a common association, that's all he's saying.
> 
> Take God of War, for example, just off the top of my head. The rather generically-named "Santa Monica Studio" released one game before, which was a moderate success. Then they just came flying out of the gate with God of War back in 2005, which absolutely an AAA game for the era, hugely polished and impressive, almost no-one saw it coming.
> 
> None of that prevents it being AAA. Do we need to go through hundreds of boring examples? I feel like we don't.
> 
> Paradox releases primarily AA games, which is to say games with decent budgets and team sizes, but which aren't even intended to be AAA, though I would personally say CK3 is definitely pushing the edge there.




 God of War blew up and would have to look into things in more detail. 

 WotC has only done one D&D game and it was a turkey.

 Budget doesn't matter to much Anthem anyone? 

 What actually counts is a games reception. 

 And yeah PI is a AA publisher I've been a fan since EUIII and HoI2. They're a problem me example of building on quality and word if mouth. They were an indie game. 

 CK2 was their breakthrough title IMHO.

 50 million is about the bare minimum imho for a AAA titles and that's if you're based in Eastern Europe eg Witcher3 which is a "cheap" AAA title.

 If your games a turkey it's not AAA regardless of it's budget. Until they produce something's it's premature to call any of their games AAA as even EA/Bioware are producing Turkeys with AAA budgets.


----------



## bedir than

Ruin Explorer said:


> Aha thank you! That is interesting. _Usually_ Jason Schrier doesn't get stuff wrong, so I wonder what's happening here.
> 
> I think it's particularly unlike Strix would post anything that wasn't valid, though, so I think we have to consider Hidden Path as still working on a D&D game unless bloody WotC just haven't told people!



Or they had a second game in dev and it was cancelled


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Zardnaar said:


> Budget doesn't matter to much Anthem anyone?



Anthem is an AAA game. It's a terrible AAA game, but it was AAA in terms of budget, ambition, team-size and polish.

You're just proving my point by continuing to not understand!


Zardnaar said:


> What actually counts is a games reception.



No, absolutely not.

That's absolutely completely fatuous and factually wrong perspective.

By that logic, Undertale is AAA, Spelunky is AAA, Papers Please is AAA.

That's just beyond words. That's like saying The Blair Witch Project was a "big budget movie".


Zardnaar said:


> 50 million is about the bare minimum imho for a AAA titles and that's if you're based in Eastern Europe eg Witcher3 which is a "cheap" AAA title.



No. Closer to true but still wrong.

Again, you just keep getting basic stuff wrong here. It's like you're doing it on purpose. In 2015 that was actually a mid budget AAA.


Zardnaar said:


> If your games a turkey it's not AAA regardless of it's budget.



Yes it is. You're just flatly wrong.

Anthem is a great example. Fallout 76 is another example. Battlefield 2042 yet another. Marvel's Avengers another one. Those are just recent examples of AAAs that were absolute trash on release. With Fallout 76 it was a big deal to Bethesda so they eventually managed to patch and give away free content enough that it became an okay game instead of trash. BF2042 the jury is still out but it ain't looking good. Marvel's Avengers they've tried to do that, but... nah mate.

The classic example of a terrible AAA is Lair, which was a game Sony invested huge amounts in, hoping it to super next-gen in 2007 and sell tons of PS3s, but... it was absolutely dire. We could look at other stuff too, like APB or Mass Effect: Andromeda, but I've made my point, and this is just a derail at this stage.

You're intentionally misusing the term to mean "good game", which it never has and never will.


----------



## Zardnaar

Ruin Explorer said:


> Anthem is an AAA game. It's a terrible AAA game, but it was AAA in terms of budget, ambition, team-size and polish.
> 
> You're just proving my point by continuing to not understand!
> 
> No, absolutely not.
> 
> That's absolutely completely fatuous and factually wrong perspective.
> 
> By that logic, Undertale is AAA, Spelunky is AAA, Papers Please is AAA.
> 
> That's just beyond words. That's like saying The Blair Witch Project was a "big budget movie".
> 
> No. Closer to true but still wrong.
> 
> Again, you just keep getting basic stuff wrong here. It's like you're doing it on purpose. In 2015 that was actually a mid budget AAA.
> 
> Yes it is. You're just flatly wrong.
> 
> Anthem is a great example. Fallout 76 is another example. Battlefield 2042 yet another. Marvel's Avengers another one. Those are just recent examples of AAAs that were absolute trash on release. With Fallout 76 it was a big deal to Bethesda so they eventually managed to patch and give away free content enough that it became an okay game instead of trash. BF2042 the jury is still out but it ain't looking good. Marvel's Avengers they've tried to do that, but... nah mate.
> 
> The classic example of a terrible AAA is Lair, which was a game Sony invested huge amounts in, hoping it to super next-gen in 2007 and sell tons of PS3s, but... it was absolutely dire. We could look at other stuff too, like APB or Mass Effect: Andromeda, but I've made my point, and this is just a derail at this stage.
> 
> You're intentionally misusing the term to mean "good game", which it never has and never will.




 I'm talking more about the long term prospects of D&D games. 

 If they make a "AAA" game that's terrible and it flops big studios can kinda write it off. They have more money and other IP to use. 

 Personally I think WotC is over rating the appeal of the D&D brand. 

 They don't have the infrastructure, vision, competency to deliver a good AAA game imho. It's all smoke and mirrors batm "hey look at us we dropped a few tens if millions and have 6 studios". Big Woop produce something good and let's talk. 

 As I said Ubisoft has 7 studios working on one game. And can actually produce stuff.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Zardnaar said:


> They don't have the infrastructure, vision, competency to deliver a good AAA game imho. It's all smoke and mirrors batm "hey look at us we dropped a few tens if millions and have 6 studios". Big Woop produce something good and let's talk.



I mean, sure?

I mostly agree. But I do think if they give Archetype Entertainment a reasonable budget, get them to hire like 100-200 more employees, and give them 3-5 years (lol) they'll be able to turn out an AAA sci-fi CRPG.

But will WotC do that? Nah. Probably not. I'm waiting for the axe to come down on Archetype. I really think that, as they've been stuck on "50-70" employees for like, coming up on two years, they're going anywhere.

And what I most agree with from what you're saying here is "vision" - yeah I don't think WotC have that vision. But they could prove us wrong, and it's mostly just about throwing money at people.


----------



## Sacrosanct

Zardnaar said:


> As I said Ubisoft has 7 studios working on one game. And can actually produce stuff.



Yeah, microtransactions...


----------



## MNblockhead

Ruin Explorer said:


> Sadly it seems like the closest we're going to get is BG3 and Solasta. I'd love to see an indie or AA company do something that was maybe 2D, sprite-based, and just really focused on providing a fun D&D experience, but it seems like that either isn't something anyone wants to make, or I think more likely, that isn't something WotC wants to even licence, let alone fund.



Turn-based strategy games, I've learned, are divisive.  Lots of people were upset with BG being turn based. I got tired with the early release and am waiting until it is finally released, but I put a lot of hours into the early release on both Stadia and PC and really, really like the game. It is almost the perfect game for my tastes.


----------



## Mistwell

Zardnaar said:


> Hasbro isn't a major video games publisher though.
> 
> They're not even on the level Paradox Interactive which tends to release quality games that are reasonably cheap.



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


----------



## MonsterEnvy

Jimmy Dick said:


> 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.



So I guess you have paid no attention whatsoever to the movie. Cause your questions are answered.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

MNblockhead said:


> Turn-based strategy games, I've learned, are divisive.  Lots of people were upset with BG being turn based. I got tired with the early release and am waiting until it is finally released, but I put a lot of hours into the early release on both Stadia and PC and really, really like the game. It is almost the perfect game for my tastes.



I think they're more divisive with a certain generation, who are mostly 35-50-ish now, than with younger gamers. People who grew up playing single-player RTSes and Infinity Engine games like BG/IWD/PST and so on are pretty loudly keen on Real-time-with-Pause (RtwP), but there's a ton of pushback on games using it, and games which use turn-based approaches, like DOS1/2, have been generally reviewed better and been better regarded than games which were designed for RtwP. It's to the point now where of the selling-points of Wrath of the Righteous was that it had turn-based built-in from day 1, and the turn-based patch for Kingmaker made it a lot more popular (whereas the turn-based patch for Deadfire showed how Deadfire's system was really well-designed for RtwP and just not great for turn-based).

I will say I feel kind of vindicated by this because I always favoured turn-based and thought RtwP was an evolutionary dead end.

I did see one game actually make good use of RtwP, but it was an obscure indie whose name escapes me, with a custom design, not emulating a turn-based tabletop game in way that is inexplicably not turn-based.


----------



## BovineofWar

Ruin Explorer said:


> I think they're more divisive with a certain generation, who are mostly 35-50-ish now, than with younger gamers. People who grew up playing single-player RTSes and Infinity Engine games like BG/IWD/PST and so on are pretty loudly keen on Real-time-with-Pause (RtwP), but there's a ton of pushback on games using it, and games which use turn-based approaches, like DOS1/2, have been generally reviewed better and been better regarded than games which were designed for RtwP.



It's always been a taste thing I think. RtwP was away to try and smooth out the experience for people that aren't as interested in the number crunching and minutiae. I still like it, but I don't begrudge people that don't enjoy it. 

Back when BG came out, there were a lot of people complaining about RtwP. Hell, people complained when about Active Time Battle in Final Fantasy games. 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. Which shows there's a spectrum of how detail oriented versus how action oriented an RPG is and games have fallen all along that spectrum. 

So I'm not surprised people are upset about BG3 being turn-based only. It would just be a different set of people complaining if it was RtwP only.


----------



## Scribe

Ruin Explorer said:


> I think they're more divisive with a certain generation, who are mostly 35-50-ish now, than with younger gamers. People who grew up playing single-player RTSes and Infinity Engine games like BG/IWD/PST and so on are pretty loudly keen on Real-time-with-Pause (RtwP), but there's a ton of pushback on games using it, and games which use turn-based approaches, like DOS1/2, have been generally reviewed better and been better regarded than games which were designed for RtwP. It's to the point now where of the selling-points of Wrath of the Righteous was that it had turn-based built-in from day 1, and the turn-based patch for Kingmaker made it a lot more popular (whereas the turn-based patch for Deadfire showed how Deadfire's system was really well-designed for RtwP and just not great for turn-based).
> 
> I will say I feel kind of vindicated by this because I always favoured turn-based and thought RtwP was an evolutionary dead end.
> 
> I did see one game actually make good use of RtwP, but it was an obscure indie whose name escapes me, with a custom design, not emulating a turn-based tabletop game in way that is inexplicably not turn-based.




Yeah I think it just depends now. I didn't mind real time, but in Wrath, at higher difficulties,  it just doesn't make sense. I enjoy turn based much more now.


----------



## MNblockhead

Ruin Explorer said:


> 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

Incenjucar said:


> 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

BovineofWar said:


> 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.



BovineofWar said:


> 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

Sacrosanct said:


> 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

Mistwell said:


> 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

Zardnaar said:


> 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

Jimmy Dick said:


> 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.


----------



## Micah Sweet

Ruin Explorer said:


> 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.
> 
> 
> 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.



Stellaris is my favorite game, and it's definitely RtwP.


----------



## Ruin Explorer

Micah Sweet said:


> Stellaris is my favorite game, and it's definitely RtwP.



It's not a party-based RPG mate though is it?

Paradox RtwP is an entirely different beast.


----------



## Zardnaar

Micah Sweet said:


> Stellaris is my favorite game, and it's definitely RtwP.




 Kinda in MP the rule is generally no pausing allowed.


----------



## Clint_L

Mistwell said:


> I assume it's because they are focused on making AAA games now and these were more middling projects?



Given this is affecting 15 people on 5 games, then yeah, these were not major projects. I'm speculating that these were at the very formative stages, and none of them looked likely to be a big winner.


----------



## Jimmy Dick

Henadic Theologian said:


> 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.




What reference would that be?


----------



## BovineofWar

Ruin Explorer said:


> 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.



That's true if your market is only the average CRPG player. The intent of RtwP in Baldur's Gate was to translate the pen-and-paper experience in to something that more people would play. I'd argue that the proliferation of action-RPGs is a pretty good indicator that the majority of video game players are not interested in turn-based game play. The challenge being can you lure people in with RtwP or ATB mechanics that otherwise wouldn't play turn based games?



Ruin Explorer said:


> 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.



I think most RtwP are turn-based "under the hood", that's definitely the case for BG and the like. You still have have the opportunity for detailed tactical decisions with RtwP, and the lack of abstraction make certain phenomena like simultaneity occur in RtwP that get very clunky in a turn-based environment. I'll agree that the main impediment is the lack of fine control; unless you're pausing every 6 seconds, which is not the usual playing condition.

I guess my point is I don't see RtwP dying out. With the number of MMOs using real-time battle with ability timers, JRPGs with ATB-inspired features, etc., the trend is here to stay. I think for better or worse, it's just a matter of time before the pendulum swings the other way and a new isometric RtwP RPG is released.


----------



## BovineofWar

Clint_L said:


> Given this is affecting 15 people on 5 games, then yeah, these were not major projects. I'm speculating that these were at the very formative stages, and none of them looked likely to be a big winner.



Only 15 people are affected at Wizards of the Coast. That's not to say that five independent studios will not be laying off 15+ developers each now that their projects are cancelled. There's really not enough information here to speculate on the stage of the projects, quality of the deliverables to date, or the business strategy. This could have been a business performance issue (I'm thinking of Aspyr's KOTOR remake) or it could have been a strategic decision (Wizards wants all the development know-how and profits in house).


----------



## Ruin Explorer

BovineofWar said:


> That's true if your market is only the average CRPG player. The intent of RtwP in Baldur's Gate was to translate the pen-and-paper experience in to something that more people would play. I'd argue that the proliferation of action-RPGs is a pretty good indicator that the majority of video game players are not interested in turn-based game play. The challenge being can you lure people in with RtwP or ATB mechanics that otherwise wouldn't play turn based games?



No, is the answer.

That wasn't true in the '90s because they weren't trying to lure in action-game players. They were trying to lure in _RTS_ players. RtwP doesn't work on action players. It never has. Same for ATB. There's a reason FF16 is basically a DMC game with RPG elements rather than using ATB.

And re: turn-based, well, whatever you think, modern turn-based games sell extremely well, whether they're Divinity: Original Sin, Civ, XCOM, Battletech, Midnight Suns, Gears Tactics, Darkest Dungeon, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Triangle Strategy, Into the Breach, Yakuza: Like a Dragon (which moved from action to turn-based, note, to great applause), Persona, Dragon Quest or whatever. They outnumber RTS games many times to one. Probably more than 10 times to 1. The RTSes which did so well in the '90s are virtually gone now. The last major one was StarCraft 2 in 2010. It's not really a thing any more (there have been some failed AA attempts and a some nostalgia remakes/enhanced versions but...). Whereas turn-based is.

The only place real-time strategy really survives is Paradox games and settlement builders, both of which have a much more hands-off approach and one that's not really about controlling individual units.

So the RtwP isn't even a real option at this point. Your choice is action or turn-based, and you can't do D&D well as action (as the Neverwinter MMO rather shows, unfortunately).


BovineofWar said:


> I guess my point is I don't see RtwP dying out.



I mean, _it already died_ dude. Apart from Paradox games and settlement builders.

As far as I know, there are literally no major (i.e. even AA) RtwP RPGs on in development. Owlcat abandoned it entirely for turn-based with their new 40K RPG. They were the last hold-out. No Kickstarters or similar for any RtwP games.

So I read a couple of threads - there is literally one game - Dark Envoy - 
Now I will say, these are the people who made the only other genuinely clever RtwP game of recent years (sorry Pillars of Eternity 1/2 you were great games and your RtwP was well-designed but it was old-fashioned and clunky partly by design), which was Tower of Time.

I've got this wishlisted and I expect it'll be a good game, but that's it. Whereas there are hordes of turn-based or action-based RPGs on the way out in the next couple of years.

I guess DA4 might come out and might_ technically_ be RtwP? It could happen!

And no, this isn't a pendulum situation. It never was. RtwP was popular because of RTSes, not because it was a natural mode. The designers of the BG1 even discussed this. It's possible that turn-based with ALSO die, but unless DA4 is the biggest smash hit in history, and is severely RtwP, I don't see anything in the near future for RtwP in party-based RPGs.


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## Zardnaar

Ruin Explorer said:


> No, is the answer.
> 
> That wasn't true in the '90s because they weren't trying to lure in action-game players. They were trying to lure in _RTS_ players. RtwP doesn't work on action players. It never has. Same for ATB. There's a reason FF16 is basically a DMC game with RPG elements rather than using ATB.
> 
> And re: turn-based, well, whatever you think, modern turn-based games sell extremely well, whether they're Divinity: Original Sin, Civ, XCOM, Battletech, Midnight Suns, Gears Tactics, Darkest Dungeon, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Triangle Strategy, Into the Breach, Yakuza: Like a Dragon (which moved from action to turn-based, note, to great applause), Persona, Dragon Quest or whatever. They outnumber RTS games many times to one. Probably more than 10 times to 1. The RTSes which did so well in the '90s are virtually gone now. The last major one was StarCraft 2 in 2010. It's not really a thing any more (there have been some failed AA attempts and a some nostalgia remakes/enhanced versions but...). Whereas turn-based is.
> 
> The only place real-time strategy really survives is Paradox games and settlement builders, both of which have a much more hands-off approach and one that's not really about controlling individual units.
> 
> So the RtwP isn't even a real option at this point. Your choice is action or turn-based, and you can't do D&D well as action (as the Neverwinter MMO rather shows, unfortunately).
> 
> I mean, _it already died_ dude. Apart from Paradox games and settlement builders.
> 
> As far as I know, there are literally no major (i.e. even AA) RtwP RPGs on in development. Owlcat abandoned it entirely for turn-based with their new 40K RPG. They were the last hold-out. No Kickstarters or similar for any RtwP games.
> 
> So I read a couple of threads - there is literally one game - Dark Envoy -
> Now I will say, these are the people who made the only other genuinely clever RtwP game of recent years (sorry Pillars of Eternity 1/2 you were great games and your RtwP was well-designed but it was old-fashioned and clunky partly by design), which was Tower of Time.
> 
> I've got this wishlisted and I expect it'll be a good game, but that's it son. Whereas there are a horde of turn-based or action-based RPGs on the way out in the next couple of years.
> 
> I guess DA4 might come out and might_ technically_ be RtwP? It could happen!
> 
> And no, this isn't a pendulum situation. It never was. RtwP was popular because of RTSes, not because it was a natural mode. The designers of the BG1 even discussed this. It's possible that turn-based with ALSO die, but unless DA4 is the biggest smash hit in history, and is severely RtwP, I don't see any future for that approach.




 Arts are essentially dead. I still play a modded one but it was released 2005 iirc. 

 Paradox Interactive isn't really rts they're grand strategy. They lured me away from Civilization series. Still but out Civ3 and SMAC occasionally.

 I tots didn't lose a Super Star Destroyer the other day!!!


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## Ruin Explorer

Zardnaar said:


> Still but out Civ3 and SMAC occasionally.



SMAC may be one of the best games ever made. That level of sheer bloody inspiration coming together is so rarely seen. It reminded me of the original Planescape boxed set in the way it synthesized so many ideas together.


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## Zardnaar

Ruin Explorer said:


> SMAC may be one of the best games ever made. That level of sheer bloody inspiration coming together is so rarely seen. It reminded me of the original Planescape boxed set in the way it synthesized so many ideas together.




 Yup. It's never really been topped since either.


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## Henadic Theologian

Ruin Explorer said:


> No, is the answer.
> 
> That wasn't true in the '90s because they weren't trying to lure in action-game players. They were trying to lure in _RTS_ players. RtwP doesn't work on action players. It never has. Same for ATB. There's a reason FF16 is basically a DMC game with RPG elements rather than using ATB.
> 
> And re: turn-based, well, whatever you think, modern turn-based games sell extremely well, whether they're Divinity: Original Sin, Civ, XCOM, Battletech, Midnight Suns, Gears Tactics, Darkest Dungeon, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Triangle Strategy, Into the Breach, Yakuza: Like a Dragon (which moved from action to turn-based, note, to great applause), Persona, Dragon Quest or whatever. They outnumber RTS games many times to one. Probably more than 10 times to 1. The RTSes which did so well in the '90s are virtually gone now. The last major one was StarCraft 2 in 2010. It's not really a thing any more (there have been some failed AA attempts and a some nostalgia remakes/enhanced versions but...). Whereas turn-based is.
> 
> The only place real-time strategy really survives is Paradox games and settlement builders, both of which have a much more hands-off approach and one that's not really about controlling individual units.
> 
> So the RtwP isn't even a real option at this point. Your choice is action or turn-based, and you can't do D&D well as action (as the Neverwinter MMO rather shows, unfortunately).
> 
> I mean, _it already died_ dude. Apart from Paradox games and settlement builders.
> 
> As far as I know, there are literally no major (i.e. even AA) RtwP RPGs on in development. Owlcat abandoned it entirely for turn-based with their new 40K RPG. They were the last hold-out. No Kickstarters or similar for any RtwP games.
> 
> So I read a couple of threads - there is literally one game - Dark Envoy -
> Now I will say, these are the people who made the only other genuinely clever RtwP game of recent years (sorry Pillars of Eternity 1/2 you were great games and your RtwP was well-designed but it was old-fashioned and clunky partly by design), which was Tower of Time.
> 
> I've got this wishlisted and I expect it'll be a good game, but that's it. Whereas there are hordes of turn-based or action-based RPGs on the way out in the next couple of years.
> 
> I guess DA4 might come out and might_ technically_ be RtwP? It could happen!
> 
> And no, this isn't a pendulum situation. It never was. RtwP was popular because of RTSes, not because it was a natural mode. The designers of the BG1 even discussed this. It's possible that turn-based with ALSO die, but unless DA4 is the biggest smash hit in history, and is severely RtwP, I don't see anything in the near future for RtwP in party-based RPGs.




 Yeah Owlcat was really the last hope for RTwP, Except maybe Dragon Age 4 (never played the DA series is it RTwP?) so Rogue Trader going completely turn based must have felt like a betrayal for RTwP fans.

 It's funny too me because when BG1 & 2 came out folks acted like their was no market for turn based games anymore, like turned based gold box game fans like me were dinosaurs, and while I enjoyed the BG 1 & 2 series and NWN2 series (didn't care for the NWN1), it's gratifying to see turned based games win.


 I love to see one of these studios do a proper sequel to the Gold Box games.


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## Ruin Explorer

Henadic Theologian said:


> It's funny too me because when BG1 & 2 came out folks acted like their was no market for turn based games anymore



That's absolutely right!

I got told at the time - repeatedly - that Fallout 1/2 were "outdated" because they were turn-based, and no-one was ever going to play turn-based CRPGs (or really other games again), and to be fair, from like 1998 to like 2010 there were pretty few turn-based games in the West.

I think two factors really served to bring it back:

1) Japan kept putting out turn-based games. Some series went action-based, but ATB-type deals largely vanished - with games largely splitting to be either turn-based OR action-based, no hybrids.

2) Board games became wildly popular with a big crossover with the sort of people who play CRPGs, strategy games, and so on. Obviously basically all of those are turn-based.

So then we got stuff like XCOM in 2012 and D:OS in 2014, both of which were very well-regarded, and a new generation got to meet RtwP in the form of Pillars of Eternity, Kingmaker, and so on, and their reaction was... to say "hmmm" and keep asking for a turn-based mode. Which the sequels to both of those put in.

So vindication at last lol!



Henadic Theologian said:


> Except maybe Dragon Age 4 (never played the DA series is it RTwP?)



Every DA game so far has a slightly different take on it.

DA:O was straight-up RtwP but with an important innovation - in-game, you could "script" your characters through menus, so whoever you weren't playing at the time could have elaborate conditional behaviour. Scripts existed for Dungeon Siege and Infinity Engine games, but they had to be created/edited out of game, and Infinity Engine games I don't think even ever explain this, you just had to know.

DA2 on PC was similar to DA:O, but refined the menus for conditional behaviour, and also clearly considered the conditional behaviour fully when designing abilities (which DA:O did not). Some people are bizarrely unaware of this - I had someone telling me DA2 "ripped out" the conditional behaviour - absolutely false, on PC at least. On consoles, DA2 had slightly different gameplay, in that you didn't click to move, but moved with the control stick, and didn't have auto-attack, you have to actually keep pressing a button to attack.

DAI made the DA2 console approach the default - no auto-attack for the controlled character, but you can turn it on in options. It made the characters a lot smarter by default, but also changed and simplified the conditional behaviour, linking it directly to abilities (which works surprisingly well, I didn't expect that). Click-to-move exists, but only in the "tactical" view, otherwise you move with KB/control stick. In general the idea has been to reduce the amount you need to pause whilst still giving you the option to be very pause-heavy if you want.

(NB DAI came out just before the "Return of the PC" era, hence the console-centric design choices. However to this day console-centric design choices remain normal, it's just PC gamers also usually now own gamepads!)

DA4 is slightly hard to predict as Bioware know they need a crowd-pleaser and nostalgia can play well, but what plays better is selling lots of copies, so it needs to be something accessible and fun (note that despite a lot of grousing about DAI from DA:O fans, and four big design errors*), DAI sold extremely well and kept selling for a long time). So I'd expect a combat design perhaps similar to DAI but maybe slightly more "action-y" on the character you're playing, whilst still allowing you to tell other characters who to act - probably looking more at conditional behaviour than pause, swap, cast stuff though. Either that or they'll go more action and make character swapping a major mechanic (a number of JRPGs do this), but that'd be risky, and if there's one thing Bioware needs, it's a game largely regarded as at least "good".

* = Hinterlands, too many zones, too many entirely optional but MMO-esque sidequests, the bloody table. All of these except the stupid table were overreactions to specific and common criticisms of DA2, and avoidable as issues by just choosing not to mess with them (but it really helped if someone warned you about them!). The table is unavoidable on consoles, but on PC you can get a mod to make it instant which suddenly takes it from "GRRRRRRR" to "Ok fine".


----------



## Ruin Explorer

The mystery deepens further:


Lot going on at WotC atm.


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## Scribe

Ruin Explorer said:


> The mystery deepens further:
> 
> 
> Lot going on at WotC atm.




You know, its really really funny.

I talk to people all the time, "how can X being doing Y, it makes no sense!" and the answer is always the same.

X (a company, a government, a political party, whatever!) is made of PEOPLE. People who are just like the idiot we all work with, and wonder how he hasnt been fired. People who are dealing with a sick kid, or a dog that needs to go to the vet, or a spouse that gets on their nerves, and people who on any given day, just dont care about their work enough.

Days like today, just make me shake my head and have a laugh.


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## Mirtek

Zardnaar said:


> If your games a turkey it's not AAA regardless of it's budget.



I have agree with those that disagree with you here.

It'd still be an AAA game, just a failed AAA game. As opposed to a successful non-AAA game that could very well outsell even some just moderately successful AAA games.

A flopped Hollywood movie is still a Hollywood movie, even if outsold by some direct-to-TV B-movie (which will also still remain a B-movie, no matter how successful it may become)


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## Vincent55

UngeheuerLich said:


> How did you come to this conclusion?



I you don't know then i can't explain it to you


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## UngeheuerLich

Vincent55 said:


> I you don't know then i can't explain it to you



Too bad. I would like to hear your insights.


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