[Pc Games] Buckle up—Hasbro spent over $1 billion on games and has plans for 'the next 100 years', since Baldur's Gate 3 proved fans 'like a great, well-executed D&D game'

[Wolf.17]

 

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll know that Baldur's Gate 3 did well—winning just about every major Game of the Year award, starting industry-wide conversations about the quality of videogames, and getting one of our highest-ever review scores. 

 

It's also done remarkably well as a licensing deal for Hasbro, which owns Wizards of the Coast, which created Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition—the tabletop rules system Baldur's Gate 3 is built on top of.

 

Unfortunately for said company, Larian's moving onto different, if not greener pastures—but Dan Ayoub, head of digital product development at Wizards of the Coast, says there's no plans on stopping the company's forward march: "Hasbro is in fact making videogames … we have a considerable investment in our studio structure; we've got over $1 billion in games right now being developed."That's as per a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz. Ayoub continues, arguing that Hasbro's MO has "always been about play, it's always been about entertaining people. And gaming is the predominant form of entertainment for a lot of people, and it's something that just continues to grow."

This does feel like a bit of a strange revelation to have now—TTRPGs and RPG games have always shared a lot of DNA, especially considering one essentially came from the other. Baldur's Gate 3 was hardly the first entry in the franchise, after all, and there are plenty of classics like Neverwinter Nights and Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines that have their roots firmly in dice, pen and paper. Heck, Cyberpunk 2077 is spawned from a TTRPG product.

 

"One of the great things we took from the success of Baldur's Gate 3 is that people really, really like a great, well-executed D&D game," muses Ayoub in the same way you might marvel out-loud that water is wet. Alright, I'm being a little uncharitable there. 

BG3 is absolutely landmark in its quality, and certainly a far cry from CRPGs of yore which mostly took place in text boxes and crunchy stat sheets—nothing wrong with that, but even the most hardcore of CRPG fans'd likely concede that kind of thing hardly screams 'mass appeal'.

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/baldurs-gate/buckle-uphasbro-has-spent-over-dollar1-billion-on-games-and-has-plans-for-the-next-100-years-since-baldurs-gate-3-proved-fans-like-a-great-well-executed-dandd-game/