Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, Thorne looks at the strategy implied by Hasbro’s hire for new CEO of Wizards of the Coast, and makes a call for more focus on tabletop and game stores.
Oh lord love a duck. After what was no doubt an exhaustive search, Hasbro has named a new CEO for Wizards of the Coast (see “Hasbro Names New WotC President“). John Hight took over as the new head of WotC this month, replacing the recently departed Cynthia Williams, who left for the CEO position at Funko after a little over two years as CEO of WotC (see “Former WotC CEO Gets New Gig“).
Much like Williams, Hight comes to the position with lots of experience in the world of video games and digital game design but no experience in the development or selling of physical products. Looking at his Linked In profile, Hight has spent his entire professional career in the video game industry, starting work at 3DO before moving to Electronic Arts, then Atari, then Sony before spending the last ten years at Blizzard Entertainment. He worked on several of the Dungeons & Dragons video games during his tenure at Atari and Sony but has devoted most of his time to World of Warcraft during his time at Blizzard.
In the statement accompanying the announcement, Hasbro CEO Chris Cooks pointed to Hight’s decades long experience in the video game industry as a prime reason for his hire. In addition to his work with World of Warcraft, Hight also has experience with Hearthstone, the digital collectible card game that outpaces Magic the Gathering’s Arena in terms of popularity. Quoting Cocks, “I admire John’s career focus on fostering community. He is a true embodiment of our mission to bring people together through play. John’s love of D&D and Magic: The Gathering, combined with his leadership in video games, will be crucial as we expand our digital offerings to deliver what our fans crave.”
Hight may love both games, but just like Williams, he brings no experience in the publishing of physical products, especially in the hobby games market segment. Wizards of the Coast, and even more so Hasbro, still gives every indication it wants to move away from the development of physical products, the company’s bread and butter for the last 40 years, and further into digital offerings. Surely, there must be someone with some actual publishing experience out there who could also improve the company’s “digital offerings?”
Unfortunately, the company also seems to want to keep the revenue streams from digital sales strictly in house, rather than opting to share them with retailers, as the Bits and Mortar program does (see “Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Core Books and Vecna: Eve of Ruin DTC“). WotC already has many channels to use to reach consumers with its digital offerings.
For years, retailers have asked WotC to set up a method to allow consumers to purchase PDF copies of D&D books along with the physical copies. Shrink-wrapping the books, putting a unique code inside allowing the buyer to redeem a digital copy and setting a higher MSRP for the bundle would certainly help assuage retailer concerns regarding getting shut out of the revenue stream generated by the sale of digital copies through online sources and give WotC a means by which it can further promote its digital offerings to consumers and make retailers happier.
Comments? Send them to castleperilousgames@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Source: ICv2
