@RollingStone Wizards of the Coast has plans for new games, movies, TV, comics.
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D&D
Dungeons & Dragons, the other castle at Wizards of the Coast, received its latest update - the Fifth Edition - about three and a half years ago after two years of large-scale beta testing. “It really helped us refine the rule set and open up the world of players,” Cocks says. “After three and a half years, we had our best sales in November. It sold out and we’ve been struggling to restock. It’s a great engine of play.”
Cocks’ personal history with D&D echoes the history of a lot of folks who are helping to fuel the game's resurgence. He started playing when he was 10, in 1983, and recently returned to the game to play it with his son, who is now 10. “Everyone raised in the ‘70s or ‘80s when D&D was a cultural phenomenon, are rediscovering the game with Fifth Edition,” he says. Adding that those same early players also have in many ways taking over a lot of powerful, creative positions in Hollywood. “The sweet spot is 35 to 45,” he says. “They grew up playing D&D and were inspired to be storytellers by it.”
The resurgence is also being helped along by the popularity of tabletop, gameplay streams by folks like Wil Wheaton and others. “They create webisodes based on D&D campaigns,” Cocks says. “They create these dramatic arcs over the course of play. And we see millions of people consume this content. It shows that it’s fun to get a group together and go on this adventure and act silly as you socialize together.” For the first time, he adds, people asked about how they got into D&D, listed watching videos online as a bigger source than recommendations from friends.
And as with Magic, Wizards is starting to plumb the depths of the game’s rich lore and history. “We are looking at TV series or movie deals as well as more web-based content and actively pursuing a larger slate of video games for D&D,” Cocks says. “Right now we have a slate of four to five coming in 12 to 18 months and five or six set for 2020 and beyond across a variety of genres.” While that may sound like a lot, since 1987 there have already been more than 100 games based on the slew of D&D properties, he noted. “At its core, D&D has a couple things going for it: A rich lore and rich history and six or seven different worlds. That’s a rich vein to be able to tap into. Also, the history associated with it means that when you play D&D it feels very authentic because it’s a mature property and has had so many iterations of it. The secret to D&D is that really the rules are just guidelines.”
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