Tim Fields, General Manager of Digital Gaming at Hasbro, said that the company aims to reduce external dependency and improve in-house productivity with the acquired studios.
Games developed by these studios are planned to be tied to Wizards of the Coast franchises such as Dungeons & Dragons and Magic the Gathering. The vision behind this move is to make Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast a bigger players in the industry.
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Tim Fields says this is an “intentional shift to move more of our product development and publishing efforts in-house,”. In the past, the company has partnered on toy IPs like Nerf. The company plans to minimize these activities with in-house studios.
Speaking to Axios, Tim Fields said that there are six studios, but some of them will talk about their expertise in licensing and managing licensed projects. Licensed projects include the D&D game Baldur’s Gate 3, which Wizards of the Coast acquired with the acquisition of TSR in the past.
“Even great game makers don’t always succeed.” Fields says. And after he added that Wizards of the Coast is committed to this. The company is likely to release new D&D games in the coming years.
“You hire great people, you give them the tools, and you give them the resources that they need. And when they succeed you celebrate and grow it and try and get as many people in the world to enjoy it as you can. And if sometimes things aren’t as great as you hope they would be, then you dust off their shoulders and you get them back up and you get them to build another game.”
Experienced leaders
These studios are not so small. Apart from the acquired Skeleton Key, Atomic Arcade, Archetype Entertainment, Tuque Games, and MTG Arena, there is another unnamed studio founded by Leah Hoyer, one of Bungie’s Project Managers in the past. After all, Tuque Games is the name behind the previously released Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance game. In addition, the studio has another unannounced project.
Archetype Entertainment, founded in 2019 and led by former BioWare developer James Ohlen, currently has over 50 employees. The studio is currently working on an unannounced sci-fi RPG game.
Another ex-BioWare developer Christian Dailey runs the Skeleton Key studio. The studio is currently working on an unannounced horror game project.
Founded in 2021, Atomic Arcade will be led by ex-Warner Bros Developer Ames Kirschen. The studio is working on a G.I. Joe game focusing on Snake Eyes.
On the other hand, MTG Arena shares the same office with the Magic: The Gathering team. The studio’s primary goal is to develop a digital version of the game.
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