Insight into why Heroscape was dropped

[kenjib]

Hi everyone. There have been some articles by insiders about the history of Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast from the perspective about Dungeons and Dragons. While most of it isn't relevant to Heroscape, some of it seems to hint at exactly what happened with Heroscape.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...ts-of-D-D-Past

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...of-D-D-Present

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...Dragons-Future

http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/31...us-column.html

From the "past" article:

As much as fans of the game were impressed with 3rd edition and its modest revision of 3.5, market pressures began to build. Wizards of the Coast, at first emboldened by the corporate resources of Hasbro, suddenly felt the need to make D&D more profitable. In the mid-2000s, "Hasbro restructured itself internally to focus on its most successful brands," said Dancey. "Brands that did $50-$100 million a year in revenue were considered 'core,' and smaller brands were going to be marginalized. Marginalized businesses get downsized in headcount. They may also be mothballed, or sold."

The sad truth was that D&D was in danger. "Wizards has a $100 million brand - Magic: the Gathering. It tried to convince Hasbro that it could have two, by amping up D&D to that level," continued Dancey. "D&D was not a $50 million a year business, nor was it likely to ever become one on its then-current trajectory. So the reaction of the folks working on RPGs at Wizards is totally understandable - they felt their jobs were at risk."

The desire to grow roleplaying games and D&D into a bigger business is a noble goal, but the executives at Wizards were divided on how to make that happen. The obvious success of fantasy MMOs like World of Warcraft in 2004 suggested there was an as yet untapped audience for fantasy RPGs. A new edition of the beloved game that catered to these folks might push growth of D&D players to new levels. The OGL and its degree of success was also a hot topic of debate, and many of the people in charge when it was implemented - including Dancey and former Wizards CEO Peter Adkinson - were no longer employed at the company. Executives' confidence in giving away content for free began to wane as the company invested time and money in having young, eager game designers develop a new edition of the rules. Even to fans, an update to the D&D rules seemed like an exciting prospect, but unlike how the OGL and 3rd edition united audiences, Wizards' handling of the release of the 4th edition of D&D in 2008 splintered roleplaying gamers into violently opposing groups.

From the "future" article:

The current strategy of WotC is diverse. For players who want a quick structured experience, WotC now offers three board games designed to be completed in an hour or two, using a simplified version of 4th edition rules. The Legend of Drizzt came out in late 2011 and uses R.A. Salvatore's iconic character to attempt to attract new players.

Also, from Ryan Dancey's follow-up article:

My opinion is that the hobby gaming industry is going to transform into a very small niche business. It will cater primarily to an aging group of players who have made TRPGs their lifetime hobbies. As those players age, they’ll need less and less support in the form of commercially produced products. They will instead seek out community support tools to help them remain in touch with their hobby even as the social network they’re directly connected to becomes ever more frayed.

In the Escapist articles I am quoted as saying that this process will be like the evolution of the model train hobby. What I could have been more clear about was that my belief in this transformation is driven not by escalating costs (as in the case with model trains) but instead by the lack of an effective acquisition engine to drive new players into the TRPG hobby, and by the continued subtraction from the TRPG social network caused by MMOs.

Conversion to Family Games

I define a Hobby Game as one where (at least one person) spends more time preparing to play the game than actually playing it. For TRPGs that is usually the GM, but often it is players as well. This “out of game time” may be the biggest obstacle to overcome to keeping the TRPG platform competitive.

I think that commercially successful TRPGs of the future will be constructed more like a family game – something that can be unpacked, learned quickly, and played with little prep work. These games will give people a lot of the same joy of “roleplaying” and narrative control that they get from today’s Hobby Game TRPGs but with a fraction of the time investment. Wizards is already experimenting with this format, as is Fantasy Flight Games. It seems like a good bet that there is a substantially profitable business down this line of evolution.

Here's my theory:

By Hasbro's metric for success, Heroscape probably never met the target numbers it needed and so they were ready to axe it in some manner. At the same time the D&D brand was struggling desperately to justify it's existence because being acquired by Hasbro was very bad for D&D, which after the 1980's had come to operate in a niche market segment that Hasbro had no interest in. Bringing Heroscape into the D&D fold served two purposes:

1. It moved the revenue from Heroscape into the D&D brand, which helped to move the D&D numbers closer to the $100 million target number that Wizards had promised Hasbro.

2. It helped create a vehicle for the acquisition of new, young, D&D players to counteract the potential for tabletop roleplaying to become a niche hobby with an aging fanbase.

I can see how from the WotC executive perspective this was an obvious move. Creating lighter board game properties tied to D&D was already a goal, and moving Heroscape over was a way to do it quickly and cheaply while they developed more long term projects. However, once D&D board games that were more closely tied to the D&D ruleset, starting the Castle Ravenloft, hit the market, Heroscape was no longer needed (and less optimal). So, Heroscape no longer needed to exist and was cancelled.

I'm not trying to bash WotC here. It seems like Heroscape was already doomed, and by having them take it over we got another couple years of Heroscape production that we otherwise would not have had. The problem is that Hasbro demands very high revenues for it's product lines because it is a large company, doesn't want to deal with niche markets, and its strategy was to focus on brands that could fuel movie licensing revenue. Heroscape does not fit the business model.

A game like Heroscape can probably only make executives happy in a smaller, niche-oriented company like Fantasy Flight Games. However, under those production and distribution models the game would be much more expensive. Heroscape at the price we saw it was probably a fluke and we are unlikely to ever see it again until bigger economic changes make it possible (like production costs drastically reducing for some reason).

[AnubianWolf88]

Thanks, Kenjib.

I read only your analysis, not the source material, but it seems to make sense the way that you have laid it out. I can only offer two comments:

1) Battleship Galaxies does not fit this model in any way, so far as I can see...it is of similar complexity and time to learn/setup/play as Ravenloft/Ashardalon/Drizzt. But it is loosely aligned with Battleship, an old-time favorite board game for some, sure, but I don't play it anymore unless the kiddoes insist. How does its revenue (or lack thereof) get counted? Thank goodness Penny Arcade featured BG this week.

2) Madness Comics and Games ownership here in Plano (norh side of Dallas) said that their Heroscape sales with DnD figures were their best ever...if that revenue was contributing to Wizards' annual goal of $100M, why stop producing? $15 plasticrack sells easier than $40 - $60 hobby games in most brick and mortar stores. For kids in this neighborhood, $20 weekly allowance might be the norm.

Again, these are comments, not criticism. For the rest of what you've got there, it's pretty easy to infer where Heroscape fell in all this.

AW88

[Hogg]

Originally Posted by AnubianWolf88

1) Battleship Galaxies does not fit this model in any way, so far as I can see...it is of similar complexity and time to learn/setup/play as Ravenloft/Ashardalon/Drizzt. But it is loosely aligned with Battleship, an old-time favorite board game for some, sure, but I don't play it anymore unless the kiddoes insist. How does its revenue (or lack thereof) get counted? Thank goodness Penny Arcade featured BG this week.

Battleship Galaxies has a loose movie tie in coming up. I'm not sure how to count it, but the new movie looks like its in the middle between classic Battleship and BSG.

[STAROCEAN980]

So the conclusion still shows the only feasible way for HS to ever get going again is if a smaller company manages to pick it up and produce it at higher cost(for us, at least). And these potential companies are Fantasy Flight Games and others which I'm not familiar with, so can't comment on how things might go after that point.

The thing is, as even one quote said, Hasbro would sell or mothball the cancelled games. What purpose is there for them to hang onto "low" profit games (for them at least) which they obviously have no interest in dealing with anymore, rather than sell them and make a final buck?

And if they did want to sell, it seems it'd be better to sell it now, too, where the relative popularity of the game would still be fresh in people's minds and possibly influence other companies to even want to buy it from them. Comparing it to years later where less would care and much more of the potential fan base and market for it had dissipated and in general lost interest after going so long without.

[screwDriver]

Things would have been different if they had Michael Bay do those D&D movies.

[kenjib]

Originally Posted by STAROCEAN980

And if they did want to sell, it seems it'd be better to sell it now, too, where the relative popularity of the game would still be fresh in people's minds and possibly influence other companies to even want to buy it from them. Comparing it to years later where less would care and much more of the potential fan base and market for it had dissipated and in general lost interest after going so long without.

They could also keep it just to pillage for other games. Am I remembering right that there is a patent on the way that the terrain interlocks? They could avoid selling off the game not so that they can bring Heroscape back, but so that they can use the design components for other games/toys.

[bamoguy]

Originally Posted by kenjib

They could also keep it just to pillage for other games. Am I remembering right that there is a patent on the way that the terrain interlocks? They could avoid selling off the game not so that they can bring Heroscape back, but so that they can use the design components for other games/toys.

Yes, you are correct. Wizards is working on interlocking terrain for a miniatures game. This was talked about it a thread a few months ago, i'll have to see if I can find it.

EDIT: Found it. Auggest talked to some Wizards guys at GenCon and got the scoop on their latest skirmish game in development. It's a miniatures game with nonrandomized packaging and if you check out post #21 you will find a nice blurp on interlocking terrain.

http://www.heroscapers.com/community...ad.php?t=37249

[CanScape]

Great post, very informative. It speaks to the question of profits vs. marketshare...something that as a kid growing up playing games of all kinds, all I was concerned about was the fun factor.

Big companies like Hasbro need not be interested in smaller titles and markets. Anybody who still pays attention to Advanced Squad Leader (Hasbro owned, run my Multiman Publishing) knows that you can still survive under Hasbro, but it takes a lot of dedicated people willing to put out big (relative) bucks. Something like Heroscape wouldn't seem to fit that bill.

Looking back, I'm ok with the way Scape's run went, even in the end. Just a natural progression. I found it really sad though to see how DnD ended up causing so much disdain among players (pro and con) with their 2008 update, but I guess that's the problem of being owned by a big company. The worst part is that you know that the game you love to play isn't being ultimately cared for by people who 'care' about it: the only reason you get to play is because it generates big time profits. I simply don't think that DnD under the TSR banner was quite so worried about profits, but it's a moot point because they were in dire straits as well.

Part of me thinks that a smaller, focused company could pick up Scape...like FFG. But, I'm not convinced they'd be willing to pay for the rights to do so. If there's a market for a Scape type game, I do believe that they're smart enough to know that, and would come up with something similar, but just a bit different from, Heroscape. They did it with Talisman, but remember that Talisman was a lot bigger property than Heroscape was. The big box games are getting downsized from FFG as well...I'm sure we'll see their like again in say, 20 years? Sounds about right, considering Milton Bradley Gamemaster Series were in their heyday around 85, and 2005 was when FFG brought out Descent and the other big box games.

Who knows...good links, though, thanks.