As it nears 50 years old, Dungeons & Dragons is more popular than ever—and Hasbro is looking to cash in by moving its wizards and warriors to TV, movies, game consoles and even virtual tabletops.
is a platform for your creativity.”was revolutionary when it was first published, and it still bears little resemblance to what most people would label a game. Players generally work together, not competitively. There is no winning or losing. A “game”—really more akin to a narrative—is rarely completed in one sitting, and sometimes unfurls over months or even years. There is no board, or game pieces, required. The game exists almost entirely in the minds of its players.
out of his Wisconsin basement through a new company, TSR, in 1974, selling a thousand copies in ten months. By 1979, the game’s core rulebooks were selling over 300,000 copies a year, according to. Then came a mass-media-fueled hysteria baselessly linking D&D to demon worship and witchcraft—which, of course, had the effect of turbocharging sales to the game’s young audience.
By 1997, TSR was barreling toward bankruptcy. Wizards of the Coast, which by then was a gaming-industry juggernaut as the publisher of the collectible card game, intervened and snapped up the company for about $25 million, or roughly $46 million in 2022 dollars. Two years later, Wizards sold itself to Hasbro for $325 million, the equivalent of $573 million today.
“D&D as a game, as a lifestyle has the potential to help people be more comfortable with who they are, express themselves more.”More broadly, in August, Wizards unveiled One D&D, a three-pronged strategy that, in addition to building out the D&D Beyond platform, will see the game’s rules revamped forThese digital initiatives offer plenty of new revenue potential. Dungeon masters will likely be able to buy premade maps plus visual and sound effects.