Baldur's Gate 3, Monopoly Go roll critical hits for Wizards of the Coast
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2023 started off on the wrong foot for Wizards of the Coast, with the company cancelling a slate of games and confirming layoffs in the first week of the year.
The company's year has trended dramatically upward since then.
The Hasbro subsidiary has seen Baldur's Gate 3 launch to a rapturous critical reception, while its partnership with Scopely for Monopoly Go resulted in a rare new game entering the top of the mobile charts, out-performing games like Roblox and Candy Crush Saga in US consumer spending in July.
Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro Gaming president Cynthia Williams and Hasbro digital games group's head of digital games Tim Fields are clearly pleased with recent developments.
We ask if Baldur's Gate 3 has been commercially successful in measure with its critical plaudits, and Williams essentially answers in the affirmative.
"We're very pleased with how it's performing, and Larian is very pleased with how it's performing," Williams says. "There are a lot of definitions of 'commercially successful,' but everyone's very happy now because our fans are happy."
Baldur's Gate 3 in particular has been the subject of a lot of conversation about setting the bar for what people might expect from other AAA RPGs, even though the conditions that led to the game – a big budget with a large independent studio and multiple years of full-priced Early Access release – are not exactly common.
"Larian Studios is a terrific partner for Wizards of the Coast because they are among the best in the business at building deep RPGs and CRPGs in particular," Fields says. "Their history as a studio is terrific, and the amount
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