D&D makers are spending $1 billion on their own video games, promising they’ll be ‘quality and authentic’ like Baldur’s Gate 3

rockpapershotgun.com:

While they ponder which developers should face the difficult task of following up one of the most acclaimed games in a long time by making a sequel by Baldur's Gate 3, the makers of Dungeons & Dragons are also putting their own money into making video games themselves. Over a billion dollars of their own money, in fact.

That’s what Dan Ayoub, head of digital product development for Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering publishers Wizards of the Coast, recently told GamesIndustry.biz, claiming that more than $1 billion is invested in the four video game studios owned by Wizards’ corporate parent and literal Monopoly-maker Hasbro.

Hasbro’s various video game projects currently include an original sci-fi universe called Exodus from former Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic lead designer James Ohlen and ex-BioWare devs, as well as some kind of horror game from studio Skeleton Key and a GI Joe game over at Atomic Arcade. (With Hasbro also being the toy giant that makes GI Joe, along with Transformers and My Little Pony.)

The unsurprising news is that Hasbro reckons there’s still something in this whole Dungeons & Dragons thing - something for which the rapturous success of Baldur’s Gate 3, both critical and commercial, provides solid evidence.

Ayoub optimistically suggested that a new Dungeons & Dragons video game in the works over at Invoke Studios would be “something like” Baldur’s Gate 3 - specifically in terms of the way that Larian made a really, really good game that was also deeply rooted in the world and lore of D&D.

"One of the great things we took from the success of Baldur's Gate 3 is that people really, really like a great, well-executed D&D game, so we've got something like that,” Ayoub said.

"For the company and for myself, that was a fantastic example of execution of the brand in an authentic way. And the players came. They loved it and are asking for more. And I think you can see that with other brands as well.

"I'm old enough to remember a