August 9, 2024 • 51 mins
Hasbro has been making toys for decades, including many classic favorites like G.I. Joe and My Little Pony. But in recent years, it's also been going big on digital games. An app version of the classic board game Monopoly — called Monopoly GO! — has become one of the top mobile games of all time and grossed billions in revenue since it launched last year. Hasbro also owns Wizards of the Coast, the publisher of Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, and the best-selling video game Baldur's Gate 3. So why is gaming such a big growth market for a traditional toymaker? Where is the market heading? And how does a big company judge the success of "freemium" apps like Monopoly GO!? On this episode, we speak to Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks about the business of gaming.
Read More at Bloomberg.com:
Hasbro Stock Rises on Digital Gaming Strength
Hasbro Names Microsoft’s John Hight to Lead Wizards Gaming Division
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast.
I'm Tracy Allaway.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
And I'm Joe why Isenthal.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Joe, what do you know about Monopoly?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
My daughter's really into Monopoly. She's really getting into it.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Do you play with her?
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I do, And she's really into it, And I think
she's developing some good intuitions. I think she's about capitalism, yeah,
and I think she could be like a little bit conservative,
Like sometimes I think she should buy and she wants
to like hold on to her cash, and so she
like foregoes opportunities to get good properties. But I'm excited
she's taken to the game.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
That's actually impressive impulse control for a little kid. But
I do think a monopoly that best strategy is just
buy everything you land on.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Pretty basically, Are we going to do an episode just
on an optimal monopoly strategy? Because I'd be done with that.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
We should actually, Okay, let me rephrase this. What do
you know about Monopoly's history?
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Well, what I've heard, and I don't know if this
is true, because it seems like it could be an
urban legend. I've heard that the game was like started
by some socialist or something like that who wanted to,
you know, create a game that would indict capitalism. Monopoly
is not considered to be a positive aspect of the
market system. We usually are against those and yet I
(01:33):
don't think many people take that lesson and became massively popular.
It's a massively successful business in its own right.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
This is actually it's not an urban legend. It's true.
So monopoly. I was reading a book about this and
it's actually really fascinating. But Monopoly comes from the Landlord's Game,
which was created in nineteen o three by a woman
named Lizzie Maggie or Maggie, I'm not sure. And she
was actually a Quaker, so sort of you know, progressive ideals,
(02:01):
and it had almost the opposite ethos to the monopoly
we know today, and it was supposed to demonstrate that
an economy that rewards individuals is better than one where
monopolies hold all the wealth. And there was also a
version of taxation in the game that was kind of progressive.
But then a company called Parker Brothers basically published a
(02:22):
version of it in nineteen thirty five without the taxation aspect,
and then Hasbro bought it in the nineteen nineties, and
then that's when we started getting the sort of modern
version of Monopoly that we all know today. And I
have to say I was also looking at all the
various versions of Monopoly that have been published over time.
(02:43):
I'm pretty sure when I was a kid, I had
the Star Wars version. But if you look at an
actual list of all the different monopolies that have come
out over the years, it's amazing. So first of all,
there's unlicensed versions like Alpakaopoly with our pakas, but there's
also a Best Buy version which was licensed and it
(03:04):
looks kind of amazing. I want to play it. It
had little store departments instead of property used to buy.
There's a David Bowie addition. I don't know if that
interests you.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
So two things. One other thing I say about sometimes
I've taken the kids to Atlantic City, so my kids know,
like they've seen you know, they're like, oh, that's actually
park place, that's actually boardwalk, since I know all the
properties are streets in Atlantic City. But also they should
have a version of Monopoly with a land value text.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And so you get penalized for failing to get it
back to its roots.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Also, I think they should have a version where the
more you build, the more rents go down.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
It's a theory.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
If there are more hotels and houses everywhere, then they
should put it depressing anyway.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Okay, all right, what I was building up to is
that there is also a new version of Monopoly. It
is an app, an app version of the game that
you can play on your phone or wherever, and it
has become so popular that it's grossed more than three
billion dollars in revenue since launching in April of last year.
(04:06):
That's according to Hasbro's latest earnings. And beyond that, it
is so popular that Joe, can you guess what comes next? No,
it's so popular that Hasbro is launching a board game
version of Monopoly. Goes so, a board game version of
the app version of the board game.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
I love that. That's so great. Yes, that's great.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Okay, we've come full circle. Anyway. The reason we were
talking about Monopoly is because today we do, in fact
have the perfect guest. We are going to be speaking
to Chris Cox, the CEO of Hasbro, and we're going
to be talking to him about the development of Monopoly
over the years, but also all of their other games,
including Magic the Gathering, Joe, you remember we did that
(04:48):
episode with Richard Garfield and all the other sort of
digital things they have in the works right now, and
just get to handle on what a traditional toymaker is
actually doing in games. So I'm very excited. Yeah, Chris,
thank you so much for coming on all.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
Thoughts, Gracie, Joe, thanks so much for having me and
for being huge Monopoly fans.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
You're welcome, You're welcome.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I got to say, I am very interested in the
Grateful Dead Opoly, where you go on tour with the
Dead presumably forever, and you travel from gig to gig
trying to get rich by purchasing album recordings. That sounds fun. Okay, okay, Chris,
you have a gaming background. I think you were at
Wizards of the Coast, Is that right?
Speaker 4 (05:31):
Yep. I've been in the games industry since nineteen ninety nine,
or in and out of it. I started at Microsoft
in their PC games division, and after about three or
four months there, I was transferred into a secret project
code named Xbox, and then ever since then, I've been
in and out of games, working on video games, physical games,
(05:54):
games for kids, games for adults. And most recently at
Wizards of the Coast, which I helmed prior to becoming
CEO of Hasbro about two years ago.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Are you a game lover?
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Like?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
I mean, maybe it's obvious, but, like, you know, if
you find someone who has had a twenty plus year
in gaming, is there a pretty good chance that they themselves,
as part of their hobbies and identities, are just really
into games.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Yeah. I would challenge you to find a game that
I wouldn't enjoy playing. I'm a gaming omnivore. I've been
playing games since. Probably the earliest game I can remember
playing is Candyland, which also is a Hasburg game. I
think I remember playing that when I was four with
my mom, and I've been playing some version of Wizards
(06:37):
of the Coast game since I was ten years old.
I started playing Dungeons and Dragons at my best friend
Hans Schroeder's house in Cincinnati, Ohio. I remember seeing like
these little metal figurines in his older brother's room that
were wizards and dragons that had these like cool jewels
built into them, and I was like, Hey, what's that.
(06:57):
Then they showed me a twenty sided dice and I
was absolutely hooked. Started playing Magic when I was in college.
All of our Avalon Hills strategy games I geeked out too,
and I have a pretty rich collection of very old
PC games dating back to my first like EPSOM twenty
six hundred from like the early nineteen eighties and my
(07:18):
original Mac one twenty eight bit PC.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
So Hasbro just released Earnings, and a lot of the discussion,
a lot of the questions from analysts was all about
the gaming strategy. Talk to us about what the opportunity
in games actually is for Hasbro. Why does this seem
to be an area of focus for you right now?
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Well, I think it's a couple of different things. First off,
it's a very large business either both physical games as
well as digital games. So inside of physical games, we
invented the role playing game, We invented the trading card game, Magic,
the Gathering. We were one of the earliest pioneers on
mass produced board games. Milton Bradley started his eponymous board
(08:04):
game company back in the late or the early eighteen sixties,
right around the Lincoln inauguration. The Parker Brothers started their
game company back I think in like the eighteen nineties,
and so we've been a part of games basically as
far back as you can really track them. So they're
a huge part of our culture, they're a huge part
(08:24):
of our business, they're a huge part of the identity
of the company. And basically everyone plays games. It's a
massive market. You know, if you go across the US,
a Hasbro game is in better than nine out of
ten households across the US. Games like Monopoly, Clue, Candyland,
(08:45):
they basically have ubiquity in terms of brand awareness. And
you know, as many people as play physical games, a
number of people who played digital games Dwarfs even that,
you know, take Wizards of the Coast, Wizards of the Coast.
Game games are mag at the gathering in D and
D and they're primarily sold through you know, around eight
(09:07):
to ten thousand mom and pop style hobby stores around
the world. About seventy million people play those kinds of
games and shop at those kinds of stores. They primarily
sell strategy games, trading card games, role playing games, and
kind of like crunchier board games. The number of people
who play those types of games on their PC, phone
(09:30):
or a console is ten to twelve XA around the world.
It's like seven hundred million to eight hundred million play
those kinds of games, So I mean that's a pretty
healthy hunk of the world's population. It's growing. The games
industry has been growing at kind of call it a
five to eight percent clip for basically as long as
(09:52):
tracking goes back, go back to the nineties, and it
just continues to expand in terms of the number of
people who play games, where they play games, how they
play games, and the technological innovation that fuels it. So
Pasbro's all in and I'm a big advocate for it
as well.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
So Tracy mentioned Monopoly Go, the mobile game and three
billion in revenue since it's launched in twenty twenty three.
First of all, like, I haven't played it. What is
the game Monopoly Go? Because I take it it's distinct.
But then like, what is the business model of Monopoly Go?
How does it make money?
Speaker 4 (10:28):
Well? I think how it engages people and the business
model go hand in hand. Yeah, And Monopoly Go effectively
takes the essence of the board game, the essence of
the fun of the board game, which is deal making
and lighthearted, stabbing your friends in the back, yes, and
gamifies it on a phone. You basically go around boards,
(10:50):
around the world collecting properties, you collect cash, you collect,
fun digital items, you collect kind of power ups and dice,
and then you're able to raid your friends and kind
of like through a series of minigames, either you know,
set them back a little bit, challenge them to some
fun kind of minigames or adventures, and it creates that
(11:13):
kind of dynamic that you see around the board when
you're playing with your family or with your friends, where
someone's trying to slip one hundred from out of the bank,
or someone's trying to slip park Place out of the
slots and the board even though it hasn't been built,
or they're pushing like a little extra house onto a
row of three houses and hoping that you don't notice.
(11:36):
And it's that kind of fun kind of mischief that
I think makes the game great to play in person,
and that scope ly our partner who's made the game
has done a fantastic job capturing the essence of and
I think it's what really has driven the popularity of it.
The business model just kind of carries on that fun.
The more that you play, the more friends that you
(11:56):
connect and can play with and kind of create that fun,
loving mischief with the more fun the game is, the
more engaging the game is, and just the more opportunities
there are for you to extend the play. And really
the kind of the way that the game makes money
is this concept of earning dice and buying extra dice
(12:16):
because the dice give you the ability to make extra
moves and extra turns. You don't have to pay a
cent to play the game, and you can have a
lot of fun playing the game for free. But if
you feel a little bit of an extra challenge, or
you want to get a couple steps ahead of your
friend who lives across the country, or you want to
be the first to be able to raid the board
(12:37):
in Sydney out of your friend group, you might be
incentivized to pay a dollar or two to get some
extra dice and just get the jump on your quote
unquote competition.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Wow, it sounds like capitalism on steroids. Like say what
you will about the original monopoly, but it respected property rights.
You couldn't like steal property. Is there anything surprising that
(13:14):
you've learned from the Monopoly Go experience. I was reading
through the earnings transcript, for instance, and there was a
lot of discussion about seasonality and you weren't quite sure
what the seasonality was with something like Monopoly Go. Talk
to us about how that sort of business aspect of
it all is unfolding.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
Well, Monopoly Goo is the most successful mobile game outside
of China in history, So it's really an unprecedented scale
of game and scale of building its engagement and building
its audience. So when you have an end of one,
there aren't a lot of other games that you can
go compare against and say, oh, it's going to behave
(13:54):
like X, or it's going to behave like Why. There's
some games that are closed on go, you know, Candy Crush,
Clash of Clans, these kind of more casual to mid
core games that have a very compelling social engagement loop
associated with them, and several of those, particularly some of
the more casual versions of those, like some of the
(14:15):
Match three games like a Candy Crush, do exhibit a
degree of seasonality. POKEMONO, particularly in its early days, certainly did,
particularly when it was all about going outside and kind
of experiencing locales. It was a little bit more weather
based back then, so there is a degree of that,
But you know, we're kind of learning as we go
(14:36):
and we're learning with scope ly as we go. The
good news there is scope Lee's arguably one of the
biggest and best mobile games publishers in the world. They
have a lot of experience with a lot of other
games that are similar in audience type and engagement loops
as a game like Monopoly Go, so we're able to
leverage those. But you know, a game like Scrabble with
(14:59):
Buddies or Yatzie with Buddies. There's still successful games, but
they're ten x smaller than Monopoly Go. So just given
that scale in size and audience reach, there's gonna be
nuances that you're gonna discover for the first time simply
by being a pioneer.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
There is this phenomenon that people in the mobile gaming
industry you talk about. I think they call it like
the sharkfin effect, which is like a game will get
really popular and then it'll fade very fast. And I
think there was that. You know, Flappy Birds was one,
and I remember like people like played that like crazy
for a little while and then it like disappeared. I
(15:36):
got into this game, Elto's Adventure. I heard people talk
about that. I forgot about it. There are a few
others this seems to be a recurring thing. Can you
describe why that happens? Why you see certain games exploded
popularity and then a year later they go like what
is the sort of impulse that that happens? And then like,
how do you think about avoiding that risk? So that okay,
(15:59):
this everyone's playing Monopoly, go and then next year they're
moving on to something else.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
Yeah, this is probably a better question for the team
at scopely since they're the experts. But I'll give you
my two cents. So a lot of games have a
very fun kind of initial loop and they're very engaging
for a call it a half hour, an hour and
maybe aswards of ten to twenty hours, so you know,
they kind of almost operate, particularly in the mobile space.
(16:25):
Is the equivalent of like a fidget spinner. It's something
to kind of keep your fingers busy. It helps to
occupy the time while you're on the subway or just
in a waiting room.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
I got really Game eight for that reason. Actually is
another one anyway, Sorry, keep going.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
But at the end of the day, they don't really
change up the game dynamic that much, or they don't
really drive kind of like additional loops that engage you
in new or different ways or different challenges. So a
lot of the games that have that quote unquote shark
thin effect, something that's really fun and really compelling, and
they keep people for call it three days or seven days.
(17:06):
But then they tend to tail off, you know. The
games that tend to be enduring, that tend to do
very very well. They tend to be games that they
have not just an initial loop, but they have multiple
loops and multiple layers the deeper you get into Itnopoly
Go is an example of that. Other games that have
been super successful of that are games like Clash of
(17:29):
Clans or Candy Crush Saga. And what they tend to
do is the complexity of the game builds over time.
The amount of things that you can do, the amount
of minigames that you can do, gets bigger and bigger,
but at a manageable pace. And they add in a
social component to it so that it's not just you
playing the game, but you feel like you're playing the
(17:51):
game with a large circle of your friends and associates,
which also makes it even more fun because the challenges
just aren't you as a single play the challenges are
with you as a group of people, and so obviously
it's more fun to play with multiple people and creating
social dynamics and kind of raiding each other or ribbing
(18:11):
each other or having like some fun loving mischief with
each other. That makes the game endure. So the games
that like do achieve hyper scale, like a monopoly go,
they tend to maintain that hyper scale for a very
long time. If you go back and look at just
in the US, the top twenty games in the US today,
(18:33):
half of them have been in the market for over
five years, and several of them have been in the
market for you know, upwards of eight to ten years.
And you know, sure they have a big year one,
they have a big year two, and then they start
to taper a bit after that, but they maintain at
a very very healthy rate.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
So this might sound like a weird question, but how
do you know when a game is a hit? And
how do you sort of judge the success of a game.
Is it purely by the amount of dollars that it
brings in, or is it virality or bringing people into
like the Hasbro network. How do you judge success here?
Speaker 4 (19:12):
Well, I think it depends on the game. So when
you're looking at a mobile game or what we call
games as a service, which usually are games that are
either free to acquire upfront or cost very little upfront,
but you tend to make money off of based off
of how frequently and long people play because there's just
(19:33):
engagement loops that engage them and give them opportunities to
power things up or customize the game. You tend to
look at the retention rates on those games, and so
usually you look at a D one, a D three,
a D seven, and a D thirty retention rate on
those games, and you're going to want to see games.
(19:53):
It will vary based off of the genre, but you're
typically going to want to see a D one retention
rate access of forty percent, ideally in excess to fifty percent.
You're going to want to see a D seven retention
rate meaning how many people who started a week ago
are still playing after seven days in excess of call
(20:14):
it twenty to thirty percent, and then you're going to
ideally want to see a D thirty retention rate in
the ten to fifteen percent range. If you have a
game that's retaining users like that and engaging players at
a pretty snappy clip, you probably have the makings of
a really, really good and long lasting business. So an
(20:35):
example of a game that Hasbro does that has retention
rates like that would be mag at the Gathering Arena.
It's a free version of our most popular brand, Match
at the Gathering, which is a billion dollar plus trading
card game. It actually invented the trading card genre, and
it has retention rates that are astronomical. They're at the
(20:58):
high end of all those balns that I talked about,
And you know, we actually measured loyalty and a game
like Arena in months and years as opposed to days.
Like many mobile games like a Flappy Bird for instance,
as good as it is, that tends to have a
high churn rate. And so generally speaking, the longer you're
(21:19):
able to engage people and the more fun they're going
to have, the more opportunities you have to be able
to make a fair profit off of the game. And
then there's premium games, which have kind of a different model.
A premium game is kind of what we all might
remember from, you know, when we were kids buying games
for a Nintendo or buying games for a PlayStation or
an Xbox. You pay fifty dollars sixty dollars sometimes upwards
(21:42):
of seventy dollars up front. You typically get almost all
the value from that initial purchase. Maybe you sell downloadable content,
maybe there's a subscription that you can join, but most
typically you get the value up front. And what you
try to do there is you try to give a
very high end kind of blockbuster entertainment experience in exchange
(22:04):
for that high upfront cost. And you know, ideally you
want to maintain people for the twenty to one hundred
hours of gameplay, but it's not as important. What's important
is that they have a really fun first five to
ten hours and feel satisfied by the game, whereas in mobile,
really the first five to ten hours is just the
(22:25):
beginning of the engagement loop. You want to see players
hang around for ideally weeks, if not months and years
and really kind of make it a part of their
daily routine.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
So Tracy mentioned in the beginning that the surreality of
the fact that there's now a physical version of the
mobile game, of the physical version of Monopoly, obviously it's tweaked.
You know, something that people talk about in culture generally,
and I often wonder if it's sort of wish casting
and not really a real thing. It's like, oh, people
(22:58):
wanting to like return to the analog, and there are
always people like oh, I think people are going to
want to read physical papers and nice heavy stock physical
magazines and maybe be on their phones a little bit less.
And again I always wonder if it's wishful thinking. But
in the game realm specifically, is this a real phenomenon
where you see people wanting to have that sort of tactile,
(23:21):
physical experience that they previously had on games, or is
this just a distinct opportunity specifically associated with the success
of Monopoly Go.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
I think it's very real phenomena, and I think it's
been what's powering the physical games portfolio for US and
other companies for the last decade plus, and I think
it's going to power it for the certainly the foreseeable future.
People hunger for authentic connection, and a game gives people
kind of an easy rule book for creating authentic connection.
(23:56):
It's an easy way for families to get together and
spend some quality time at a table, phones down and
people engaged on the totem that is the game. It's
a great way to find an excuse to get together
with friends on a regular basis to go through an
adventure together like we do with Dungeons and Dragons. It's
(24:18):
a fantastic way for you know, people who are new
to a city and want to plug in with people
who have shared interests, like we see with Magic the
Gathering and the network of stores that we call the
Wizard's Play Network who put on over a million play
events per year across those stores, that people can come
(24:39):
in and find a friend who loves the game and
has a similar passion to them. And you know, I
don't see that ebbing, if anything, I see that hunger
for physical connection and that desire to kind of create
a shared story through the adventure that a game provides.
As only growing it to be more and more important
(25:02):
to people as we digitize more and more.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Since you brought up Magic the Gathering, one thing I've
been wondering is how do you balance the sort of
original attraction of the game with the expansion and the
need to you know, basically roll out new products and
get people buying new cards. And one of the things
I've been thinking about, you know, call me a Magic
(25:26):
the Gathering purist, but you've been doing a lot of
collaborations with TV shows, and I think you just announced
something with the Marvel universe, and I personally find some
of these tie ins kind of weird. Like I can't
imagine playing cards and being like I attack with Rick
from The Walking Dead and then I block with iron
(25:49):
Man or something like that.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
How do you.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Balance the originality of the experience or the initial attraction
to the game with some of this like new licensing
driven growth.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
I think what's great about this podcast, Tracy, is what
you find weird. I find amazing. You know, as a player,
you know, hey, sign me up for Rick battling iron
Man set against a bunch of space marines from Warhammer
forty K. That sounds like a really fun gaming time
to me. And I think that's the magic of what
(26:25):
we've been doing with Magic for the last five years.
We don't want to just be trapped in amber. We
don't want the game to just be the same thing
that it's been for the last thirty years. We want
it to change and we want it to evolve, but
we also want it to be fully backwards compatible and
(26:45):
continuously offering flavors that bring in more and more people
to the table and just make the community richer and
more vibrant. Now you know. The downside to it is
there are some people who are traditionalists. There are some
people who are completionists, and they don't necessarily like the changes,
(27:06):
but that tends to be the significant minority. There's way, way,
way more people who want to weigh into what, in
my opinion, is one of the best games ever invented
to play with ips that they love, with cards that
are instantly familiar to them, and we found what we
(27:27):
call Universes Beyond, which are these tie ins we do
with other brands to be by far the most successful
new player introduction that we've ever done in physical cards.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Well, say, can you explain that last part further? What's
the new move that has been so successful.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
It's called the Universes Beyond, which is our invitation of
other brands to come into our play platform and be
able to experience the magic of magic. It's not an
original strategy. It's actually a very time test strategy. You know,
you look at games like Fortnite, they do constant seasons
(28:05):
with outside ip that really spices up the game and
invites new people in. Lego has been doing it for forever,
you know, they started with Star Wars and have expanded
to you know, they do Transformers now, they do Pepa Pig, now,
they do D and D now. It just makes the
play system a richer playground for people to be able
(28:25):
to experience. Now, we still have all the traditional elves
and dragons and heroes and lore from Magic, and we
always have sets for those, and we always make sure
all the cards inside of Magic, and I think at
this point we're getting close to between twenty to twenty
five thousand unique cards that exist in the Magic Universe.
(28:47):
All of those cards are fully compatible with each other.
You can buy a pack of cards from nineteen ninety three,
and I wouldn't recommend cracking them open because they're very
valuable if you buy them, But you could and you
could play with the pack of cards that you bought
in twenty twenty three and they would be fully compatible
with each other. And you know, I think enriching that
(29:09):
play system with a lot of fantastic brands that have
very vibrant fan communities just makes Magic more magical to play. Joe.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
After we recorded that episode with Richard Garfield, I went
off to look to see if I could find my
old Magic the gathering cards. These would have been from
like nineteen ninety four, ninety five, and I can't find
them anywhere. And I'm so sad because not only do
I think they are worth like a decent amount of
money nowadays, but I would actually like to see them again.
And I have this vision in my mind of exactly
(29:55):
where they are. They were in an after eight mint container. Oh,
and I recall seeing it somewhere like in the past
twenty years. But I'll find it.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
You'll find it.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
I know I have old baseball cards and a record
collection somewhere, and I have no idea where there's. You know,
something I'm interested in speaking of, like culture, is the
sort of like intergenerational cultural transmission. And you know, when
I was a kid, I listened to the same music
as my parents because they would put on music and
I was in the room, and so that's what I
(30:26):
heard and that's what I got into. And to some extent,
that doesn't happen the same way with music anymore, because
my kids might be on headphones or I might be
on headphones. So when I'm listening to music, it's not
just sort of blasting throughout the living room or wherever
it is you know, when you think about like these
like games like these like backwards compatible games like you know,
like Magic and so forth, I'm curious, like how you
(30:49):
see that playing out in the game space. Games getting
passed on. Parents play with their kids. Obviously I played
Monopoly with my daughter. I think we also play like
and ladders and stuff like that. But then there is
this element that they have all the avenues of finding games,
whether it's online or on a phone, that are not
you know, something I would have played. And I'm sort
(31:10):
of curious about the phenomenon of like passing down games
and how you think about the durability of brands in
this aspect.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
I think it's the primary way people learn about a
new game is through their parents playing around family board
game night, you know, whether that's a Friday or Thursday
or pick your boys and experiencing the joy and you know,
passing on like a treasured memory from your childhood to
your kids. I know my son loves D and D.
(31:39):
He loves Magic. He got that from me. The favorite
game our family plays is Monopoly. You know, we try
playing well, we play it less because my wife dislikes
how much we cheat. But the kids in chip ceo.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Wait do you it's admitting that cheer? Wait do you
play that? If you land on free parking you get
cash in the middle or like, where do you stand on?
Speaker 4 (32:07):
That is often unnecessary for my kids and I because
we seem to always have a magical font of cash.
Our favorite version is the cheaters edition. We actually came
out with a version of Monopoly which was focused on
things that you needed to cheat on, tasks you needed
to do, and basically, like we know, the game of
Monopoly is done at our house when my wife flips
(32:28):
the board, usually around turn four or five. Game. But
it's fun. And you know, my kids love Monopoly. Now
my son loves magic and D and D. And you
do it with video games as well. Like to me,
games are such powerful ip you know, they might not
(32:50):
create like these cultural moments that a big Hollywood movie does, right,
but they create millions upon millions of very powerful personal moments.
And that's why brands like Monopoly can translate so well
from a board game to a multi billion dollar mobile
(33:11):
game back to a board game again, because people have
such intimate experience with them that has this deep personal
connection usually resulting from you know, a very fond memory
of siblings against siblings, friends with friends or parents and
kids circling around a table.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
You mentioned cultural moment. You know, I'm curious. Like last year,
I guess, uh, Mattel had that huge hit with the
Barbie movie. I know you have all this ip. Are
you doing anything similar in terms of sort of like
big like adult oriented movies around some of the brands
that you have within the broader Hasbro world?
Speaker 4 (33:52):
Oh? Yeah, for sure. I think it last count Transformers
as a five billion dollar plus box office franchise. I
think it's in the top ten box office franchises of
all time. We have a new movie coming out in
September called Transformers One. It's the origin story of Optimus
Prime and Megatron back when they were friends as young
cogless robots on Cybertron and how the clash between them
(34:17):
and the Autobots and Decepticons emerged. Directed by Josh Cooley,
who I think did Toy Story three or Toy Story four.
And it's been getting really good feedback from things like
San Diego Comic Con. Fans are excited for it, and
we hope families will enjoy it too. And then we
have at last count I think we have thirty five
entertainment projects in development. You know, you brought up the
(34:40):
Barbie movie. Barbie herself is the executive producer of our
Monopoly movie with Lionsgate. We have a Clue movie.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
And executive producer, yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
Margot Robbie's Lucky count.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
The Doll.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Okay, we did release a version of Barbie Monopoly last
year and it was one of the most successful Monopoly
versions from last year. So there's a lot of tie ins.
So yeah, I mean we have a ton of content
coming out. You know, Transformers is probably the movie that
the toy industry kind of holds up as like great
(35:21):
synergies between selling product and creating a great story. You know,
last year with Transformers Rise of the Beast, we had
a ninety percent uplift in point of sale over like
the twelve weeks of the movie, and I think we
did something like thirty or forty percent pos point of
sale uplift during the whole year from that movie. So,
(35:43):
you know, Transformers movies aren't just fun. They sell a
lot of toys.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
By the way, Tracy, I see has Bro has the
ipated Gem, which I think could be a huge hit.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Wait, is this the old the old one from the
nineteen eighty Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Yeah, yeah, people will love a gym movie. Yeah. So
I'm just saying I'm giving a free idea here.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Think there was a contempt I wanted to talk about AI,
and there's sort of two different paths we could go
down here, because number one, I know you're experimenting with
some AI based products, so like an AI driven Ouiji board,
which sounds kind of fun. And then on the other hand,
(36:21):
has Bro has got to be one of the biggest
commissioners of like science fiction and fantasy art in the world,
and I know there's a lot of discussion nowadays about
how much of that is going to end up being
AI generated. And I believe you had a big round
of layoffs announced last year and they're probably still ongoing.
A lot of those were in the art department. So
(36:43):
can you talk to us about the impact of AI
on your business, both in terms of new products and
then also I guess how it would affect the art
of a lot of your games.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
Yeah. Sure. Actually, just to correct it upfront, we are
going through a series of layoffs as part of restructuring
our toy and commercial organizations. But that's not affecting Wizards
of the Coast. They had some modest impacts, but that
was actually mostly kind of the back office related roles.
We really prize design talent, art talent, and generally creativity.
(37:18):
It's what fuels our brands. We prize it both internally
in terms of the employees we have and the great
talent that we're able to attract to the company. And
we really prize it in terms of you know, really
the Triple A top shelf artists that we work with
both to help us drive concept art and new product development,
as well as all the art commissioning we do for
(37:39):
the thousands of new magic cards and D and D
books and imagery that we do every year. You know,
I would say for AI, AI is a big topic,
like we could probably do like three or four podcasts
on that and its impacts on any given industry. I
suppose I'll start with the headline color Meia and AII optimist.
(38:00):
In terms of coming from the industry of play, it's
an incredibly playful, very high impact set of technologies that
really can light up the average player, the average fans.
Creativity really creates and enables amazing user generated content. And
(38:21):
as someone who builds games that really rely on storytelling,
that relies on an end user's creativity and people collaborating
around a table. I think there's really exciting possibilities for it.
You know. That said, we're in a lot of undiscovered
country as it relates to AI, and we have to
(38:42):
deploy it very, very responsibly and at a measured pace
because we got to make sure that creatives are paid
for their work. You know, we're a company that values creativity,
and therefore we value creatives. So we're thinking through, how
do we do this way that's ethical, that's responsible, that
(39:04):
gives voice actors, gives actors, gives artists, gives writers their
fair shake inside of it. And you know, I think
it's going to take us a little bit of time
and the industry as a whole to figure it out.
But I'm pleased with how we're going about it. I'm
sure there'll be instances where you know, we have to
police things carefully. You know, you'll see AI pop up
(39:27):
in art now and then that's not something that we're
doing by design. It's something that just happens when you
work with hundreds of different artists who have different kind
of motivations and different kind of thoughts on things. Generally speaking,
in our finished products, everything will be human created and
human finished. However, when we think about AI enabled tools
(39:52):
that kind of bring fun to life and it enables
users to be able to create things, sure, I think
we will use our art, we will use ORIP, and
we will try to use that to create ethically trained
art and ethically trained AI tools that kind of bring
imaginations to life. You know, if I just look at
(40:14):
like my own D and D groups, and I play
in three different D and D groups, nice, I can't
tell you a single person around the table who doesn't
use AI in some way, shape or form to help
either craft their character, help inspire an adventure, bring imagery
and audio to life. And so you know, if that's
(40:35):
just my little kind of ballpark of twenty or thirty
players that I play with on the regular, I'm sure
that's happening across the vast tens of millions of people
who play the game. And so when your users are
telling you that they're using a tool and that they're
valuing it, I think you have to take notice and
you have to figure out how to harness it.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Oh this reminds me, actually, I remember hearing about the
Open gaming license controversy for Dungeons and Dragons, and there
was a lot of debate and a lot of outrage
initially about some of the changes you were proposing. But
since we're on the topic of you know, user generated
content and Dungeons and Dragons is famous for the amount
(41:17):
of participation that gamers actually have, and that talked to
us about how that controversy, like, what were the lessons
learned from that and how did it all end, because
I think it's been resolved somewhat at this point.
Speaker 4 (41:29):
Yeah, I mean that was about a year and a
half ago, and that was a serious case of foot
and mouth disease. From our perspective, we did it wrong
and we apologized and I think we quickly made amends.
I think where we were coming from on that whole
thing and the Open Game License, for people who don't
know it, was something that was established about twenty ish
(41:50):
years ago that basically opens up the rule set and
some of the core content for Dungeons and Dragons to
create a lingu of frame, a rule set and set
of content for people to be able to play tabletop
role playing games. So what we were trying to do is.
We were trying to evolve it because a document that
was created in two thousand and two didn't foresee the
(42:14):
rise of video games, it didn't foresee the rise of
AI tools, it didn't foresee even things like content streaming.
So our goal there was to try to protect an
end user's ability to be able to make content and
have fun, and a creator's ability to create content and
(42:34):
be able to make a living off of it, while
preventing kind of like a quick serve restaurant from using
the D and D brand to sell tacos, or a
big video game company to be able to create a
video game using the IP in a way that wasn't
fair to us as the kind of quote unquote brand owners,
(42:56):
or maybe do something that we didn't necessarily like with
the brand, or had content that was inappropriate, which happens
when you have tons of millions of users making content.
I think we found a fair and equitable solution to it.
You know, if anything, we embraced open source even more.
We also are opening up our own distribution platforms like
(43:18):
D and D Beyond to you know, create marketplaces where
more and more creators and more and more users can
be able to share their content and hopefully, you know,
make a nice living off of their content. I think
you're going to see more and more from that from
us in terms of how we expand that marketplace opportunity
and how we think about new ways that they can
(43:39):
create content, for instance, on something we're calling a virtual tabletop,
which is an Unreal Engine five powered kind of like sandbox,
where you can build full three D models of like
miniatures and buildings and special effects. And you know, I
think that'll be a wonderful opportunity for people and really
(44:01):
leverage kind of the legacy of the OGL in a
positive and new way.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Oh that sounds really fun. What are your favorite games
to play? Give us some recommendations, and they don't all
have to be from the Hawsbro universe, but you know,
having spoken to you, it sounds like a lot of them.
Speaker 4 (44:16):
Are fortunately, many, many, many of them are well. Certainly,
if you're into role playing games and you haven't played
Balder's Gate three, that's a seminal role playing game. It
won I think it swept all of the major Game
of the Year awards. It swept all of the major
role playing Game of the Year awards, and it's just
a fabulous game from our partners with Larry, and I
(44:37):
think they hit a home run on that. I obviously
think Monopoly Go is a lot of fun, and there's
several hundred million people who agree with me, so I
think if you're looking for something to tick some time
away on your subway commute, that one's a lot of
fun as well. I'm kind of a hardcore, crunchy gamer,
I think you can tell based on my answers and
a little bit nerdy, but actually my favorite game is Scrabble,
(44:59):
so I really enjoy playing that. And I suppose if
I was going to pick a competitors game, what's a
fun game that I play with my family from a competitor,
so I will pick two. If you're a little nerdy
and want a fun kind of D and D light experience,
Munchkin is probably one of my family's favorite games that
(45:23):
has a very Monopoly esque kind of vibe to it,
where you're in coopetition trying to be the first tiny
creature to complete a dungeon and power yourselves up, and
then of course ultimately the other players who've been helping
you stabs you in the back at the end to
prevent you from Being First, and then another family favorite,
this one I think is from Asmodi out of Europe
(45:45):
is Ticket to Ride. That's just a really fun kind
of travel themed game where you become kind of a
railroad tycoon. So that's a fun one too.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Oh, both of these sound amazing. Sorry, I'm looking them
up as you speak. That sounds great, okay, Chris Cox,
the CEO of hasan Bro, thank you so much for
coming on of those.
Speaker 4 (46:02):
Hey, thank you so much for having me, Joe.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
I thought that was a fun conversation. I just like
talking about games.
Speaker 3 (46:19):
Really, Tracy, are you ever going to invite me to
one of your game made ups out up in Connecticut?
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
I would love you to come play board games, Joe.
Speaker 3 (46:30):
Really, yeah, okay, I'll come out. What game are we
going to play?
Speaker 4 (46:33):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (46:34):
You know, this isn't really a board game per se,
but I would love to play Avalon with you. I
think you'd be good at it. Okay, this is the
one where you basically lie to your friends and annoy
everyone that you know.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
I'm done with that. So, in all seriousness, it is
interesting to think about game. You know, people are always
talking about, Oh, we want like real world connection. If
it's like oh third Spaces and all this stuff. It
is interesting to think like games are a little little
bit unique in that respect in which there is this
sort of like in person put down the phone community event,
(47:08):
Like there's you know, people play games on their phone,
people play them on their computers. But there is something
like powerful about a board game from a sort of
social perspective. Oh.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
Absolutely. And I have to say board game cafes, of
which there seem to be there are more of those
in New York than there used to be. Those are fantastic,
like spaces just to socialize. I love going to those.
The other thing that I thought was really interesting was
the discussion about AI generated Arn't and the sort of
balancing act there also kind of funny to discuss that
(47:39):
in the context of the Dungeons and Dragons licensing controversy.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Also, I thought it was interesting and I was a
little bit had my mind blown that when Chris was
talking about his own gaming community and coming up with
the stories that every single one of them is using
AI for that purpose. Yeah, which, I you know, you
figure out some people when they're like developing a story
or going to use it. But the fact that's like
one hundred percent of his community is doing that is
(48:06):
pretty powerful.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
Well, and also like how do businesses even start to
take that into account? And Chris mentioned this, but the
idea that like, Okay, you're working with hundreds, if not thousands,
of different artists, some of them might be using AI, right,
you know, you can ask them maybe to sign a
disclosure or something like that, But it seems like you're
never going to be able to like police it entirely
(48:29):
because people are using it as a tool.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
By the way, can I just say, like, I feel
if the CEO of Hasbro plays Monopoly on cheat mode
where he's like adding in a little Lextra house to
a property surreptitiously, or taking one hundred dollars from the
bank or doing the free parking stuff, I feel like
that's a license for all of us to cheat.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Or should buy the actual Monopoly Cheaters edition, which sounds
kind of fun.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
Yeah, but it's more fun if you're not supposed to
cheat and you actually do it, right. But I was
I was actually kind of flabbergasted. I thought he would
be a very like strict, you know, by the book
type when it came to gameplay.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
Maybe this is the way to play it, to just
make it as chaotic as possible. I mean, it sounds
like that's what Monopoly Go is doing.
Speaker 3 (49:10):
And it sounds like that's really a big part of
the fun for people.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
Cush.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
There's a Chance edition of Monopoly as well. Sorry, I'm
just flicking through all the different Monopoly editions again. The
Monopoly Chance game is the high stakes card flipping version
of the Monopoly game, and it only takes twenty minutes
to play.
Speaker 3 (49:28):
That would be nice because I would play more Monopoly.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
If it didn't take like two hours.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
The thing. It's a pretty big time investment in game
of Monopoly.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
I need to tell you about the time I was
in Guatemala and I got caught up in a game
of risk that went on, I kid you not for
twelve hours all night.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
I'm not forward to hearing this story.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
I was trying to extricate myself for hours by losing
and it didn't work, and for various reasons, I couldn't
just walk away from the table anyway. Story for another day.
Shall we leave it there.
Speaker 3 (49:57):
Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
This has been another episode of Odd Thlots podcast. I'm
Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 3 (50:04):
And I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman, dash Ol
Bennett at Dashbott and Kelbrooks at Kelbrooks. Thank you to
our producer Moses Ondam. For more Oddlaws content, go to
Bloomberg dot com slash odlots, where you have transcripts, a blog,
and a newsletter and you can chat about all of
these topics with fellow listeners twenty four to seven in
(50:25):
the discord discord dot gg slash odlots. I am certain
that there are many games players in there for sure.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
And if you enjoy all thoughts, If you like it
when we do these gaming episodes, then please leave us
a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember,
if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to
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In order to do that, just go on Apple Podcasts,
(50:53):
find the Bloomberg channel and follow the instructions there. Thanks
for listening it in
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast.
I'm Tracy Allaway.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
And I'm Joe why Isenthal.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Joe, what do you know about Monopoly?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
My daughter's really into Monopoly. She's really getting into it.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Do you play with her?
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I do, And she's really into it, And I think
she's developing some good intuitions. I think she's about capitalism, yeah,
and I think she could be like a little bit conservative,
Like sometimes I think she should buy and she wants
to like hold on to her cash, and so she
like foregoes opportunities to get good properties. But I'm excited
she's taken to the game.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
That's actually impressive impulse control for a little kid. But
I do think a monopoly that best strategy is just
buy everything you land on.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Pretty basically, Are we going to do an episode just
on an optimal monopoly strategy? Because I'd be done with that.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
We should actually, Okay, let me rephrase this. What do
you know about Monopoly's history?
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Well, what I've heard, and I don't know if this
is true, because it seems like it could be an
urban legend. I've heard that the game was like started
by some socialist or something like that who wanted to,
you know, create a game that would indict capitalism. Monopoly
is not considered to be a positive aspect of the
market system. We usually are against those and yet I
(01:33):
don't think many people take that lesson and became massively popular.
It's a massively successful business in its own right.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
This is actually it's not an urban legend. It's true.
So monopoly. I was reading a book about this and
it's actually really fascinating. But Monopoly comes from the Landlord's Game,
which was created in nineteen o three by a woman
named Lizzie Maggie or Maggie, I'm not sure. And she
was actually a Quaker, so sort of you know, progressive ideals,
(02:01):
and it had almost the opposite ethos to the monopoly
we know today, and it was supposed to demonstrate that
an economy that rewards individuals is better than one where
monopolies hold all the wealth. And there was also a
version of taxation in the game that was kind of progressive.
But then a company called Parker Brothers basically published a
(02:22):
version of it in nineteen thirty five without the taxation aspect,
and then Hasbro bought it in the nineteen nineties, and
then that's when we started getting the sort of modern
version of Monopoly that we all know today. And I
have to say I was also looking at all the
various versions of Monopoly that have been published over time.
(02:43):
I'm pretty sure when I was a kid, I had
the Star Wars version. But if you look at an
actual list of all the different monopolies that have come
out over the years, it's amazing. So first of all,
there's unlicensed versions like Alpakaopoly with our pakas, but there's
also a Best Buy version which was licensed and it
(03:04):
looks kind of amazing. I want to play it. It
had little store departments instead of property used to buy.
There's a David Bowie addition. I don't know if that
interests you.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
So two things. One other thing I say about sometimes
I've taken the kids to Atlantic City, so my kids know,
like they've seen you know, they're like, oh, that's actually
park place, that's actually boardwalk, since I know all the
properties are streets in Atlantic City. But also they should
have a version of Monopoly with a land value text.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And so you get penalized for failing to get it
back to its roots.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Also, I think they should have a version where the
more you build, the more rents go down.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
It's a theory.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
If there are more hotels and houses everywhere, then they
should put it depressing anyway.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Okay, all right, what I was building up to is
that there is also a new version of Monopoly. It
is an app, an app version of the game that
you can play on your phone or wherever, and it
has become so popular that it's grossed more than three
billion dollars in revenue since launching in April of last year.
(04:06):
That's according to Hasbro's latest earnings. And beyond that, it
is so popular that Joe, can you guess what comes next? No,
it's so popular that Hasbro is launching a board game
version of Monopoly. Goes so, a board game version of
the app version of the board game.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
I love that. That's so great. Yes, that's great.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Okay, we've come full circle. Anyway. The reason we were
talking about Monopoly is because today we do, in fact
have the perfect guest. We are going to be speaking
to Chris Cox, the CEO of Hasbro, and we're going
to be talking to him about the development of Monopoly
over the years, but also all of their other games,
including Magic the Gathering, Joe, you remember we did that
(04:48):
episode with Richard Garfield and all the other sort of
digital things they have in the works right now, and
just get to handle on what a traditional toymaker is
actually doing in games. So I'm very excited. Yeah, Chris,
thank you so much for coming on all.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
Thoughts, Gracie, Joe, thanks so much for having me and
for being huge Monopoly fans.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
You're welcome, You're welcome.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I got to say, I am very interested in the
Grateful Dead Opoly, where you go on tour with the
Dead presumably forever, and you travel from gig to gig
trying to get rich by purchasing album recordings. That sounds fun. Okay, okay, Chris,
you have a gaming background. I think you were at
Wizards of the Coast, Is that right?
Speaker 4 (05:31):
Yep. I've been in the games industry since nineteen ninety nine,
or in and out of it. I started at Microsoft
in their PC games division, and after about three or
four months there, I was transferred into a secret project
code named Xbox, and then ever since then, I've been
in and out of games, working on video games, physical games,
(05:54):
games for kids, games for adults. And most recently at
Wizards of the Coast, which I helmed prior to becoming
CEO of Hasbro about two years ago.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Are you a game lover?
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Like?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
I mean, maybe it's obvious, but, like, you know, if
you find someone who has had a twenty plus year
in gaming, is there a pretty good chance that they themselves,
as part of their hobbies and identities, are just really
into games.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Yeah. I would challenge you to find a game that
I wouldn't enjoy playing. I'm a gaming omnivore. I've been
playing games since. Probably the earliest game I can remember
playing is Candyland, which also is a Hasburg game. I
think I remember playing that when I was four with
my mom, and I've been playing some version of Wizards
(06:37):
of the Coast game since I was ten years old.
I started playing Dungeons and Dragons at my best friend
Hans Schroeder's house in Cincinnati, Ohio. I remember seeing like
these little metal figurines in his older brother's room that
were wizards and dragons that had these like cool jewels
built into them, and I was like, Hey, what's that.
(06:57):
Then they showed me a twenty sided dice and I
was absolutely hooked. Started playing Magic when I was in college.
All of our Avalon Hills strategy games I geeked out too,
and I have a pretty rich collection of very old
PC games dating back to my first like EPSOM twenty
six hundred from like the early nineteen eighties and my
(07:18):
original Mac one twenty eight bit PC.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
So Hasbro just released Earnings, and a lot of the discussion,
a lot of the questions from analysts was all about
the gaming strategy. Talk to us about what the opportunity
in games actually is for Hasbro. Why does this seem
to be an area of focus for you right now?
Speaker 4 (07:39):
Well, I think it's a couple of different things. First off,
it's a very large business either both physical games as
well as digital games. So inside of physical games, we
invented the role playing game, We invented the trading card game, Magic,
the Gathering. We were one of the earliest pioneers on
mass produced board games. Milton Bradley started his eponymous board
(08:04):
game company back in the late or the early eighteen sixties,
right around the Lincoln inauguration. The Parker Brothers started their
game company back I think in like the eighteen nineties,
and so we've been a part of games basically as
far back as you can really track them. So they're
a huge part of our culture, they're a huge part
(08:24):
of our business, they're a huge part of the identity
of the company. And basically everyone plays games. It's a
massive market. You know, if you go across the US,
a Hasbro game is in better than nine out of
ten households across the US. Games like Monopoly, Clue, Candyland,
(08:45):
they basically have ubiquity in terms of brand awareness. And
you know, as many people as play physical games, a
number of people who played digital games Dwarfs even that,
you know, take Wizards of the Coast, Wizards of the Coast.
Game games are mag at the gathering in D and
D and they're primarily sold through you know, around eight
(09:07):
to ten thousand mom and pop style hobby stores around
the world. About seventy million people play those kinds of
games and shop at those kinds of stores. They primarily
sell strategy games, trading card games, role playing games, and
kind of like crunchier board games. The number of people
who play those types of games on their PC, phone
(09:30):
or a console is ten to twelve XA around the world.
It's like seven hundred million to eight hundred million play
those kinds of games, So I mean that's a pretty
healthy hunk of the world's population. It's growing. The games
industry has been growing at kind of call it a
five to eight percent clip for basically as long as
(09:52):
tracking goes back, go back to the nineties, and it
just continues to expand in terms of the number of
people who play games, where they play games, how they
play games, and the technological innovation that fuels it. So
Pasbro's all in and I'm a big advocate for it
as well.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
So Tracy mentioned Monopoly Go, the mobile game and three
billion in revenue since it's launched in twenty twenty three.
First of all, like, I haven't played it. What is
the game Monopoly Go? Because I take it it's distinct.
But then like, what is the business model of Monopoly Go?
How does it make money?
Speaker 4 (10:28):
Well? I think how it engages people and the business
model go hand in hand. Yeah, And Monopoly Go effectively
takes the essence of the board game, the essence of
the fun of the board game, which is deal making
and lighthearted, stabbing your friends in the back, yes, and
gamifies it on a phone. You basically go around boards,
(10:50):
around the world collecting properties, you collect cash, you collect,
fun digital items, you collect kind of power ups and dice,
and then you're able to raid your friends and kind
of like through a series of minigames, either you know,
set them back a little bit, challenge them to some
fun kind of minigames or adventures, and it creates that
(11:13):
kind of dynamic that you see around the board when
you're playing with your family or with your friends, where
someone's trying to slip one hundred from out of the bank,
or someone's trying to slip park Place out of the
slots and the board even though it hasn't been built,
or they're pushing like a little extra house onto a
row of three houses and hoping that you don't notice.
(11:36):
And it's that kind of fun kind of mischief that
I think makes the game great to play in person,
and that scope ly our partner who's made the game
has done a fantastic job capturing the essence of and
I think it's what really has driven the popularity of it.
The business model just kind of carries on that fun.
The more that you play, the more friends that you
(11:56):
connect and can play with and kind of create that fun,
loving mischief with the more fun the game is, the
more engaging the game is, and just the more opportunities
there are for you to extend the play. And really
the kind of the way that the game makes money
is this concept of earning dice and buying extra dice
(12:16):
because the dice give you the ability to make extra
moves and extra turns. You don't have to pay a
cent to play the game, and you can have a
lot of fun playing the game for free. But if
you feel a little bit of an extra challenge, or
you want to get a couple steps ahead of your
friend who lives across the country, or you want to
be the first to be able to raid the board
(12:37):
in Sydney out of your friend group, you might be
incentivized to pay a dollar or two to get some
extra dice and just get the jump on your quote
unquote competition.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Wow, it sounds like capitalism on steroids. Like say what
you will about the original monopoly, but it respected property rights.
You couldn't like steal property. Is there anything surprising that
(13:14):
you've learned from the Monopoly Go experience. I was reading
through the earnings transcript, for instance, and there was a
lot of discussion about seasonality and you weren't quite sure
what the seasonality was with something like Monopoly Go. Talk
to us about how that sort of business aspect of
it all is unfolding.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
Well, Monopoly Goo is the most successful mobile game outside
of China in history, So it's really an unprecedented scale
of game and scale of building its engagement and building
its audience. So when you have an end of one,
there aren't a lot of other games that you can
go compare against and say, oh, it's going to behave
(13:54):
like X, or it's going to behave like Why. There's
some games that are closed on go, you know, Candy Crush,
Clash of Clans, these kind of more casual to mid
core games that have a very compelling social engagement loop
associated with them, and several of those, particularly some of
the more casual versions of those, like some of the
(14:15):
Match three games like a Candy Crush, do exhibit a
degree of seasonality. POKEMONO, particularly in its early days, certainly did,
particularly when it was all about going outside and kind
of experiencing locales. It was a little bit more weather
based back then, so there is a degree of that,
But you know, we're kind of learning as we go
(14:36):
and we're learning with scope ly as we go. The
good news there is scope Lee's arguably one of the
biggest and best mobile games publishers in the world. They
have a lot of experience with a lot of other
games that are similar in audience type and engagement loops
as a game like Monopoly Go, so we're able to
leverage those. But you know, a game like Scrabble with
(14:59):
Buddies or Yatzie with Buddies. There's still successful games, but
they're ten x smaller than Monopoly Go. So just given
that scale in size and audience reach, there's gonna be
nuances that you're gonna discover for the first time simply
by being a pioneer.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
There is this phenomenon that people in the mobile gaming
industry you talk about. I think they call it like
the sharkfin effect, which is like a game will get
really popular and then it'll fade very fast. And I
think there was that. You know, Flappy Birds was one,
and I remember like people like played that like crazy
for a little while and then it like disappeared. I
(15:36):
got into this game, Elto's Adventure. I heard people talk
about that. I forgot about it. There are a few
others this seems to be a recurring thing. Can you
describe why that happens? Why you see certain games exploded
popularity and then a year later they go like what
is the sort of impulse that that happens? And then like,
how do you think about avoiding that risk? So that okay,
(15:59):
this everyone's playing Monopoly, go and then next year they're
moving on to something else.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
Yeah, this is probably a better question for the team
at scopely since they're the experts. But I'll give you
my two cents. So a lot of games have a
very fun kind of initial loop and they're very engaging
for a call it a half hour, an hour and
maybe aswards of ten to twenty hours, so you know,
they kind of almost operate, particularly in the mobile space.
(16:25):
Is the equivalent of like a fidget spinner. It's something
to kind of keep your fingers busy. It helps to
occupy the time while you're on the subway or just
in a waiting room.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
I got really Game eight for that reason. Actually is
another one anyway, Sorry, keep going.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
But at the end of the day, they don't really
change up the game dynamic that much, or they don't
really drive kind of like additional loops that engage you
in new or different ways or different challenges. So a
lot of the games that have that quote unquote shark
thin effect, something that's really fun and really compelling, and
they keep people for call it three days or seven days.
(17:06):
But then they tend to tail off, you know. The
games that tend to be enduring, that tend to do
very very well. They tend to be games that they
have not just an initial loop, but they have multiple
loops and multiple layers the deeper you get into Itnopoly
Go is an example of that. Other games that have
been super successful of that are games like Clash of
(17:29):
Clans or Candy Crush Saga. And what they tend to
do is the complexity of the game builds over time.
The amount of things that you can do, the amount
of minigames that you can do, gets bigger and bigger,
but at a manageable pace. And they add in a
social component to it so that it's not just you
playing the game, but you feel like you're playing the
(17:51):
game with a large circle of your friends and associates,
which also makes it even more fun because the challenges
just aren't you as a single play the challenges are
with you as a group of people, and so obviously
it's more fun to play with multiple people and creating
social dynamics and kind of raiding each other or ribbing
(18:11):
each other or having like some fun loving mischief with
each other. That makes the game endure. So the games
that like do achieve hyper scale, like a monopoly go,
they tend to maintain that hyper scale for a very
long time. If you go back and look at just
in the US, the top twenty games in the US today,
(18:33):
half of them have been in the market for over
five years, and several of them have been in the
market for you know, upwards of eight to ten years.
And you know, sure they have a big year one,
they have a big year two, and then they start
to taper a bit after that, but they maintain at
a very very healthy rate.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
So this might sound like a weird question, but how
do you know when a game is a hit? And
how do you sort of judge the success of a game.
Is it purely by the amount of dollars that it
brings in, or is it virality or bringing people into
like the Hasbro network. How do you judge success here?
Speaker 4 (19:12):
Well, I think it depends on the game. So when
you're looking at a mobile game or what we call
games as a service, which usually are games that are
either free to acquire upfront or cost very little upfront,
but you tend to make money off of based off
of how frequently and long people play because there's just
(19:33):
engagement loops that engage them and give them opportunities to
power things up or customize the game. You tend to
look at the retention rates on those games, and so
usually you look at a D one, a D three,
a D seven, and a D thirty retention rate on
those games, and you're going to want to see games.
(19:53):
It will vary based off of the genre, but you're
typically going to want to see a D one retention
rate access of forty percent, ideally in excess to fifty percent.
You're going to want to see a D seven retention
rate meaning how many people who started a week ago
are still playing after seven days in excess of call
(20:14):
it twenty to thirty percent, and then you're going to
ideally want to see a D thirty retention rate in
the ten to fifteen percent range. If you have a
game that's retaining users like that and engaging players at
a pretty snappy clip, you probably have the makings of
a really, really good and long lasting business. So an
(20:35):
example of a game that Hasbro does that has retention
rates like that would be mag at the Gathering Arena.
It's a free version of our most popular brand, Match
at the Gathering, which is a billion dollar plus trading
card game. It actually invented the trading card genre, and
it has retention rates that are astronomical. They're at the
(20:58):
high end of all those balns that I talked about,
And you know, we actually measured loyalty and a game
like Arena in months and years as opposed to days.
Like many mobile games like a Flappy Bird for instance,
as good as it is, that tends to have a
high churn rate. And so generally speaking, the longer you're
(21:19):
able to engage people and the more fun they're going
to have, the more opportunities you have to be able
to make a fair profit off of the game. And
then there's premium games, which have kind of a different model.
A premium game is kind of what we all might
remember from, you know, when we were kids buying games
for a Nintendo or buying games for a PlayStation or
an Xbox. You pay fifty dollars sixty dollars sometimes upwards
(21:42):
of seventy dollars up front. You typically get almost all
the value from that initial purchase. Maybe you sell downloadable content,
maybe there's a subscription that you can join, but most
typically you get the value up front. And what you
try to do there is you try to give a
very high end kind of blockbuster entertainment experience in exchange
(22:04):
for that high upfront cost. And you know, ideally you
want to maintain people for the twenty to one hundred
hours of gameplay, but it's not as important. What's important
is that they have a really fun first five to
ten hours and feel satisfied by the game, whereas in mobile,
really the first five to ten hours is just the
(22:25):
beginning of the engagement loop. You want to see players
hang around for ideally weeks, if not months and years
and really kind of make it a part of their
daily routine.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
So Tracy mentioned in the beginning that the surreality of
the fact that there's now a physical version of the
mobile game, of the physical version of Monopoly, obviously it's tweaked.
You know, something that people talk about in culture generally,
and I often wonder if it's sort of wish casting
and not really a real thing. It's like, oh, people
(22:58):
wanting to like return to the analog, and there are
always people like oh, I think people are going to
want to read physical papers and nice heavy stock physical
magazines and maybe be on their phones a little bit less.
And again I always wonder if it's wishful thinking. But
in the game realm specifically, is this a real phenomenon
where you see people wanting to have that sort of tactile,
(23:21):
physical experience that they previously had on games, or is
this just a distinct opportunity specifically associated with the success
of Monopoly Go.
Speaker 4 (23:31):
I think it's very real phenomena, and I think it's
been what's powering the physical games portfolio for US and
other companies for the last decade plus, and I think
it's going to power it for the certainly the foreseeable future.
People hunger for authentic connection, and a game gives people
kind of an easy rule book for creating authentic connection.
(23:56):
It's an easy way for families to get together and
spend some quality time at a table, phones down and
people engaged on the totem that is the game. It's
a great way to find an excuse to get together
with friends on a regular basis to go through an
adventure together like we do with Dungeons and Dragons. It's
(24:18):
a fantastic way for you know, people who are new
to a city and want to plug in with people
who have shared interests, like we see with Magic the
Gathering and the network of stores that we call the
Wizard's Play Network who put on over a million play
events per year across those stores, that people can come
(24:39):
in and find a friend who loves the game and
has a similar passion to them. And you know, I
don't see that ebbing, if anything, I see that hunger
for physical connection and that desire to kind of create
a shared story through the adventure that a game provides.
As only growing it to be more and more important
(25:02):
to people as we digitize more and more.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Since you brought up Magic the Gathering, one thing I've
been wondering is how do you balance the sort of
original attraction of the game with the expansion and the
need to you know, basically roll out new products and
get people buying new cards. And one of the things
I've been thinking about, you know, call me a Magic
(25:26):
the Gathering purist, but you've been doing a lot of
collaborations with TV shows, and I think you just announced
something with the Marvel universe, and I personally find some
of these tie ins kind of weird. Like I can't
imagine playing cards and being like I attack with Rick
from The Walking Dead and then I block with iron
(25:49):
Man or something like that.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
How do you.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Balance the originality of the experience or the initial attraction
to the game with some of this like new licensing
driven growth.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
I think what's great about this podcast, Tracy, is what
you find weird. I find amazing. You know, as a player,
you know, hey, sign me up for Rick battling iron
Man set against a bunch of space marines from Warhammer
forty K. That sounds like a really fun gaming time
to me. And I think that's the magic of what
(26:25):
we've been doing with Magic for the last five years.
We don't want to just be trapped in amber. We
don't want the game to just be the same thing
that it's been for the last thirty years. We want
it to change and we want it to evolve, but
we also want it to be fully backwards compatible and
(26:45):
continuously offering flavors that bring in more and more people
to the table and just make the community richer and
more vibrant. Now you know. The downside to it is
there are some people who are traditionalists. There are some
people who are completionists, and they don't necessarily like the changes,
(27:06):
but that tends to be the significant minority. There's way, way,
way more people who want to weigh into what, in
my opinion, is one of the best games ever invented
to play with ips that they love, with cards that
are instantly familiar to them, and we found what we
(27:27):
call Universes Beyond, which are these tie ins we do
with other brands to be by far the most successful
new player introduction that we've ever done in physical cards.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Well, say, can you explain that last part further? What's
the new move that has been so successful.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
It's called the Universes Beyond, which is our invitation of
other brands to come into our play platform and be
able to experience the magic of magic. It's not an
original strategy. It's actually a very time test strategy. You know,
you look at games like Fortnite, they do constant seasons
(28:05):
with outside ip that really spices up the game and
invites new people in. Lego has been doing it for forever,
you know, they started with Star Wars and have expanded
to you know, they do Transformers now, they do Pepa Pig, now,
they do D and D now. It just makes the
play system a richer playground for people to be able
(28:25):
to experience. Now, we still have all the traditional elves
and dragons and heroes and lore from Magic, and we
always have sets for those, and we always make sure
all the cards inside of Magic, and I think at
this point we're getting close to between twenty to twenty
five thousand unique cards that exist in the Magic Universe.
(28:47):
All of those cards are fully compatible with each other.
You can buy a pack of cards from nineteen ninety three,
and I wouldn't recommend cracking them open because they're very
valuable if you buy them, But you could and you
could play with the pack of cards that you bought
in twenty twenty three and they would be fully compatible
with each other. And you know, I think enriching that
(29:09):
play system with a lot of fantastic brands that have
very vibrant fan communities just makes Magic more magical to play. Joe.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
After we recorded that episode with Richard Garfield, I went
off to look to see if I could find my
old Magic the gathering cards. These would have been from
like nineteen ninety four, ninety five, and I can't find
them anywhere. And I'm so sad because not only do
I think they are worth like a decent amount of
money nowadays, but I would actually like to see them again.
And I have this vision in my mind of exactly
(29:55):
where they are. They were in an after eight mint container. Oh,
and I recall seeing it somewhere like in the past
twenty years. But I'll find it.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
You'll find it.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
I know I have old baseball cards and a record
collection somewhere, and I have no idea where there's. You know,
something I'm interested in speaking of, like culture, is the
sort of like intergenerational cultural transmission. And you know, when
I was a kid, I listened to the same music
as my parents because they would put on music and
I was in the room, and so that's what I
(30:26):
heard and that's what I got into. And to some extent,
that doesn't happen the same way with music anymore, because
my kids might be on headphones or I might be
on headphones. So when I'm listening to music, it's not
just sort of blasting throughout the living room or wherever
it is you know, when you think about like these
like games like these like backwards compatible games like you know,
like Magic and so forth, I'm curious, like how you
(30:49):
see that playing out in the game space. Games getting
passed on. Parents play with their kids. Obviously I played
Monopoly with my daughter. I think we also play like
and ladders and stuff like that. But then there is
this element that they have all the avenues of finding games,
whether it's online or on a phone, that are not
you know, something I would have played. And I'm sort
(31:10):
of curious about the phenomenon of like passing down games
and how you think about the durability of brands in
this aspect.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
I think it's the primary way people learn about a
new game is through their parents playing around family board
game night, you know, whether that's a Friday or Thursday
or pick your boys and experiencing the joy and you know,
passing on like a treasured memory from your childhood to
your kids. I know my son loves D and D.
(31:39):
He loves Magic. He got that from me. The favorite
game our family plays is Monopoly. You know, we try
playing well, we play it less because my wife dislikes
how much we cheat. But the kids in chip ceo.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
Wait do you it's admitting that cheer? Wait do you
play that? If you land on free parking you get
cash in the middle or like, where do you stand on?
Speaker 4 (32:07):
That is often unnecessary for my kids and I because
we seem to always have a magical font of cash.
Our favorite version is the cheaters edition. We actually came
out with a version of Monopoly which was focused on
things that you needed to cheat on, tasks you needed
to do, and basically, like we know, the game of
Monopoly is done at our house when my wife flips
(32:28):
the board, usually around turn four or five. Game. But
it's fun. And you know, my kids love Monopoly. Now
my son loves magic and D and D. And you
do it with video games as well. Like to me,
games are such powerful ip you know, they might not
(32:50):
create like these cultural moments that a big Hollywood movie does, right,
but they create millions upon millions of very powerful personal moments.
And that's why brands like Monopoly can translate so well
from a board game to a multi billion dollar mobile
(33:11):
game back to a board game again, because people have
such intimate experience with them that has this deep personal
connection usually resulting from you know, a very fond memory
of siblings against siblings, friends with friends or parents and
kids circling around a table.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
You mentioned cultural moment. You know, I'm curious. Like last year,
I guess, uh, Mattel had that huge hit with the
Barbie movie. I know you have all this ip. Are
you doing anything similar in terms of sort of like
big like adult oriented movies around some of the brands
that you have within the broader Hasbro world?
Speaker 4 (33:52):
Oh? Yeah, for sure. I think it last count Transformers
as a five billion dollar plus box office franchise. I
think it's in the top ten box office franchises of
all time. We have a new movie coming out in
September called Transformers One. It's the origin story of Optimus
Prime and Megatron back when they were friends as young
cogless robots on Cybertron and how the clash between them
(34:17):
and the Autobots and Decepticons emerged. Directed by Josh Cooley,
who I think did Toy Story three or Toy Story four.
And it's been getting really good feedback from things like
San Diego Comic Con. Fans are excited for it, and
we hope families will enjoy it too. And then we
have at last count I think we have thirty five
entertainment projects in development. You know, you brought up the
(34:40):
Barbie movie. Barbie herself is the executive producer of our
Monopoly movie with Lionsgate. We have a Clue movie.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
And executive producer, yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
Margot Robbie's Lucky count.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
The Doll.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Okay, we did release a version of Barbie Monopoly last
year and it was one of the most successful Monopoly
versions from last year. So there's a lot of tie ins.
So yeah, I mean we have a ton of content
coming out. You know, Transformers is probably the movie that
the toy industry kind of holds up as like great
(35:21):
synergies between selling product and creating a great story. You know,
last year with Transformers Rise of the Beast, we had
a ninety percent uplift in point of sale over like
the twelve weeks of the movie, and I think we
did something like thirty or forty percent pos point of
sale uplift during the whole year from that movie. So,
(35:43):
you know, Transformers movies aren't just fun. They sell a
lot of toys.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
By the way, Tracy, I see has Bro has the
ipated Gem, which I think could be a huge hit.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Wait, is this the old the old one from the
nineteen eighty Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Yeah, yeah, people will love a gym movie. Yeah. So
I'm just saying I'm giving a free idea here.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Think there was a contempt I wanted to talk about AI,
and there's sort of two different paths we could go
down here, because number one, I know you're experimenting with
some AI based products, so like an AI driven Ouiji board,
which sounds kind of fun. And then on the other hand,
(36:21):
has Bro has got to be one of the biggest
commissioners of like science fiction and fantasy art in the world,
and I know there's a lot of discussion nowadays about
how much of that is going to end up being
AI generated. And I believe you had a big round
of layoffs announced last year and they're probably still ongoing.
A lot of those were in the art department. So
(36:43):
can you talk to us about the impact of AI
on your business, both in terms of new products and
then also I guess how it would affect the art
of a lot of your games.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
Yeah. Sure. Actually, just to correct it upfront, we are
going through a series of layoffs as part of restructuring
our toy and commercial organizations. But that's not affecting Wizards
of the Coast. They had some modest impacts, but that
was actually mostly kind of the back office related roles.
We really prize design talent, art talent, and generally creativity.
(37:18):
It's what fuels our brands. We prize it both internally
in terms of the employees we have and the great
talent that we're able to attract to the company. And
we really prize it in terms of you know, really
the Triple A top shelf artists that we work with
both to help us drive concept art and new product development,
as well as all the art commissioning we do for
(37:39):
the thousands of new magic cards and D and D
books and imagery that we do every year. You know,
I would say for AI, AI is a big topic,
like we could probably do like three or four podcasts
on that and its impacts on any given industry. I
suppose I'll start with the headline color Meia and AII optimist.
(38:00):
In terms of coming from the industry of play, it's
an incredibly playful, very high impact set of technologies that
really can light up the average player, the average fans.
Creativity really creates and enables amazing user generated content. And
(38:21):
as someone who builds games that really rely on storytelling,
that relies on an end user's creativity and people collaborating
around a table. I think there's really exciting possibilities for it.
You know. That said, we're in a lot of undiscovered
country as it relates to AI, and we have to
(38:42):
deploy it very, very responsibly and at a measured pace
because we got to make sure that creatives are paid
for their work. You know, we're a company that values creativity,
and therefore we value creatives. So we're thinking through, how
do we do this way that's ethical, that's responsible, that
(39:04):
gives voice actors, gives actors, gives artists, gives writers their
fair shake inside of it. And you know, I think
it's going to take us a little bit of time
and the industry as a whole to figure it out.
But I'm pleased with how we're going about it. I'm
sure there'll be instances where you know, we have to
police things carefully. You know, you'll see AI pop up
(39:27):
in art now and then that's not something that we're
doing by design. It's something that just happens when you
work with hundreds of different artists who have different kind
of motivations and different kind of thoughts on things. Generally speaking,
in our finished products, everything will be human created and
human finished. However, when we think about AI enabled tools
(39:52):
that kind of bring fun to life and it enables
users to be able to create things, sure, I think
we will use our art, we will use ORIP, and
we will try to use that to create ethically trained
art and ethically trained AI tools that kind of bring
imaginations to life. You know, if I just look at
(40:14):
like my own D and D groups, and I play
in three different D and D groups, nice, I can't
tell you a single person around the table who doesn't
use AI in some way, shape or form to help
either craft their character, help inspire an adventure, bring imagery
and audio to life. And so you know, if that's
(40:35):
just my little kind of ballpark of twenty or thirty
players that I play with on the regular, I'm sure
that's happening across the vast tens of millions of people
who play the game. And so when your users are
telling you that they're using a tool and that they're
valuing it, I think you have to take notice and
you have to figure out how to harness it.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
Oh this reminds me, actually, I remember hearing about the
Open gaming license controversy for Dungeons and Dragons, and there
was a lot of debate and a lot of outrage
initially about some of the changes you were proposing. But
since we're on the topic of you know, user generated
content and Dungeons and Dragons is famous for the amount
(41:17):
of participation that gamers actually have, and that talked to
us about how that controversy, like, what were the lessons
learned from that and how did it all end, because
I think it's been resolved somewhat at this point.
Speaker 4 (41:29):
Yeah, I mean that was about a year and a
half ago, and that was a serious case of foot
and mouth disease. From our perspective, we did it wrong
and we apologized and I think we quickly made amends.
I think where we were coming from on that whole
thing and the Open Game License, for people who don't
know it, was something that was established about twenty ish
(41:50):
years ago that basically opens up the rule set and
some of the core content for Dungeons and Dragons to
create a lingu of frame, a rule set and set
of content for people to be able to play tabletop
role playing games. So what we were trying to do is.
We were trying to evolve it because a document that
was created in two thousand and two didn't foresee the
(42:14):
rise of video games, it didn't foresee the rise of
AI tools, it didn't foresee even things like content streaming.
So our goal there was to try to protect an
end user's ability to be able to make content and
have fun, and a creator's ability to create content and
(42:34):
be able to make a living off of it, while
preventing kind of like a quick serve restaurant from using
the D and D brand to sell tacos, or a
big video game company to be able to create a
video game using the IP in a way that wasn't
fair to us as the kind of quote unquote brand owners,
(42:56):
or maybe do something that we didn't necessarily like with
the brand, or had content that was inappropriate, which happens
when you have tons of millions of users making content.
I think we found a fair and equitable solution to it.
You know, if anything, we embraced open source even more.
We also are opening up our own distribution platforms like
(43:18):
D and D Beyond to you know, create marketplaces where
more and more creators and more and more users can
be able to share their content and hopefully, you know,
make a nice living off of their content. I think
you're going to see more and more from that from
us in terms of how we expand that marketplace opportunity
and how we think about new ways that they can
(43:39):
create content, for instance, on something we're calling a virtual tabletop,
which is an Unreal Engine five powered kind of like sandbox,
where you can build full three D models of like
miniatures and buildings and special effects. And you know, I
think that'll be a wonderful opportunity for people and really
(44:01):
leverage kind of the legacy of the OGL in a
positive and new way.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Oh that sounds really fun. What are your favorite games
to play? Give us some recommendations, and they don't all
have to be from the Hawsbro universe, but you know,
having spoken to you, it sounds like a lot of them.
Speaker 4 (44:16):
Are fortunately, many, many, many of them are well. Certainly,
if you're into role playing games and you haven't played
Balder's Gate three, that's a seminal role playing game. It
won I think it swept all of the major Game
of the Year awards. It swept all of the major
role playing Game of the Year awards, and it's just
a fabulous game from our partners with Larry, and I
(44:37):
think they hit a home run on that. I obviously
think Monopoly Go is a lot of fun, and there's
several hundred million people who agree with me, so I
think if you're looking for something to tick some time
away on your subway commute, that one's a lot of
fun as well. I'm kind of a hardcore, crunchy gamer,
I think you can tell based on my answers and
a little bit nerdy, but actually my favorite game is Scrabble,
(44:59):
so I really enjoy playing that. And I suppose if
I was going to pick a competitors game, what's a
fun game that I play with my family from a competitor,
so I will pick two. If you're a little nerdy
and want a fun kind of D and D light experience,
Munchkin is probably one of my family's favorite games that
(45:23):
has a very Monopoly esque kind of vibe to it,
where you're in coopetition trying to be the first tiny
creature to complete a dungeon and power yourselves up, and
then of course ultimately the other players who've been helping
you stabs you in the back at the end to
prevent you from Being First, and then another family favorite,
this one I think is from Asmodi out of Europe
(45:45):
is Ticket to Ride. That's just a really fun kind
of travel themed game where you become kind of a
railroad tycoon. So that's a fun one too.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Oh, both of these sound amazing. Sorry, I'm looking them
up as you speak. That sounds great, okay, Chris Cox,
the CEO of hasan Bro, thank you so much for
coming on of those.
Speaker 4 (46:02):
Hey, thank you so much for having me, Joe.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
I thought that was a fun conversation. I just like
talking about games.
Speaker 3 (46:19):
Really, Tracy, are you ever going to invite me to
one of your game made ups out up in Connecticut?
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
I would love you to come play board games, Joe.
Speaker 3 (46:30):
Really, yeah, okay, I'll come out. What game are we
going to play?
Speaker 4 (46:33):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (46:34):
You know, this isn't really a board game per se,
but I would love to play Avalon with you. I
think you'd be good at it. Okay, this is the
one where you basically lie to your friends and annoy
everyone that you know.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
I'm done with that. So, in all seriousness, it is
interesting to think about game. You know, people are always
talking about, Oh, we want like real world connection. If
it's like oh third Spaces and all this stuff. It
is interesting to think like games are a little little
bit unique in that respect in which there is this
sort of like in person put down the phone community event,
(47:08):
Like there's you know, people play games on their phone,
people play them on their computers. But there is something
like powerful about a board game from a sort of
social perspective. Oh.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
Absolutely. And I have to say board game cafes, of
which there seem to be there are more of those
in New York than there used to be. Those are fantastic,
like spaces just to socialize. I love going to those.
The other thing that I thought was really interesting was
the discussion about AI generated Arn't and the sort of
balancing act there also kind of funny to discuss that
(47:39):
in the context of the Dungeons and Dragons licensing controversy.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Also, I thought it was interesting and I was a
little bit had my mind blown that when Chris was
talking about his own gaming community and coming up with
the stories that every single one of them is using
AI for that purpose. Yeah, which, I you know, you
figure out some people when they're like developing a story
or going to use it. But the fact that's like
one hundred percent of his community is doing that is
(48:06):
pretty powerful.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
Well, and also like how do businesses even start to
take that into account? And Chris mentioned this, but the
idea that like, Okay, you're working with hundreds, if not thousands,
of different artists, some of them might be using AI, right,
you know, you can ask them maybe to sign a
disclosure or something like that, But it seems like you're
never going to be able to like police it entirely
(48:29):
because people are using it as a tool.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
By the way, can I just say, like, I feel
if the CEO of Hasbro plays Monopoly on cheat mode
where he's like adding in a little Lextra house to
a property surreptitiously, or taking one hundred dollars from the
bank or doing the free parking stuff, I feel like
that's a license for all of us to cheat.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Or should buy the actual Monopoly Cheaters edition, which sounds
kind of fun.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
Yeah, but it's more fun if you're not supposed to
cheat and you actually do it, right. But I was
I was actually kind of flabbergasted. I thought he would
be a very like strict, you know, by the book
type when it came to gameplay.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
Maybe this is the way to play it, to just
make it as chaotic as possible. I mean, it sounds
like that's what Monopoly Go is doing.
Speaker 3 (49:10):
And it sounds like that's really a big part of
the fun for people.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
Cush.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
There's a Chance edition of Monopoly as well. Sorry, I'm
just flicking through all the different Monopoly editions again. The
Monopoly Chance game is the high stakes card flipping version
of the Monopoly game, and it only takes twenty minutes
to play.
Speaker 3 (49:28):
That would be nice because I would play more Monopoly.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
If it didn't take like two hours.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
The thing. It's a pretty big time investment in game
of Monopoly.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
I need to tell you about the time I was
in Guatemala and I got caught up in a game
of risk that went on, I kid you not for
twelve hours all night.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
I'm not forward to hearing this story.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
I was trying to extricate myself for hours by losing
and it didn't work, and for various reasons, I couldn't
just walk away from the table anyway. Story for another day.
Shall we leave it there.
Speaker 3 (49:57):
Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
This has been another episode of Odd Thlots podcast. I'm
Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 3 (50:04):
And I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman, dash Ol
Bennett at Dashbott and Kelbrooks at Kelbrooks. Thank you to
our producer Moses Ondam. For more Oddlaws content, go to
Bloomberg dot com slash odlots, where you have transcripts, a blog,
and a newsletter and you can chat about all of
these topics with fellow listeners twenty four to seven in
(50:25):
the discord discord dot gg slash odlots. I am certain
that there are many games players in there for sure.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
And if you enjoy all thoughts, If you like it
when we do these gaming episodes, then please leave us
a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember,
if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to
all of our episodes absolutely ad free. All you need
to do is connect to your Bloomberg account with Apple Podcasts.
In order to do that, just go on Apple Podcasts,
(50:53):
find the Bloomberg channel and follow the instructions there. Thanks
for listening it in
Hosts And Creators
Joe Weisenthal
Tracy Alloway
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