Hasbro’s new video game push is getting more and more serious.
Wizards of the Coast president John Hight just revealed that they are making yet another new video game. Even better, they hired staff from Cliffhanger Games.
Some Background on Hasbro’s Video Games Push
Wizards of the Coast is most famous as the publisher of Magic The Gathering. They have been a subsidiary of Hasbro since 1999. They also own the Dungeons & Dragons property.
It was the Wizards of the Coast side of Hasbro that licensed and saw the monumental success of Baldur’s Gate 3. It convinced Hasbro to move from licensing to making video games themselves.
Wizards of the Coast is part of the division that’s making these games. They have upcoming Magic The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons video games that they haven’t revealed yet. They also have Archetype Entertainment and its upcoming action game Exodus.
The Atomic Arcade video game based around GI Joe’s Snake Eyes is technically under their division. Finally, they have Giant Skull, headed by Stig Asmussen, making another unannounced game.
What We Know About The Next Wizards of the Coast Video Game
Hight namedropped Michael de Plater. De Plater is one of many Cliffhanger staff who came from Monolith Productions. He was director of Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor.
Hight said this about de Plater:
He’ll be starting concept development on something very cool and new – and that part I can’t tell you yet.
We want to give him time. We’ll go through a fairly lengthy concept process where they’re going to look at a lot of different ideas.”
Is This Baldur’s Gate 4?
We can’t rule out the possibility that this next project is Baldur’s Gate 4. But we can say it is highly unlikely. Monolith Productions’ specialty was single player action games and not turn based tactical games. De Plater and other former Monolith Productions developers were also making a single player action Black Panther video game under Cliffhanger Games.
The Possibilities Are As Limitless As A New D&D Campaign
It’s really fun to speculate what this upcoming game could possibly be. The Dungeons & Dragons world alone has so many campaign settings that could be the basis for new action games. A Mordor style game in a Dungeons & Dragons setting just feels the stars aligning.
We know that these moves aren’t enough to make up for the wave of industry layoffs. But it is good to know that a lot of these developers really are able to find their way back into making video games.
We can only hope that Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast are in it for the long haul, and that these games turn out to be the critical and commercial hits we hope they will be.
