Joe Snake Eyes game, for example–and still more are creating brand-new IPs.
We saw one of these new IPs revealed atlast year’s The Game Awards: Archetype Entertainment’sExodus.
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Has this been going on for a while and I just haven’t been privy to it?
Ayoub: I wish I could say that was the case.
It has really been something we haven’t talked too much about.
But if you think about it, it just makes a ton of sense, right?
So if you think about it, Hasbro’s a 100-year-old company.
So why don’t we just jump right into it?
And that’s being run by James Olin and a bunch of the Mass Effect 1 and 2 team.
And frankly, the reaction blew us away; [we’re] just blown out the water.
We’ve got [a studio] in Montreal that’s working on a large Dungeons & Dragons-based game.
That’s Invoke Studio.
We’ve got Atomic Arcade in North Carolina that’s working on Snake Eyes.
As we like to say [that that game is] not your daddy’s G.I.
And one of the great things about being in Hasbro [is] we’ve got toys.
We’ve got all these other things we can do with it.
Then of course you look at Atomic and Invoke and those are classical Hasbro or Wizards IP from G.I.
Joe to Dungeons & Dragons.
So we’re growing up these studio infrastructures.
So it’s quite a large endeavor happening under the Hasbro umbrella right now.
I think the studios are really now coming into that period where they’re growing.
I think we’ve certainly looked and seen the lessons over the last couple of years.
I think we’re being very diligent about our growth.
But this is a core part of Hasbro’s growth strategy, over the next several years.
What’s the process?
[In some cases,] we went out and sought certain people.
And in some cases it was the opposite, it was just people we were talking to.
So, [as an example,] Atomic Arcade is doing the Snake Eyes game.
We’ve got a lot of folks there that worked on Arkham, like our studio head.
And honestly, I cannot wait to show you.
I’m a huge G.I.
And that replicates across our studio ecosystem.
What makes sense, and what are the strengths we can bring to it?"
And a big part of that strength is just talent that’s already done it before.
How are they bringing Snake Eyes to life in a video game?
And the answer to that is just obviously make a great game first.
[Snake Eyes] is just an amazing character.
He’s got that mix of commando, but he’s also a ninja.
[The team] have come up with some really, really clever ideas.
Can we expect to see more totally new ideas that don’t connect to any existing Hasbro IP?
We have a couple of ideas in the oven.
And play has changed over the last hundred years considerably.
So some of those will be expressions of things like G.I.
Joe, like D&D.
But you are going to see more and more new IP being developed under that banner as well.
For all these studios, are they independent?
Do they communicate with each other?
Are they helping each other out?
What’s their relationship?
Yeah, great question.
And they do communicate amongst one another as well.
So it’s kind of a combination where they’ve got a tremendous amount of creative independence.
How do we amplify what they’ve got?
We bring some structure to it, some centralized services, so we’re not replicating things with everybody.
But yeah, the teams have a tremendous amount of creative liberty.
We all work together really, really well.
Or make games that are as different as possible an experience from Baldur’s Gate 3?
We were obviously thrilled at the reception of Baldur’s Gate 3.
I think that proved a lot of things.
So we obviously don’t exist on an island.
When we make a D&D game, we work with the D&D team.
We also want to tie into what they’re planning for future releases and things like that.
So you may see some overlap, but if you do, it’s intentional.
So you’re going to be seeing a number of different kinds of D&D experiences coming.
It’s an influence in some cases.
So let me go and use Baldur’s Gate as an example.
We’ll express it in different ways, but it’ll always be authentic.
Obviously you hit the nail on the head–that’s certainly the most popular area.
When you go to people wanting expressions of what they know, that’s a big part of it.
We are going to play around the edges, a little bit as well.
I can’t say too much more than that.
Look, man, Eberron is right there.
Any sort of roadmap for all of these games?
We don’t want to rush out with anything.
This business is really, really important to us.
It’s close to me personally.
This interview was edited for both brevity and readability.
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