Wizards of the Coast and Resolution Games announced cooperation To bring Dungeons & Dragons to virtual reality.
The decades-old tabletop role-playing game has become increasingly popular over the past several years, largely due to third-party content creators like Critical Role and Dimension 20, where casts take on the role of D&D to create a compelling story for audiences. The series has also had major success this year with a Hollywood film and the hugely successful Baldur’s Gate III, a video game that licenses the Dungeons & Dragons IP.
The precision company is best known for its game Demeo, which digitally recreates the tabletop gaming experience, whether that’s on a VR headset like the Meta Quest or Apple Vision Pro, or just on an iPad.
Details of the deal are unclear – is Wizards just licensing the IP or working with Resolution? — but it continues Wizards’ trend of taking Dungeons & Dragons off the table and into digital media. It’s also not clear whether this is a platform for players to connect with their friends to play D&D through virtual reality, or whether they are telling an entirely new story, like the movie “Honor Among Thieves.” But in the trailers for Demeo, it appears that players are actually using VR hand tracking to play cards and draw virtual miniatures, so maybe co-op is more like a virtual tabletop than a single-player story game.
It’s common for people to use platforms like Foundry and Roll20 to play D&D with non-local friends, and Baldur’s Gate has been a huge hit, but… are we really trying to defeat our enemies in VR? D&D sessions typically last two to three hours (or longer, if you’re really committed), and even when you’re having a good time with your friends, your attention span can fluctuate a bit. Does anyone really want to wear a headset for an entire D&D session?
The news comes soon after Mass layoffs Hit Hasbro, the parent company of Wizards. In the division of the company that runs Wizards and digital games, revenues were up 40% on an annual basis to $423.6 million, achieving an operating profit of $203.4 million; But overall, Hasbro’s revenue was down 10%. Although Wizards is thriving, its Hasbro division has not been spared layoffs.