Wizards of the Coast and Giant Skull: ‘Gamers are telling us what they have always told us’ | The DeanBeat

Ten days ago, there is Sorcerers of the coast Announced an exclusive publication agreement with Giant Skull, the game studio launched by Star Wars Jedi: the leader of the Survivor Stig Asmussen game.

They announced that Asmussen’s studio is working on a new solo action adventure title in the world of Dungeons & Dragons.

I had the chance to speak with business leaders of the agreement. During the summer game days, I sat with John Hight, president of Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming in Hasbro; And Asmussen, who is the CEO of Giant Skull and a former leader in Rapawn.

It certainly resembles a big effort, because it will be an original title. It is a solo action-adventure title in the world of Dungeons & Dragons and “marks a final moment in the game ambitions of the two companies”.

The game is currently in development for PC and console and more details will be revealed on a later date. Hight himself is a new executive in charge of The Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons Game and Game Licensing Business at Hasbro because he has been working for less than a year. He was previously Senior Vice-President and Managing Director of the Warcraft franchise at Blizzard Entertainment, where he supervised all development and commercial activities for World of Warcraft, Hearthstone and Warcraft Rumble.

During his 12 -year term in Blizzard, John led development efforts for several World of Warcraft extensions, including Diablo III: Reaper of Souls and Diablo III on the console. Before Blizzard, Hight worked on more than 30 games on various platforms, including games acclaimed by criticism in the Command & Conquer, Neverwinter Nights and God of War Franchises.

“It is not a whole year that enters the sorcerers of the coast. It was incredible. I knew that the objective is to build a digital publishing division,” said Hight in our interview. “We already had current matches, but we wanted our goal to have essentially having a few premium games a year that we publish as part of the Wizards label. It was therefore fun, and one of the first calls I made after having obtained the work was Stig Stick because if you want to build one of the best games, you speak to one of the best developers.”

Asmussen was more recently the Jedi Star Wars game director: Survivor and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order for Respawn Entertainment, a division of electronic arts. Before that, he was the game director on God of War III and the artistic director of God of War II in Sony Santa Monica. Giant Skull has an elite team, which will all help shape this new action adventure focused on solo, using Unreal Engine 5, from zero.

Asmussen said: “We opened Giant Skull in September 2023, and a year later, John called me. He said:” Hey, I’m at Wizards now. “We had spoken throughout this period.

Handle

Hight stretched out in December 2024 and said he was really interested in the team. Hight asked if Asmussen was interested in one of the Wizards.

“I dug a little further, and the dungeons and the dragons make sense. It is something that I grew up. It is something that a lot of people in my team are extremely passionate,” said Asmussen. “We have just jumped in a contract at that time and continued. We made a Redmon visit to the Seattle region, at the Wizards headquarters. We were able to choose the brain of the creative team there and see what a partnership would look like. And I left completely impressed.

The Asmussen team had a pedigree focused on Action Adventure RPGs, and therefore worked on something focused on melee fight, had a robust crossing system.

Asumssen said: “I certainly don’t want to say that we could put it in D&D. But there were a lot of elements on which we worked that seemed just very well.”

The ambition of the sorcerer

This partnership is added to the growing range of games of Wizards of the Coast, which includes both original titles and those based on popular brands. In addition to the Giant Skull Project, several other exciting games are in preparation in North American Wizards studios.

Hight said that Chestype Entertainment in Austin, Texas, works on Exodus, an epic science fiction RPG that puts players at the center of an emotional story.

And Atomic Arcade (Raleigh, North Caroline) published two new images of her first project: a game centered on Snake Eyes, the legendary Ninja / Commando of GI Joe. Invoke (Montreal, Canada) is in full production of another game of action-adventure built around magic.

In addition, Skeleton Key (Austin, Texas) works on a project that mixes experiences of memorable suspense, horror and play. Finally, the Wizards of the Coast team continues to extend Magic: The Gathering Arena with new content and features.

This relatively new team has a lot to live. Hasbro is at the top of success like the Big D&D Hit de Larian, Baldur’s Gate 3, as well as the Monopoly Go of Scoply, which has generated more than $ 5 billion in income to date.

“D&D awareness is great. I think the appetite is great. We want to feel at the same time, you know, CRPG players, table players and players in general, because it is a wonderful fantastic universe to install games,” said Hight.

Hight has said that the goal with magic: the rally and the D&D is essentially to raise awareness of more people from these worlds and to bring more players to these communities. He said there were announced games, working studios and unexpected projects.

Gather

“With that, there is an opening of mind on how we express this. D&D should not always be expressed in a strict computer RPG. The magic does not have to be expressed in a strict exchange card game. Because the worlds themselves, in creatures and bad guys and the heroes, are the stories that are told in these two games,” he said. “I think they are a fertile soil to create new things. And when I saw the vertical slice demo that the Stig team showed me, I thought it was great.”

Hight added: “This is one of those things where to run in the world they created was fun. Once you have got your hands on the controller – you have done this, you know, Dean – you want to play this. They give you the controller. You look at you. Hero in D&D, or player of a player in D&D, and run and fight. »»

Hight thought it would be an incredible experience. He also wanted to work again with Asmussen, because they had already crossed the construction of a game together.

“You have this kind of honest and transparent relationship where you can just cut, you know, all the BS, and know that you have a common interest in doing something great,” said Asmussen. “As desperately as I wanted to do this, I didn’t want to be heavy, and I wanted to give it the opportunity. Is it an adjustment? Is there a brand that we have interests you, and even within D&D, I wanted to make sure he had the impression that he and the team had a lot of license to do their own.”

For this idea of ​​play, D&D made sense when magic was not the same kind of cup.

“When you make a game, there is the world, there is the frame, there is the hero, there are things on which the player clings,” said Asmussen. “There is everything under the hood, and that’s right, that’s how the game controls. This is how the movement model works, this is how the camera system works, this is how sound can use it. And we have all these things in place for the type of game that we are good, and translating that learn. justifies it.

Large teams or small teams

However, no one is really convinced that the future is made up of triple-a giant teams. The Asmussen team now has 35 people, and it does not expect to grow a lot.

“We intend to keep the team in this size for a bit. There is no reason to develop if we don’t need it,” said Asmussen. “You want to get to the point where you have a very strong vertical edge. You do several game tests. Once you are super confident with it, you can do a long -term schedule. This would affect the number of heads, but we are not going to become huge.”

I have noted that so many games need to go up level now. I was wondering if D&D was in this process. There are now pressure on the studios. Some need to make players happy and they must also be less ambitious.

This last sentence threw Asmussen.

“Have you said less ambitious?” He asked.

And I don’t only have some teams have become too large. The projects in progress for years and never end. Then something like Concord happens. So now there is a downward pressure on the teams, and maybe it is better to make a 20-hour match than a 50-hour match.

“I think this is one of the pressures that everyone in all the industry now feels,” I said. “What matters most to you?” Increasing D&D is something beyond what Larian has done, or thinking about what players really say to the people they want? ”

Hight did not hesitate to answer. He said, “They tell us what they told us. I have been a player and I have been playing games for 30 years. They want big games, whether it’s a big budget game, whether it’s a little experimental game. They are looking for innovation. They are looking for a fun experience.”

Issuance

Hight is confident Giant Skull can deliver this.

“In the case of, you know, by working with a team like Giant Skull, they will give us a big game, a great execution, a wonderful artistic talent, an excellent narration, an action – you must deliver what you have implemented. But I think there is a fun aspect for the game. The story is good, the piece is good. They just want big games.

Asmussen said, “I think the problem might be that people are approaching playing games as if there were a lot of boxes that you need to check. I think it’s, like John, I have a good game. You make a game that feels good. The game.

As for the approach, Asmussen said he was approaching tasks at a time. As he does, he tries to learn and use it to inform him what to do then. Asmussen and Hight talked about production budgets and Asmussen made sure that Hight agreed to make a premium game.

“We are comfortable with it,” said Hight. “We certainly have a budget in which we work, and I think it’s healthy enough to make a fairly incredible game. So, it is not completely open. We are not very limited either, where, if we discover things that we have to add to the game to make it even better, to build even more players in this trip.”

Asmussen added: “We don’t spoil. We do diligence goods. We make sure that we create a production calendar that makes sense, and it is based on real data, data points that we can emphasize in history, things that we have made this enlightened success to move forward and along the way, as we discover exactly what it is and what it becomes.