Tuque Games, now Invoke, and they’re working on an undisclosed product. Our North Carolina studio [Atomic Arcade] is building a GI Joe game that’s going to be a reimagining of what GI Joe can be. And then we have our Austin studio, two teams in Austin, one of them is Archetype Entertainment, which is building a new sci fi game, a real space opera called Exodus. We’ve been building that studio over the last few years and we announced the game at the Game Awards in November, and have shown some early work. So that’s our strategy. And overall, as a company, we see digital and licensing - whether it’s digital licensing or broader consumer product licensing - as a really important growth element to the company.


MCV: Last year you hired Warhammer’s head of business development and product licensing… EE: We did. Eric Mogensen joined us from Games Workshop. He’d been there for over 20 years. I first met Eric in 2005 when I was at a company that licensed Warhammer and we created Warhammer Online, so he and I have a long history and he’s been a tremendous addition to the team. I have four great bizdev people who are on the


front lines of partnerships, all veterans in their own right, and then I have my production team, who I consider one of the best in the business, and have, in some cases, been working with licensed partners for 15-plus years. I think it’s really important to understand how to operate, both working with a licensed partner to get the very best out of the IP, be true to the IP, capture


October/November 2024 MCV/DEVELOP | 25


the spirit and the emotion of that IP, and then also work to represent and champion those games within Hasbro to ensure that we can amplify those products for success once they are ready. It means that our IP is only going to get stronger over the next few years, which is why licensing and digital is such an important part of our strategy.


MCV: You’ve probably got the big IPs covered - D&D. Monopoly, Magic: The Gathering - but what about the niche stuff? Would you welcome a small studio pitching, say, for Squad Leader or Mouse Trap? EE: We have 40 games in development right now that will release through partners in the next three to four years, and some of those are from… call it “the vault”, call it retro, call it old school, but they are much loved and I think there’ll be some surprises in there. Our partners have come to us with pitches, and we’ve said, ‘That’s really clever. Let’s do that’. It’s a much loved


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