products. But it’s also interesting what they have in common. They were both in development for about six to seven years. They were both built by teams of several hundred people spread across the world, and they were both from studios that showed amazing tenacity - through covid in particular - to get these products built. So despite how completely different the games are, they have that in common, which is world class developers that knew their art and their craft. Just in the pursuit of the very best examples in their category, we have arguably one of the top performing and most loved PC console games last year and a success on a global basis like Monopoly Go! We ultimately have to trust the developers; that


they know their craft and they know and love our IP. In some cases, they know our IP better than we do, because they immerse themselves in it for many years and go very deep. The Larian guys are an example of that, where they went incredibly deep into the lore and created an amazing expression of D&D that has been celebrated by, not only more Game of the Year awards than any other product, but a fan base that just loved every minute of the game and, in some cases, has recorded hundreds of hours of gameplay. These games will be difficult to follow!


MCV: Finally, if you ask most developers what their biggest issue is at the moment - apart from obvious things like restructuring - usually it’s visibility. That’s not something you ever have to wrestle with, or is it? EE: We certainly don’t [in terms of] brand awareness.


October/November 2024 MCV/DEVELOP | 27


All of our brands have an incredibly high level of recognition. D&D is up there with Lord of the Rings and Warcraft, because in many ways it is the original fantasy game, having been around for 50 years. So no, we very rarely have an issue of awareness, but we’re always working to make sure that we remain relevant. And that comes down to modern expressions of the IP that really resonate with fans today. That’s something we can uniquely do. Then when we do find success, we’re then always trying to think about how we follow that; how do we double down on that success.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52