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When Random House Sued TSR For $9.5M
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<blockquote data-quote="JLowder" data-source="post: 7858418" data-attributes="member: 28003"><p>It's not either/or here. Hasbro has never been all that thrilled about the fiction program. This goes back to when they bought WotC and did not even realize that the company published fiction. (I was told a Hasbro VP noted in an early meeting something along the lines of "We do fiction?" when told about the latest Salvatore bestseller.) Fiction publishing and distribution is not the same as game publishing and distribution, and Hasbro knows they are not experts there. They normally license that out, just as they license out comics and other stuff that is not part of their main business.</p><p></p><p>So long as WotC's fiction program was making sufficient money, Hasbro was willing to let it go on, but they were not throwing more money at it to grow that part of the operation. There were talks shortly after the WotC purchase to make the WotC fiction department a more robust operation within Hasbro, where WotC Fiction would publish material tied to other Hasbro IP or projects. There were even some books commissioned and written, which will likely never see the light of day because Hasbro decided it did not want to go in that direction before any were published.</p><p></p><p>Since that happened, the book department at WotC has steadily shrunk and was eventually subsumed by games. (D&D-related fiction had been a separate department since around 1990, back at TSR.) Fiction got fewer and fewer resources, and was cast more and more as support product to games. They lost many of the fiction experts in house. WotC came to run the fiction in ways that made it less attractive to fiction authors. Sales overall continued to diminish, as might be expected. The exception here was Bob Salvatore's Drizzt material, but WotC had figured out some time ago that they should leave Bob alone to write what he wanted and, basically, build his own teams to get his books done.</p><p></p><p>Barring some major change of direction, it was inevitable after Hasbro decided not to make WotC Fiction a bigger part of the Hasbro operation that the fiction lines would eventually be closed and the fiction licensed out. Because that's the standard Hasbro approach to fiction--which eventually became the standard WotC approach. When Mike M. and other WotC folks talk about the company not being fiction experts or not having the resources, I would venture a guess that we are all in agreement on the problems and the history of how the fiction program got to the point where it made limited sense to continue.</p><p></p><p>By the by, fiction had never been a strong aspect of WotC's identity, either. They had tried to do Magic fiction in house, but ended up burning the program to the ground once or twice even before the TSR purchase. They went the licensing route at one point with Magic fiction, too, so it was not a big jump for them to start thinking like Hasbro on this. (Side note: I was offered the job of heading up a new Magic fiction line at WotC after the TSR buyout, but turned them down because I did not see a really clear, longterm commitment to fiction within the company. It was the right move; the line I was going to head up was killed a couple months later, along with a planned Magic RPG that was going to created in tandem. Though I admit the overall fiction program hung on a lot longer than I had expected.)</p><p></p><p>The interesting thing now, of course, is that both WotC and Hasbro are realizing that their best chances of branching out into other media rests with narrative content, such as fiction. You don't make miniatures or Netflix series out of the Encumbrance Rules, but WotC got a lot of subsidiary use and related products out of my novel <em>The Ring of Winter</em> (Artus Cimber, Ras Nsi, etc, etc, in RPGs, minis, board games, card games, computer games...). So it is possible they (Hasbro + WotC) end up bringing fiction back in some form. That now fits in with the larger vision for D&D's value as an IP, and vertical content creation and delivery are back in fashion (eg WotC buying a computer game company), so fiction could get better resources and more support this time. What happens with the latest planned D&D movie will impact the fate of fiction at the company quite a bit, so we shall see how that plays out.</p><p></p><p>Cheers,</p><p>Jim Lowder</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="JLowder, post: 7858418, member: 28003"] It's not either/or here. Hasbro has never been all that thrilled about the fiction program. This goes back to when they bought WotC and did not even realize that the company published fiction. (I was told a Hasbro VP noted in an early meeting something along the lines of "We do fiction?" when told about the latest Salvatore bestseller.) Fiction publishing and distribution is not the same as game publishing and distribution, and Hasbro knows they are not experts there. They normally license that out, just as they license out comics and other stuff that is not part of their main business. So long as WotC's fiction program was making sufficient money, Hasbro was willing to let it go on, but they were not throwing more money at it to grow that part of the operation. There were talks shortly after the WotC purchase to make the WotC fiction department a more robust operation within Hasbro, where WotC Fiction would publish material tied to other Hasbro IP or projects. There were even some books commissioned and written, which will likely never see the light of day because Hasbro decided it did not want to go in that direction before any were published. Since that happened, the book department at WotC has steadily shrunk and was eventually subsumed by games. (D&D-related fiction had been a separate department since around 1990, back at TSR.) Fiction got fewer and fewer resources, and was cast more and more as support product to games. They lost many of the fiction experts in house. WotC came to run the fiction in ways that made it less attractive to fiction authors. Sales overall continued to diminish, as might be expected. The exception here was Bob Salvatore's Drizzt material, but WotC had figured out some time ago that they should leave Bob alone to write what he wanted and, basically, build his own teams to get his books done. Barring some major change of direction, it was inevitable after Hasbro decided not to make WotC Fiction a bigger part of the Hasbro operation that the fiction lines would eventually be closed and the fiction licensed out. Because that's the standard Hasbro approach to fiction--which eventually became the standard WotC approach. When Mike M. and other WotC folks talk about the company not being fiction experts or not having the resources, I would venture a guess that we are all in agreement on the problems and the history of how the fiction program got to the point where it made limited sense to continue. By the by, fiction had never been a strong aspect of WotC's identity, either. They had tried to do Magic fiction in house, but ended up burning the program to the ground once or twice even before the TSR purchase. They went the licensing route at one point with Magic fiction, too, so it was not a big jump for them to start thinking like Hasbro on this. (Side note: I was offered the job of heading up a new Magic fiction line at WotC after the TSR buyout, but turned them down because I did not see a really clear, longterm commitment to fiction within the company. It was the right move; the line I was going to head up was killed a couple months later, along with a planned Magic RPG that was going to created in tandem. Though I admit the overall fiction program hung on a lot longer than I had expected.) The interesting thing now, of course, is that both WotC and Hasbro are realizing that their best chances of branching out into other media rests with narrative content, such as fiction. You don't make miniatures or Netflix series out of the Encumbrance Rules, but WotC got a lot of subsidiary use and related products out of my novel [I]The Ring of Winter[/I] (Artus Cimber, Ras Nsi, etc, etc, in RPGs, minis, board games, card games, computer games...). So it is possible they (Hasbro + WotC) end up bringing fiction back in some form. That now fits in with the larger vision for D&D's value as an IP, and vertical content creation and delivery are back in fashion (eg WotC buying a computer game company), so fiction could get better resources and more support this time. What happens with the latest planned D&D movie will impact the fate of fiction at the company quite a bit, so we shall see how that plays out. Cheers, Jim Lowder [/QUOTE]
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