Welcome home.
This is Audio EXP for the 20th of July, and the episode title is “Wizards of the Coast’s new boss plays D&D and Magic”
[The following is a transcript of Audio EXP: #249]
[Also on Stitcher | Spotify | Apple]
The OG GM Adventures won the RPG Publisher Spotlight this month.
The interview with Michael Straus is live, and I tried to ask a clever question about superheroes and ended up sounding stupid.
But we also talked about the Wild West with goblins in it.
Since we last spoke, Amazon Prime Day has been and gone. Geek Native tries to use these events to earn pennies. Previously we’ve talked about how hard it to run a gaming blog, which is why we did that feature on Rascal News and shared a promo link to help them out.
But, this year, as well as predicting D&D would get big discounts ahead of the D&D 2024 launch, we also did an Anyone but Amazon megathread. That had deals from big companies like Sony and LEGO but also smaller brands like Squishable and the King Authur baking shop.
A big day that’s in the near future rather than the recent past, though, is San Diego Comic-Con and Bronwen put together a detailed highlights schedule. Her write-up starts with Transformers One on Thursday 25th, obviously include some Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles since they’ve appeared twice on the blog this week and conclude with the TikTok-made viral A Celebration of “Hazbin Hotel,” Hosted by Hot Topic late on Friday.
My prediction: watch the Hot Topic site for Hazbin Hotel merch appearing.
While SDCC is the big event we saw coming the big news this week is John Hight. John’s the new President of Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming at Hasbro.
A few months back I talked about who might replace Cynthia Williams and kinda concluded that the names we know probably aren’t the right fit, suggested some behind the scenes powers and concluded we’d see someone move from the Microsoft Activision merger.
Well, John Hight comes from the Activision-owned Blizzard. At Blizzard, John was the chief caretaker for the World of Warcraft brand. I notice also he’s been an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California, teaching classes such as Business of Interactive Media and Anatomy of a Game.
On his LinkedIn page, John wrote;
Feel like I’ve rolled a 20 with this one… I’m thrilled to share I’ll be joining Hasbro as President of its Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming, overseeing strategy for MAGIC, D&D and digital games. I’ve been a loyal player and fan of both MAGIC and D&D for as long as I can remember.
What do you think of the appointment?
Firstly, I think John’s about making money from games. Secondly, I believe his LinkedIn post. I think he is a gamer. I think he cares.
I also think he’ll be used to mercenary cut and thrust of board-level politics in gaming companies.
Lastly, well, before moving on to a different topic, I think John will have to focus on making Wizards of the Coast’s digital activities work.
Also boosting their digital activities are Green Ronin Publishing who’ll be relaunching The Expanse RPG.
This edition, which will be backwards compatible with the first, will have official Foundry support and more on Roll20.
Official The Expanse miniatures, including RPG characters and ship models, will also be available. The BackerKit campaign is not live yet, but the sign-up for the news page is, and it might be worth doing if you’re interested, as day one backers get free The Expanse dice.
We’re going to develop a bit of a sci-fi theme here because the next story come from Bronwen, a big Alien fan, who has written up the final Alien Romulus trailer.
Her conclusion? Nothing but good vibes. Mind you, it is also supposed to be terrifying.
As we move into the outro of bundle offers we’re sticking with sci-fi as there’s a deal for The Gaia Complex. That’s a TTRPG of Flesh and Wires, a cyberpunk game set in a mega city ruled by an AI and prowled by vampires.
Finally, there’s also a bundle deal on the deluxe edition of the revised Stars Without Number. With that game, you can run your own Alien Romulus one-shot.
On that note, avoid facehuggers, and see you next week.
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