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Ten days ago, Hasbro’s Magician of the coast The game studio terminated an exclusive publication agreement with Giant Skull and was launched by Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Game Leader Stig Asmussen.
They announced that Asmussens Studio is working on a new single player action adventure title in the world of dungeons & dragons.
I had the opportunity to talk to the company leaders about the deal. At the Summer Game Fest Play Day, I sat down with John Hight, President of Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming at Hasbro. And Asmussen, the CEO of Giant Skull and former leader at respawn.
This certainly sounds like a great effort because it will be an original title. It is a single player action adventure title in the world of dungeons & dragons and “marks a definitive moment in the games of both companies”.
The game is currently in development for PC and console and further details will be announced at a later date. Hight itself is a new executive for the magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons Game and Game Lenzing Business at Hasbro, since he has been in use for less than a year. Previously, he was Senior Vice President and General Manager of Warcraft franchise at Blizzard Entertainment, where he supervised all development and trade activities for World of Warcraft, Hearthstone and Warcraft Rumble.
During his 12-year term in Blizzard, John led the development efforts for several expansions in the Warcraft world, including Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, and Diablo III on the console. Before Blizzard, Hight worked on over 30 games on various platforms, including critically recognized games in Kommando & Conquer, Neverwinter Nights and God of War -Franchise companies.
“It wasn’t a year ago when he entered wizards of the coast. It was incredible. I knew that the goal was to build a digital publishing department,” said Hight in our interview. “We already had a few games, but we wanted our goal essentially to have a few premium games per year that we publish as part of the Wizards label. So it was fun, and one of the first calls that I made after the stig stick was when you want to build one of the best games out there, talk to one of the best developers.”
Asmussen was last Game Director of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and Star Wars Jedi: Fall Order for Respawn Entertainment, a department for electronic arts. Previously, he was the game director at God of War III and the Art Director for God of War II at Sony Santa Monica. Giant Skull has an elite team that will have a significant time to design this new single player-focused action adventure using Unreal Engine 5.
Asmussen said: “We opened a giant skull in September 2023 and a year later John calls me up. He said:” Hey, I’m now with Wizards. “We had spoken during this time.
Grab
Hight reached in December 2024 and said he was really interested in the team. Hight asked whether Asmussen was interested in one of the IPs of Wizards.
“I dug up a little further into the dug up, and dungeons and dragons made a lot of sense.” We grew up. “We just jumped into a contract at this point and visited the Wizard’s headquarters at the Seattle area. There we had to choose the brain of the creative team there and see what a partnership would look like. And I was thoroughly impressed.
Asmussen’s team had a family tree that concentrated on action adventure RPGs, and so it worked on something that concentrated with the melee fighter.
Asumsen said: “I certainly don’t want to say that we could skin it in D&D. But there were many elements we worked on, so they seemed very well.”
The wizard’s ambition
This partnership contributes to wizards of the growing games of the coast, which contain both original titles and those based on popular brands. In addition to the giant skull project, several other exciting games in the North American studios of Wizards are in the works.
Hight said that Archetype Entertainment is working on Exodus in Austin, Texas, an epic sci-fi-RPG that plays the player at the center of an emotional story.
And Atomic Arcade (Raleigh, North Carolina) has published two new pictures from his first project: a game that focuses on snake eyes, the legendary Ninja/Commando by Joe. Invoke (Montreal, Canada) produces another D&D action adventure game that is about magic.
Skeleton Key (Austin, Texas) also works on a project that connects tension, horror and unforgettable gaming experiences. Finally, the Wizards of the Coast Team extends magic: the collective arena with new content and functions.
This relatively new team has a lot to do. Hasbro rides from hits like Larians Big D&D -Hit, Baldur’s Gate 3 and Scopelys Monopol, which has previously achieved more than 5 billion US dollars of more than 5 billion US dollars.
“The awareness of D&D is great. I think the appetite is great. We want both, you know, the CRPG players, the tabletop players and only players in general because it is a wonderful fantasy universe to set games,” said Hight.
Hight said that the goal with magic: The Gathering and D&D essentially consists of drawing more attention to these worlds and bringing more players into these communities. He said there are announced games, studios and unannounced projects.
Come together
“This makes it open to how we express this. D&D does not always have to be expressed in a strict computer -RPG. Magic does not have to be expressed in the strict trading card game. Because the worlds themselves, in the creatures and villains and heroes are the stories that are told in both games,” he said. “I think they are fertile soil to create new things. When I saw the demo of the vertical slice that the Stig team showed me, I found it great.”
Hight added: “It is one of these things in which the circulation in the world that created it was fun. As soon as you have your hand on the controller – you did it, you know, Dean – you want to play.
Hight thought it was an amazing experience. He also wanted to work with Asmussen again because they had already built a game together.
“You have such an honest and transparent relationship in which you simply cut through all BS and know that you have a common interest in making something big,” said Asmussen. “I didn’t want to despair this, I didn’t want to be heavily and I wanted to give him the opportunity. Is that a fit? Is there a brand that we have, which interests you, and even within D&D I wanted to make sure that he and the team have a lot of license to make it your own.”
D&D made sense for this game idea, while magic was not the same type of fit.
“If you play a game, there is the world, there is the backdrop, there is the hero, there are things that the player rings on,” said Asmussen. “But then the game controls everything under the bonnet. This is how the player model works. This is how the camera system works, as the sound can use. And we have all these things for the kind of game that we do well and translate that dungeons and dragons, but it does a lot to learn.”
Big teams or small teams
But nobody is really convinced that the future consists of huge triple-a teams. The Asmussen team now has 35 people and does not expect to grow a lot.
“We intend to keep the team a lot about this size. There is no reason to scale if we don’t need it,” said Asmussen. “You want to reach the point where you have a very strong vertical disc. You do several game tests. As soon as you are very sure, you can make a confident long -term schedule. That would affect the number of heads, but we don’t get huge.”
I have found that so many games have to rise now. I wondered if D&D was in this process. There is now pressure on studios. Some have to make players happy and they also have to be less ambitious.
This last sentence threw out asmussen.
“Did you say less ambitious?” he asked.
And I am not that some teams have gotten too big. The projects have been going for years and never ended. Then something like Concord happens. So now there is the pressure on the teams, and maybe it is better to play a 20-hour game than a 50-hour game.
“I think this is one of the pressure that everyone in the entire industry now feels,” I said. “What is more important to you? Level up D&D is that something about what Larian did, or do you think about what the players actually tell the people you want?”
Hight did not hesitate to answer. He said: “You tell us what you have told us. I have been a player for 30 years and play games. You want great games, whether it is a big budget game, whether it is a small, experimental game. You are looking for innovation. You are looking for a fun experience.”
liberation
Hight is confident that giant skull can deliver that.
“In the case of when you work with a team like Giant Skull, you will give us a big game, a great execution, a wonderful art, a great storytelling. That’s why we have registered it. But I think the main thing is that there is no magical formula. You just have to be good.” Just want great games. “
Asmussen said: “I think the problem could be that people are playing like there are a number of boxes that you have to check. I think it’s about playing a good game. You play a game that feels good. You make a game that has a soul. Watch Expedition 33.
As for the approach, Asmussen said that he will approach the tasks one after the other. As he does, he tries to learn from it and use him to inform him of what to do next. Asmussen and Hight spoke about production budgets and Asmussen ensured that it was high with a premium game.
“We feel comfortable with it,” said Hight. “We certainly have a budget in which we work and I think it’s healthy enough to play a pretty, seriously amazing game. So it is not entirely open.
Asmussen added: “We don’t get around. We make Due Diligence. We make sure that we create a production plan that makes sense, and it is based on real data, data points that we can indicate history that we have made this informed success on the way, since we find out exactly what it is and what it will be.”
