Dungeons & Dragons license holder Wizards of the Coast wants to "release premium" video games going forward, but to do so, it's "going to have to make some bets on up-and-coming talent."
Baldur's Gate 3 was far from the first Dungeons & Dragons game, and it certainly won't be the last. In fact, the director of the Star Wars Jedi games – Stig Asmussen – is currently working on his own D&D action-adventure (not Baldur's Gate 4) with new studio Giant Skull, which comes following "an exclusive publishing agreement" with Wizards of the Coast, which also owns Magic: The Gathering.
However, in an interview with The Game Business, Wizards of the Coast president John Hight acknowledges that while Asmussen is a big, well-known name in the games industry, not everyone that the company works with going forward will be.
"We are going to release premium games," Hight begins. "There are going to be, hopefully, some of the best games that you'll see. You're going to start to associate the Wizards brand with premium publishing of games."
He continues: "You don't find folks like Stig every day. So, we're going to have to make some bets on up-and-coming talent, and maybe do smaller games and give them a shot at building up teams and learning along the way. We're going to do some experimental stuff."
As of now, Hight says "we have five internal studios," and the company is "going to bring on a few more projects, hopefully of this ilk, maybe not quite as big as what Stig aspires to do." After that, we can expect "a number of smaller things," although Hight notes that "I don't want to put an exact number on it."
Hight concludes: "We're looking at a lot of stuff, and we're trying to invest in the things that we believe in most. But we've got room for more."
Honestly, this sounds like a really promising move overall. While we can all get excited about games from notable, veteran developers, fresh faces can bring about some real masterpieces, too. I mean, just look at Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – its development team was largely made up of junior developers (thanks, BBC) and look at what they managed to achieve.
