Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast LLC is an American game publisher, mostly of fantasy and science-fiction games, and formerly an operator of retail game stores. In 1999, toy manufacturer Hasbro acquired the company and currently operates it as a subsidiary. During a February 2021 reorganization of Hasbro, WotC became the lead part of a new division called "Wizards & Digital".
WotC was originally a role-playing game publisher that in the mid-1990s originated and popularized collectible card games with Magic: The Gathering. It later acquired TSR, publisher of the RPG Dungeons & Dragons, and published the licensed Pokémon Trading Card Game from 1999 to 2003. WotC's corporate headquarters is located in Renton, Washington, which is part of the Seattle metropolitan area.
The company publishes RPGs, board games, and collectible card games. It has received numerous awards, including several Origins Awards. The company has also produced sets of sports cards and series for association football, baseball, basketball and American football.
History
Wizards of the Coast was founded by Peter Adkison in 1990 outside of Seattle, Washington, and its current headquarters is located in nearby Renton. The company was named after a guild of wizards in a role-playing game Adkison was playing. The company published RPGs such as the third edition of Talislanta and its own product The Primal Order. The Primal Order was a supplement designed for use with any game system, but Palladium Books sued WotC for using references to Palladium's game and system. The suit was settled in 1993.In 1991, Richard Garfield approached WotC with the idea for a new board game called RoboRally but Adkison rejected it because the game would have been too expensive to produce. Adkison asked Garfield if he could invent a game that was portable and quick-playing, and Garfield agreed.
Adkison set up a new corporation called Garfield Games to develop Garfield's collectible card game concept into Magic: The Gathering. The new company sheltered the game from the legal battle with Palladium. Garfield Games then licensed the production and sale rights to WotC until the court case was settled, at which point Garfield Games was shut down. WotC debuted Magic: The Gathering in July 1993 at Origins Game Fair in Dallas. The following month, the game was extremely popular at Gen Con, selling out of its supply of 2.5 million cards, which had been planned to last until the end of the year. The game's success generated revenue that grew the company in two years from a few employees working in Adkison's basement headquarters to 250 employees in its own offices. In 1994, Magic: The Gathering won the Mensa Top Five Mind Games award, and the Origins Awards for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Board Game of 1993 and Best Graphic Presentation of a Board Game of 1993.
In 1994, WotC began an association with The Beanstalk Group, a brand-licensing agency and consultancy, to license the brand Magic: The Gathering. After the success of Magic: The Gathering, in 1994, WotC published RoboRally, which won the 1994 Origins Awards for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Board Game and Best Graphic Presentation of a Board Game. Also in 1994, WotC also expanded its RPG line by buying SLA Industries from Nightfall Games and Ars Magica from White Wolf. In 1995, WotC published The Great Dalmuti, another card game by Richard Garfield, which won the 1995 Mensa Best New Mind Game award. In August 1995, WotC released Everway before closing its RPG product line four months later. In 1995, Wizards' annual sales passed US$65 million.
Acquisition of TSR and ''Pokémon Trading Card Game''
Wizards of the Coast announced the purchase of TSR, the makers of Dungeons & Dragons, on April 10, 1997. WotC acquired TSR and Five Rings Publishing Group for $25 million. As part of the sale, TSR employees were offered an opportunity to relocate from Wisconsin to the west coast. WotC continued using the brand name TSR until 2000 and allowed the trademark to expire in 2004. Between 1997 and 1999, the company spun off several TSR campaign settings, including Planescape, Dark Sun, and Spelljammer, to focus the business on the more profitable Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms lines.In mid 1997, WotC revisited the concept of a third edition of Dungeons & Dragons, having first discussed it soon after the purchase of TSR. WotC released the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons in 2000 with the d20 System. The company released these properties under the Open Game License, which allows other companies to make use of those systems.
The new edition of Dungeons & Dragons won multiple Origins Awards in 2000, such as Best Roleplaying Game for Dungeons & Dragons and Best Graphic Presentation of a Roleplaying Game, Adventure, or Supplement for the Monster Manual. In 2002, WotC sponsored a design contest for which designers could submit proposals to produce a new campaign world to the company. WotC selected "Eberron", which game designer Keith Baker submitted, and its first campaign book was released in June 2004. The Eberron Campaign Setting won the 2004 Origins Award for Best Role-Playing Supplement. In 2003, WotC released version 3.5 of Dungeons & Dragons and the d20 system. The 30th anniversary of the D&D game was celebrated at Gen Con Indy 2004.
''Pokémon TCG''
On August 2, 1997, Wizards of the Coast was granted on collectible card games. In January 1999, WotC began publishing Pokémon Trading Card Game after acquiring the rights in August 1998. The game sold nearly 400,000 copies in less than six weeks and sold 10-times more units than initial projections. Some sports card series were discontinued in 1999 because so many printers were producing Pokémon cards. The game won the National Parenting Center's 1999 Seal of Approval.Within a year, WotC had sold millions of copies of the Pokémon game and the company released a new set that included an instructional CD-ROM. WotC continued to publish the game until 2003. One of Nintendo's affiliates The Pokémon Company began producing a new edition for the game one day after the last of its agreements with Wizards expired on September 30, 2003. The following day, WotC filed suit against Nintendo, accusing it of "abandoning a contract with Wizards, the longtime producer and distributor of Pokémon trading-card games, and using Wizards-patented methods and technology to manufacture the games itself". The companies resolved the legal action in December 2003 without going to court.
Retail stores
After the company's success in 1999 with Pokémon, Wizards of the Coast acquired and expanded The Game Keeper, a US chain of retail gaming stores, eventually changing its name to Wizards of the Coast. The company's gaming center in Seattle was closed in March 2001. In December 2003, WotC announced it would close all of its stores to allow it concentrate on game design. The stores were closed in early 2004.Acquisition by Hasbro
In September 1999, toy manufacturer Hasbro bought Wizards of the Coast for about US$325 million. Avalon Hill, which Hasbro had purchased in mid-1998, was made a division of WotC in late 1999. In November 1999, WotC announced Gen Con would leave Milwaukee after the 2002 convention. Also in November, Vince Caluori became President of WotC.On January 1, 2001, Peter Adkison resigned from WotC. In August 2001, the company, which had been a semi-independent division of Hasbro, was consolidated into Hasbro's game division. According to trade magazine ICv2: "this is seen as a loss of autonomy for WotC by most. The Hasbro release specified that despite the consolidation at the management level, WotC will continue to operate out of its Seattle offices." Between 2001 and 2002, Hasbro sold Origins Game Fair to Game Manufacturers Association, and in May 2002, it sold Gen Con to Peter Adkison.
2000–2010
In 2000, Wizards of the Coast introduced the Open Game License, which allowed the production of a wide range of unofficial commercial derivative works based on the mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons; it is credited with increasing the market share of d20 products and leading to a "boom in the RPG industry in the early 2000s". Chuck Huebner became president and CEO of Wizards of the Coast in June 2002. In 2003, the company employed 850 people.Throughout the early 2000s, WotC won multiple Origins Awards, including: 2001 Best Role-Playing Game Supplement '' and the Best Game Related Novel ; 2002 Best Role-Playing Adventure ; 2005 Collectible Card Game or Expansion of the Year and Gamer's Choice Best Historical Game of the Year, and the 2006 Miniature or Miniatures Line of the Year. It also won the 2002 Gold Ennie Award for "Best Publisher" and the 2006 Silver Ennie Award for "Fan's Choice for Best Publisher".
In 2002, Wizards of the Coast's periodicals department was spun off; WotC outsourced its magazines by licensing Dungeon, Dragon, Polyhedron, and Amazing Stories to Paizo Publishing. The license expired in September 2007 and WotC began publishing the magazines online. In 2003, WotC released Dungeons & Dragons miniatures; collectible, painted, plastic miniature games. In 2004, the company added a licensed Star Wars line. In April 2004, Loren Greenwood succeeded Huebner as the subsidiary's president. Also in 2004, Avalon Hill became a subsidiary of WotC.
In early 2006, WotC filed a lawsuit against Daron Rutter, who was the administrator of the website MTG Salvation. The lawsuit said Rutter publicly posted confidential prototypes of upcoming Magic: The Gathering card sets to the MTG Salvation forums, ten months before the cards were to be released. The lawsuit was settled out of court, according to Mark Rosewater.
Greg Leeds succeeded Greenwood as president and CEO of WotC in March 2008. On June 6, 2008, Wizards released the fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and began introducing fourth-edition online content in Dragon and Dungeon magazines.
Throughout the 2000s, WotC released new editions of Magic: The Gathering. In 2009, WotC announced a new edition called Magic 2010, which coincided with the first major rules change to Magic since the Revised Edition was released in 1994.
By 2008, the company employed over 300 people and went through a restructuring. On April 6, 2009, WotC suspended all sales of its products for the Dungeons & Dragons games in PDF format from places such as OneBookShelf, and its online storefronts RPGNow and DriveThruRPG. The company launched a lawsuit against eight people to prevent future copyright infringement of its books, including fourth-edition Dungeons & Dragons'' products that were sold through these places, and all older editions PDFs of the game.