Hasbro will begin developing its own video games starting next year for the first time, CMO Jason Bunge said onstage at ADWEEK’s Brandweek conference in Atlanta.
He wouldn’t divulge more, adding that more details will come at the Game Awards ceremony on Dec. 11.
Hasbro IP like Magic: the Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons has certainly formed the basis of video games, and the company has also alluded to developing its own video games as part of a new corporate strategy, revealed early this year.
Bunge signaled a major shift while speaking at Brandweek. “As we expand the company’s reach into different styles of play, we’re super excited about actually delivering for the first time our first video game,” he said.
Brands are rethinking how they engage with fans
Hasbro’s development is an aggressive move to expand engagement and influence as consumer attention becomes harder to capture and retain.
Brands like Hasbro have long tried to attach themselves to cultural touchstones to drive that reach, but now they’re investing in new strategic arenas because the era of broad one-to-many marketing is largely over, Bunge said.
Hasbro’s influencer strategy also reflects that shift, where it’s less about trying to reach top creators like MrBeasts and more about finding creators with 1,000 or 2,000 followers who are engaged.
“The communities for Monopoly are very different than communities for Transformers are very different than communities for Magic are very different from the communities for video games,” said Bunge.
He added: “We have to be both bespoke, but then we also have to scale.” And the more communities Hasbro can engage with, the bigger the scale. Bunge pointed to recent collabs with Disney, the Final Fantasy video game franchise, and Netflix’s Kpop Demon Hunters hit.
Twitch, the video game livestreaming platform also needs to shift the way it engages with fans, said Rachel Delphin, CMO of Twitch.
“For a long time, we’ve been a place that was a gathering place for fans,” Delphin said. “Increasingly, where we’ve been really trying to operate differently is the brand as a fan.”