At a investor meeting on 12/9/22 they discussed how they want to monetize D&D under a video game model. It is a investor meeting so grain of salt I guess as they are trying to hype investors. At what point do you nope out of the next edition due to this. And given how beyond works maybe nope out of 5e?
For me I don't mind paying a subscription for something like a rock solid VTT as my games have moved more virtual over time. But that is the limit, I wouldn't pay a subscription for access to the books. One time purchase for books sure, ongoing subscription no.
Depends on what they mean by video game model. Like... what does that even mean? You buy a license that only gives you access to a digital copy of D&D but you don't actually own it? I'm not sure what the difference is between that and what we have now.
Microtransactions? Those suck.
Monthly subscription ala MMO? Like... they kinda did that with 4e, but that was with A TON of content where you needed the digital tools to keep track of it all. 5e has nothing close to that amount of content nor the amount of updates to justify it.
Virtual tabletop with great online support? Take my money. With shitty support? I'd have to wait and see.
NFTs? Hell to the no. I'd rather give up gaming as a whole.
I mean, its no secret that DnD is heavily undermonetized, and its completely fair for the parent company to look to get more out of it. There are bad ways to go about this, but the core idea is not inherently bad or unfair.
Build a digital VTT, get a bunch of customers invested in your ecosystem with very low barrier to entry. Offer a host of purchasable things like dice skins, monster minis, avatar portraits, customizable PC minis (wouldn't be surprised to see a partnership with something like Heroforge). Sell digital battlemaps and prop bundles for building new maps.
Allow players to upload and sell their own maps and homebrew content that will seamlessly integrate with the platform, taking a cut of the sales off the top. Allow players to gift each other cosmetics, too. DnDbeyond already sells piecemeal content. Brining more players directly to your tabletop also boosts those sales.
I don't have an issue with any of the above. Where I might start to struggle is if they abuse things like lootboxes or other questionable practices. I'm sure there will be some sort of subscription model available for the VTT to get bonus cosmetics and maybe temporary blanket access to content. But they will also have non-subscription models and probably have free access to the core VTT itself. The success of this business model relies on that low barrier to entry, and a monthly subscription would lock out a lot of players who might otherwise eventually drop money in your store.
Well I would not be surprised at all if micro transactions or new spells, monsters, items, subclasses, races and the like were added. Where players and DMs could purchase individual things for a small charge online rather than having to purchase entire books.
And really they are going to look to focus this on players as right now dms basically purchase everything and let their players use their resources. Meaning they are only selling to the small percentage of their actual user market. Getting players involved instead of just gm's is not easy, but would be massively profitable.
Well I would not be surprised at all if micro transactions or new spells, monsters, items, subclasses, races and the like were added. Where players and DMs could purchase individual things for a small charge online rather than having to purchase entire books.
And really they are going to look to focus this on players as right now dms basically purchase everything and let their players use their resources. Meaning they are only selling to the small percentage of their actual user market. Getting players involved instead of just gm's is not easy, but would be massively profitable.
They already do microtransactions for spells, subclasses, magic items and such. Every time a new book comes out, all of those items are available individually for $1.99
D&Dbeyond already has monthly subscriptions... so most of it is already there. It wouldn't work for physical books, since you can't revoke what is printed, so the main fear would be that they move entirely to digital only; But so long as they don't do that, I think they already literally have everything that video games utilize, unless they can figure out how to some how to do Loot Boxes in a game that has homebrew and DMs.
It's hard to know what they mean. Microtransactions already exist and are likely here to stay, support for third party "mod" (aka homebrew) is likely as well. The digital dice skins are already micro-transcation cosmetic features, and splat books are effectively DLC.
D&Dbeyond already has monthly subscriptions... so most of it is already there. It wouldn't work for physical books, since you can't revoke what is printed, so the main fear would be that they move entirely to digital only; But so long as they don't do that, I think they already literally have everything that video games utilize, unless they can figure out how to some how to do Loot Boxes in a game that has homebrew and DMs.
Yeah that is the thing, to make it a point of the presentation of something they need to do in the future seems like they are saying the monetization practices so far are not enough. I'm not saying they are at my limit but I'm not sure how much further they can push it either.
D&Dbeyond already has monthly subscriptions... so most of it is already there. It wouldn't work for physical books, since you can't revoke what is printed, so the main fear would be that they move entirely to digital only; But so long as they don't do that, I think they already literally have everything that video games utilize, unless they can figure out how to some how to do Loot Boxes in a game that has homebrew and DMs.
One thing I don't think people are accounting for is how content sharing currently works on DnD Beyond. Currently if you are in a game on DnD beyond the DM can just share all of his content with the players and the players just have full access to what ever the DM has. If they remove sharable content it would force players to get all of the things they want for what ever campaign. The idea here is they KNOW the DM's are buying things and want to encourage players to buy more. People would be mad, but removing sharable content online will do one of 2 things. A. increase player purchases, B. Decrease the number of people that play online without using pen and Paper, C. Decrease the number of players and DM's in general.
I mean, its no secret that DnD is heavily undermonetized,
Well, of course that isn't a secret.
In order for it to be a secret, it would have to be true first.
And in order for it to be true, the idea that something can be 'undermonitized' would have to be real and not some sick perversity of greed cooked up in the mind of someone who sees things only in terms of how much money can be nickled and dimed out of people.
It's not like D&D as a product is actively losing WotC money. They may not be making all the money in the world or even all the money they possibly could be from D&D, but they definitely make more than enough to keep the lights on. Trying to make even more money off of D&D would negatively affect user experience and, therefore, the quality of the product.
I mean, its no secret that DnD is heavily undermonetized,
Well, of course that isn't a secret.
In order for it to be a secret, it would have to be true first.
And in order for it to be true, the idea that something can be 'undermonitized' would have to be real and not some sick perversity of greed cooked up in the mind of someone who sees things only in terms of how much money can be nickled and dimed out of people.
It's not like D&D as a product is actively losing WotC money. They may not be making all the money in the world or even all the money they possibly could be from D&D, but they definitely make more than enough to keep the lights on. Trying to make even more money off of D&D would negatively affect user experience and, therefore, the quality of the product.
So in terms of business language, what a businessman means when they say something is "undermonetized" is along the lines of Under-utilized. Their is a large opportunity with Dungeon and Dragons that the company feels they are not taking advantage of. It may be a case of books, T-shirts, Official Custom figurines, Video games, since they mention Baldur's Gate 3 that is utilizing the 5e ruleset with some tweaks. Dungeons and Dragons is a massive IP and the people at Hasbro feel their may be a lot of missed opportunities for cashing in on that name recognition and developing that IP.
Roll a bad roll? Buy our 'Reroll Natural 1's' pack! A series of tokens you can hand to your GM to reroll any natural 1's you roll! Halfling-sized packs start at $0.99 for 5 charges and go up to $99.99 for our Gold Dragon pack.
We also offer special 'Ra-*cough*IMEANSPECIES booster packs' to enhance your game! Each booster pack come with five new possible options for character customization including one rare or higher! Features like 'Red Dwarf Hair' and 'Spiral Curved Tiefling Horn' can now be unlocked with ease!
We also took our adventures and broke them u*COUGH COUGH* I MEAN EXPANDED THEM into three separate adventures each retailing for $29.99! Now you can experience 'Swear Word of Strahd' 'Curse of Strahd' and 'Cancelation for Bad Language of Strahd'!
Finally we offer new adventures like... Baronbuilder and Fury of the Just!
It's not like D&D as a product is actively losing WotC money. They may not be making all the money in the world or even all the money they possibly could be from D&D, but they definitely make more than enough to keep the lights on. Trying to make even more money off of D&D would negatively affect user experience and, therefore, the quality of the product.
Hasbro and WotC have, in fact, been losing money lately. And in corporate world, if you're not making all the money, you're a failure and should be optimized. Which usually means milking the customers dry and churning out a series of half-assed, half baked products with little to no support. At least that's what's going on in gaming industry.
Hasbro and WotC have, in fact, been losing money lately. And in corporate world, if you're not making all the money, you're a failure and should be optimized. Which usually means milking the customers dry and churning out a series of half-assed, half baked products with little to no support. At least that's what's going on in gaming industry.
If I'm parsing that article correctly, Hasbro and WotC are losing money specifically because they did exactly that thing with MtG and it hurt both vendors and players to such an extent that it led to less people buying cards and playing the game.
It's not like D&D as a product is actively losing WotC money. They may not be making all the money in the world or even all the money they possibly could be from D&D, but they definitely make more than enough to keep the lights on. Trying to make even more money off of D&D would negatively affect user experience and, therefore, the quality of the product.
Hasbro and WotC have, in fact, been losing money lately. And in corporate world, if you're not making all the money, you're a failure and should be optimized. Which usually means milking the customers dry and churning out a series of half-assed, half baked products with little to no support. At least that's what's going on in gaming industry.
They aren't "losing" money, they are seeing diminishing profits but are still making profit, what we are seeing is a natural side effect of COVID, which dramatically spiked their profits during the lockdowns. Most corporations will always be trying to milk their customers and I have little care for MtG to begin with but printing overpriced cards half-assed cards looks like nothing new to me.
Hasbro and WotC have, in fact, been losing money lately. And in corporate world, if you're not making all the money, you're a failure and should be optimized. Which usually means milking the customers dry and churning out a series of half-assed, half baked products with little to no support. At least that's what's going on in gaming industry.
If I'm parsing that article correctly, Hasbro and WotC are losing money specifically because they did exactly that thing with MtG and it hurt both vendors and players to such an extent that it led to less people buying cards and playing the game.
As if any corporation ever had the insight to come to this conclusion...
There's a lot of factors that are leading to the decline in sales and I won't even begin to try and figure them all out. I do think that, regardless, they need to be extremely careful with what they do and I highly suspect that tilting so heavily into whaling/microtransactions/stuff like that, for a game franchise that's already notorious for its steep price of entry, would likely sink the ship faster than anything possible. For example, with MtG, I've heard they're looking to do more cross-over stuff and I suspect that will lead to more players leaving the game out of disgust and the sensation that they're w***ing themselves out than it will bring in. A crossover every once in a while is interesting and cool. A non-stop stream of them... not good.
MTG has a couple of factors that make it different from D&D.
1) In MTG there is a culture of in-person play that greatly prefers for you to own the physical cards. Everyone's tables are different, but it's a collectible card game and powerful/rare cards are more expensive. And MTG players are used to spending money for them. Whereas in D&D you could literally play an entire campaign for free. I think most groups probably have a DM and 1-2 players who have bought books, but the culture is more about sharing those resources. And I haven't been a part of a D&D group that shunned anyone for not spending money on books or dice or literally anything else.
2) In the last couple of years MTG has recently suffered from oversaturation of new cards. There's something new to buy seemingly every month. And everything that is released is relevant to the games you play because each set becomes legally playable, and with some formats is compatible with every other set (minus a banned cards list for various formats). D&D doesn't have this issue. Every table gets to choose what sourcebooks and adventures will be used in their games. I think if we got a new book every month, maybe it would feel like a bit too much, but again no one's forcing everyone to buy everything that comes out because the table decides what is allowed and what isn't.
-----
So, how do you monetize D&D? Well, one way would be to try to force things in the direction of MTG. Try to instill a culture of collection and a need to buy every new product. But I think this is an extremely tough uphill battle. Changing culture is difficult and works best when it happens organically. I could potentially see a new product (like a VTT) being built with this type of model in mind, but any new product would be an optional tool and wouldn't change the core experience of D&D. And the market for D&D tools is extremely competitive, so again, you'll have options if you don't want to buy into something that seems exploitative.
A different way would be to simply raise the price of everything. I think you risk losing good will when you do this, and you raise the barrier of entry for new players. I'm sure the cost-benefit analysis here is complicated, but in general this strategy is not good for growth of your user base. This is what you do when you've realized you've stopped growing and need to extract the most money you can before your existing users start leaving. (Production costs driving price increases are a separate issue, but might still cause loss of confidence with users).
Another way would be to try to capitalize on D&D's huge name recognition. Almost everyone has heard of the game, but I'd guess the number of actual players is a tiny percentage. So, the solution is to get more players to experience the game first-hand. Then you increase your potential paying customers and nothing else about the core experience really has to change. How you accomplish this is to continue to get the game in front of people through other media, but maybe also through more hands-on programs.
But in any of these cases, I think the fact remains that you'll pretty much always be able to play D&D without spending a lot of money. Certainly not the kind of money that MTG players spend. I think it will be easy to recognize when WOTC is trying to take advantage of your love of D&D, and I think they're aware you have plenty of other options to continue playing the game maybe with unofficial tool support.
----
On another note, the encroachment of other IPs isn't necessarily a lose-lose proposition. MTG has been a little bit hit or miss, but when they hit (40k commander set), they knock it out of the park. But again, each D&D table gets to decide what is allowed and what isn't, so no one's FORCING anyone to play with this kind of material, unlike in MTG.
So, how do you monetize D&D? Well, one way would be to try to force things in the direction of MTG. Try to instill a culture of collection and a need to buy every new product. But I think this is an extremely tough uphill battle. Changing culture is difficult and works best when it happens organically. I could potentially see a new product (like a VTT) being built with this type of model in mind, but any new product would be an optional tool and wouldn't change the core experience of D&D. And the market for D&D tools is extremely competitive, so again, you'll have options if you don't want to buy into something that seems exploitative.
WotC / Hasboro even mentioned in the video that the monetization strategy for D&D has to be different from MtG. MtG always way and always will be a microtransaction, player-exploitative game. MtG is the archetype of all the "collectible X game" which laid the foundation for videogame lootboxes. Each pack of magic cards is a microtransaction lootbox, just in physical form. It is well established that such games 80% of revenue comes from the top 20% of players so WotC just needs to make the barrier to entry low enough to keep a revolving door of casual players to keep the game alive enough that the whales remain interested.
D&D however is not structured like that, it is a cooperative game thus rules MUST be shared among DMs & Players alike so randomized mechanical rewards are simply not possible. However, the D&D community already has plenty of interest in collectibles they can exploit: customizable character art or tokens or figurines, DICE! (digital or physical), monster art / miniatures, and terrain pieces for building maps. WotC has already started monetizing dice sets, I would not be surprised at all if D&D Beyond releases custom sheet designs and/or art packs as microtransactions in the future (especially with the rise of AI art generation, I could totally see a low-cost AI generated items, character art, and location / atmosphere art becoming a new product). A price of $5 for 20-50 bits of character art seems like a viable proposition to both players & dms. Map and token packs for VTTs are another easy source of monetization.
Beyond game accessories (which are already basically a mini industry already), you have expansions into other types of media - movies, videogames, TV, novels... etc...
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At a investor meeting on 12/9/22 they discussed how they want to monetize D&D under a video game model. It is a investor meeting so grain of salt I guess as they are trying to hype investors. At what point do you nope out of the next edition due to this. And given how beyond works maybe nope out of 5e?
For me I don't mind paying a subscription for something like a rock solid VTT as my games have moved more virtual over time. But that is the limit, I wouldn't pay a subscription for access to the books. One time purchase for books sure, ongoing subscription no.
Depends on what they mean by video game model. Like... what does that even mean? You buy a license that only gives you access to a digital copy of D&D but you don't actually own it? I'm not sure what the difference is between that and what we have now.
Microtransactions? Those suck.
Monthly subscription ala MMO? Like... they kinda did that with 4e, but that was with A TON of content where you needed the digital tools to keep track of it all. 5e has nothing close to that amount of content nor the amount of updates to justify it.
Virtual tabletop with great online support? Take my money. With shitty support? I'd have to wait and see.
NFTs? Hell to the no. I'd rather give up gaming as a whole.
I mean, its no secret that DnD is heavily undermonetized, and its completely fair for the parent company to look to get more out of it. There are bad ways to go about this, but the core idea is not inherently bad or unfair.
Build a digital VTT, get a bunch of customers invested in your ecosystem with very low barrier to entry. Offer a host of purchasable things like dice skins, monster minis, avatar portraits, customizable PC minis (wouldn't be surprised to see a partnership with something like Heroforge). Sell digital battlemaps and prop bundles for building new maps.
Allow players to upload and sell their own maps and homebrew content that will seamlessly integrate with the platform, taking a cut of the sales off the top. Allow players to gift each other cosmetics, too. DnDbeyond already sells piecemeal content. Brining more players directly to your tabletop also boosts those sales.
I don't have an issue with any of the above. Where I might start to struggle is if they abuse things like lootboxes or other questionable practices. I'm sure there will be some sort of subscription model available for the VTT to get bonus cosmetics and maybe temporary blanket access to content. But they will also have non-subscription models and probably have free access to the core VTT itself. The success of this business model relies on that low barrier to entry, and a monthly subscription would lock out a lot of players who might otherwise eventually drop money in your store.
Well I would not be surprised at all if micro transactions or new spells, monsters, items, subclasses, races and the like were added. Where players and DMs could purchase individual things for a small charge online rather than having to purchase entire books.
And really they are going to look to focus this on players as right now dms basically purchase everything and let their players use their resources. Meaning they are only selling to the small percentage of their actual user market. Getting players involved instead of just gm's is not easy, but would be massively profitable.
They already do microtransactions for spells, subclasses, magic items and such. Every time a new book comes out, all of those items are available individually for $1.99
D&Dbeyond already has monthly subscriptions... so most of it is already there. It wouldn't work for physical books, since you can't revoke what is printed, so the main fear would be that they move entirely to digital only; But so long as they don't do that, I think they already literally have everything that video games utilize, unless they can figure out how to some how to do Loot Boxes in a game that has homebrew and DMs.
It's hard to know what they mean. Microtransactions already exist and are likely here to stay, support for third party "mod" (aka homebrew) is likely as well. The digital dice skins are already micro-transcation cosmetic features, and splat books are effectively DLC.
Yeah that is the thing, to make it a point of the presentation of something they need to do in the future seems like they are saying the monetization practices so far are not enough. I'm not saying they are at my limit but I'm not sure how much further they can push it either.
One thing I don't think people are accounting for is how content sharing currently works on DnD Beyond. Currently if you are in a game on DnD beyond the DM can just share all of his content with the players and the players just have full access to what ever the DM has. If they remove sharable content it would force players to get all of the things they want for what ever campaign. The idea here is they KNOW the DM's are buying things and want to encourage players to buy more. People would be mad, but removing sharable content online will do one of 2 things. A. increase player purchases, B. Decrease the number of people that play online without using pen and Paper, C. Decrease the number of players and DM's in general.
Just thoughts on negative things they could do.
Well, of course that isn't a secret.
In order for it to be a secret, it would have to be true first.
And in order for it to be true, the idea that something can be 'undermonitized' would have to be real and not some sick perversity of greed cooked up in the mind of someone who sees things only in terms of how much money can be nickled and dimed out of people.
It's not like D&D as a product is actively losing WotC money. They may not be making all the money in the world or even all the money they possibly could be from D&D, but they definitely make more than enough to keep the lights on. Trying to make even more money off of D&D would negatively affect user experience and, therefore, the quality of the product.
So in terms of business language, what a businessman means when they say something is "undermonetized" is along the lines of Under-utilized. Their is a large opportunity with Dungeon and Dragons that the company feels they are not taking advantage of. It may be a case of books, T-shirts, Official Custom figurines, Video games, since they mention Baldur's Gate 3 that is utilizing the 5e ruleset with some tweaks. Dungeons and Dragons is a massive IP and the people at Hasbro feel their may be a lot of missed opportunities for cashing in on that name recognition and developing that IP.
Roll a bad roll? Buy our 'Reroll Natural 1's' pack! A series of tokens you can hand to your GM to reroll any natural 1's you roll! Halfling-sized packs start at $0.99 for 5 charges and go up to $99.99 for our Gold Dragon pack.
We also offer special 'Ra-*cough*IMEANSPECIES booster packs' to enhance your game! Each booster pack come with five new possible options for character customization including one rare or higher! Features like 'Red Dwarf Hair' and 'Spiral Curved Tiefling Horn' can now be unlocked with ease!
We also took our adventures and broke them u*COUGH COUGH* I MEAN EXPANDED THEM into three separate adventures each retailing for $29.99! Now you can experience 'Swear Word of Strahd' 'Curse of Strahd' and 'Cancelation for Bad Language of Strahd'!
Finally we offer new adventures like... Baronbuilder and Fury of the Just!
Hasbro and WotC have, in fact, been losing money lately. And in corporate world, if you're not making all the money, you're a failure and should be optimized. Which usually means milking the customers dry and churning out a series of half-assed, half baked products with little to no support. At least that's what's going on in gaming industry.
If I'm parsing that article correctly, Hasbro and WotC are losing money specifically because they did exactly that thing with MtG and it hurt both vendors and players to such an extent that it led to less people buying cards and playing the game.
They aren't "losing" money, they are seeing diminishing profits but are still making profit, what we are seeing is a natural side effect of COVID, which dramatically spiked their profits during the lockdowns. Most corporations will always be trying to milk their customers and I have little care for MtG to begin with but printing overpriced cards half-assed cards looks like nothing new to me.
As if any corporation ever had the insight to come to this conclusion...
There's a lot of factors that are leading to the decline in sales and I won't even begin to try and figure them all out. I do think that, regardless, they need to be extremely careful with what they do and I highly suspect that tilting so heavily into whaling/microtransactions/stuff like that, for a game franchise that's already notorious for its steep price of entry, would likely sink the ship faster than anything possible. For example, with MtG, I've heard they're looking to do more cross-over stuff and I suspect that will lead to more players leaving the game out of disgust and the sensation that they're w***ing themselves out than it will bring in. A crossover every once in a while is interesting and cool. A non-stop stream of them... not good.
MTG has a couple of factors that make it different from D&D.
1) In MTG there is a culture of in-person play that greatly prefers for you to own the physical cards. Everyone's tables are different, but it's a collectible card game and powerful/rare cards are more expensive. And MTG players are used to spending money for them. Whereas in D&D you could literally play an entire campaign for free. I think most groups probably have a DM and 1-2 players who have bought books, but the culture is more about sharing those resources. And I haven't been a part of a D&D group that shunned anyone for not spending money on books or dice or literally anything else.
2) In the last couple of years MTG has recently suffered from oversaturation of new cards. There's something new to buy seemingly every month. And everything that is released is relevant to the games you play because each set becomes legally playable, and with some formats is compatible with every other set (minus a banned cards list for various formats). D&D doesn't have this issue. Every table gets to choose what sourcebooks and adventures will be used in their games. I think if we got a new book every month, maybe it would feel like a bit too much, but again no one's forcing everyone to buy everything that comes out because the table decides what is allowed and what isn't.
-----
So, how do you monetize D&D? Well, one way would be to try to force things in the direction of MTG. Try to instill a culture of collection and a need to buy every new product. But I think this is an extremely tough uphill battle. Changing culture is difficult and works best when it happens organically. I could potentially see a new product (like a VTT) being built with this type of model in mind, but any new product would be an optional tool and wouldn't change the core experience of D&D. And the market for D&D tools is extremely competitive, so again, you'll have options if you don't want to buy into something that seems exploitative.
A different way would be to simply raise the price of everything. I think you risk losing good will when you do this, and you raise the barrier of entry for new players. I'm sure the cost-benefit analysis here is complicated, but in general this strategy is not good for growth of your user base. This is what you do when you've realized you've stopped growing and need to extract the most money you can before your existing users start leaving. (Production costs driving price increases are a separate issue, but might still cause loss of confidence with users).
Another way would be to try to capitalize on D&D's huge name recognition. Almost everyone has heard of the game, but I'd guess the number of actual players is a tiny percentage. So, the solution is to get more players to experience the game first-hand. Then you increase your potential paying customers and nothing else about the core experience really has to change. How you accomplish this is to continue to get the game in front of people through other media, but maybe also through more hands-on programs.
But in any of these cases, I think the fact remains that you'll pretty much always be able to play D&D without spending a lot of money. Certainly not the kind of money that MTG players spend. I think it will be easy to recognize when WOTC is trying to take advantage of your love of D&D, and I think they're aware you have plenty of other options to continue playing the game maybe with unofficial tool support.
----
On another note, the encroachment of other IPs isn't necessarily a lose-lose proposition. MTG has been a little bit hit or miss, but when they hit (40k commander set), they knock it out of the park. But again, each D&D table gets to decide what is allowed and what isn't, so no one's FORCING anyone to play with this kind of material, unlike in MTG.
What about trying to produce a product that is both good and universally appealing that causes people to desire to upgrade to the newest edition?
WotC / Hasboro even mentioned in the video that the monetization strategy for D&D has to be different from MtG. MtG always way and always will be a microtransaction, player-exploitative game. MtG is the archetype of all the "collectible X game" which laid the foundation for videogame lootboxes. Each pack of magic cards is a microtransaction lootbox, just in physical form. It is well established that such games 80% of revenue comes from the top 20% of players so WotC just needs to make the barrier to entry low enough to keep a revolving door of casual players to keep the game alive enough that the whales remain interested.
D&D however is not structured like that, it is a cooperative game thus rules MUST be shared among DMs & Players alike so randomized mechanical rewards are simply not possible. However, the D&D community already has plenty of interest in collectibles they can exploit: customizable character art or tokens or figurines, DICE! (digital or physical), monster art / miniatures, and terrain pieces for building maps. WotC has already started monetizing dice sets, I would not be surprised at all if D&D Beyond releases custom sheet designs and/or art packs as microtransactions in the future (especially with the rise of AI art generation, I could totally see a low-cost AI generated items, character art, and location / atmosphere art becoming a new product). A price of $5 for 20-50 bits of character art seems like a viable proposition to both players & dms. Map and token packs for VTTs are another easy source of monetization.
Beyond game accessories (which are already basically a mini industry already), you have expansions into other types of media - movies, videogames, TV, novels... etc...