10 years after buying White Wolf from CCP Games, and seven years after eliminating it as a “separate entity,” Paradox Interactive is bringing it back as “the official licensing and publishing entity for all its transmedia properties, including Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and Hunter: The Reckoning.”
White Wolf will also serve as co-publisher of the upcoming Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, which is set to launch in October.
“I’m incredibly excited and proud to bring back White Wolf as an independent business entity, taking the legendary World of Darkness IP portfolio into the future,” World of Darkness EVP Marco Behrmann said in today’s announcement. “Establishing a dedicated publishing wing for our internally developed tabletop role-playing games strengthens our already successful licensing business. This lets us develop both classic and new IPs faster and with a clearer long-term transmedia vision, always in collaboration with our passionate fans and partners.
“The White Wolf name echoes in eternity, with strong brand recognition across entertainment sectors, including game makers, licensing partners, retailers, and distributors. This rebirth is a huge win for our fans because it empowers us to create the products, experiences, and worlds they want to explore.”
I’m generally skeptical of the impact of rebranding exercises: Is putting a new name over the door really “empowering the brand to work closely with partners to create interconnected stories and develop more products for fans” in ways that it couldn’t under the World of Darkness brand? Maybe.
All things White Wolf “will have direct access to the brand’s development resources and marketing support,” Paradox said, along with “access to a global network of distributors and partners, ensuring that World of Darkness fans worldwide can experience the brand’s compelling stories.” Which is all good, but again, I’m not clear how a new letterhead drives that in ways that World of Darkness could not.
Even so, the troubled history of the White Wolf brand makes it an interesting move. White Wolf was founded in 1991 and merged with CCP—yes, the EVE Online people—in 2006, but a planned World of Darkness MMO (which seemed, and honestly still seems, like a can’t-miss idea) floundered and was eventually cancelled in 2014.
Paradox bought White Wolf and all related assets in 2015, but pulled the plug three years later following the release of Vampire: The Masquerade source books that inappropriately referenced purges of gay people in Chechnya and also faced allegations of catering to Nazis.
“In practical terms, White Wolf will no longer function as a separate entity,” Shams Jorjani, who at the time served as Paradox’s VP of business development, wrote in a now-deleted announcement (via the Wayback Machine). “The White Wolf team will be restructured and integrated directly into Paradox Interactive, and I will be temporarily managing things during this process. We are recruiting new leadership to guide White Wolf both creatively and commercially into the future, a process that has been ongoing since September.
“Going forward, White Wolf will focus on brand management. This means White Wolf will develop the guiding principles for its vision of the World of Darkness, and give licensees the tools they need to create new, excellent products in this story world. White Wolf will no longer develop and publish these products internally. This has always been the intended goal for White Wolf as a company, and it is now time to enact it.”
By some measures, seven years is a long time—long enough for White Wolf’s controversial past to be mostly forgotten, or at least to have blown over. Even so, resurrecting the brand strikes me as a bit of a head-scratcher: Is there really that much more brand strength and recognition in White Wolf than there is in World of Darkness? Maybe old-time tabletop gamers will feel differently, but when I think of Vampire (or Werewolf, which is where I first came into contact with the games), I think World of Darkness first and foremost.
I’ve asked Paradox if it’s willing to share any more insights into its reasons for bringing back the White Wolf brand, and will update if I receive a reply. In the meantime, here’s a closer look at what started all of this: Bloodlines 2, as noted, is now set for launch in October, and despite plenty of well-documented troubles of its own, it seems to be coming together very nicely.