At Christmas in 1998, Chris Cocks received a copy of Baldur’s Gate. His future wife had given him a fantasy role-playing game. It would also become an argument for changing jobs. He was working at Procter & Gamble, a Harvard graduate on an established corporate path, when a computer game reminded him how much he wanted a different one.
The game revived an enthusiasm that had accompanied him through childhood and college. Within roughly nine months, he recalled, he was at Microsoft. Soon he was helping build the first-party games organization for Xbox. A present chosen for his spare time had begun rearranging his working life.
Many years and several job titles later, Cocks became chief executive of Hasbro, the company that owns Dungeons & Dragons, the game behind Baldur’s Gate. Careers rarely provide such obliging narrative symmetry. This one arrived with dice.
The neighbor with the rulebook
His introduction to D&D came around age nine or ten, through a friend’s older brother who acted as Dungeon Master. The attraction went beyond winning. Here was a game in which children could build a story together, make decisions inside it, and discover that the evening’s entertainment depended partly on their own invention.
Cocks has described that encounter as an opening into reading and storytelling. Terry Brooks’s The Sword of Shannara became an early companion to the game. Decades later, when Brooks visited Wizards of the Coast, Cocks had the peculiar pleasure of meeting an author whose work had helped furnish his imagination.
His preferred D&D character, he said in 2018, was a fighter-thief. It is a practical combination: someone equipped for a direct approach, with alternatives available. The larger point is that he remembers the character. Games leave people with surprisingly durable possessions, even when those possessions never existed outside a character sheet.
“I think the biggest reason to do it is it’s fun.”
Chris Cocks, on playing Dungeons & Dragons, 2018
Learning to sell the adventure
Cocks attended Harvard from 1992 to 1996, then began his career in brand management at Procter & Gamble. His eventual escape into games did not mean escaping business. At Microsoft, he worked in product management and marketing, including on Xbox franchises such as Halo and Fable. The work joined a player’s interest to the problem of finding an audience.
He also held roles at MSN, spent a period at LeapFrog leading educational games, and returned to Microsoft. By the time Wizards came calling, his responsibilities had expanded to OEM technical sales. His experience included software, hardware, consumer brands, and the commercial machinery that gets products into people’s hands.
The call itself came through an unusually apt connection. Someone who had once been his college intern at MSN was now working in executive recruitment. Remembering Cocks’s interest in games, he contacted him about leading Wizards of the Coast. A former junior colleague had become the person introducing him to his next chapter.
A bigger table at Wizards
Cocks joined Wizards in 2016. The assignment required him to think about how established games could find new forms without losing the reasons people played them. A card game carries different pleasures from a video game, but the same person can want both. The commercial opportunity lay partly in making that journey easier.
Magic: The Gathering Arena became a central example. Cocks described a board willing to support investment in technical leadership, engineering, and games industry recruitment. Building a digital expression of Magic required people who could translate an existing game into a different medium, with its own expectations and constraints.
Meanwhile, the physical business remained stubbornly physical. In 2018, he talked about the logistics of getting billions of cards to thousands of stores together. Fantasy worlds still require delivery schedules. Digital expansion sat alongside warehouses, printers, books, and shop owners waiting for stock.
By 2021, Wizards’ revenue had exceeded $1 billion, more than double its level when he arrived. Hasbro appointed him CEO effective February 25, 2022. The division he had joined as a fan had become the clearest credential for the larger job.
Owning the world, earning the invitation
Cocks calls D&D “fantasy improv.” The phrase makes room for the people at the table. A rulebook can establish possibilities, but the players supply the particular evening: the bad plan, the unexpected rescue, the joke repeated for years. A company can own the setting without having invented most of the experiences that make it valuable.
His leadership analogy follows from that distinction. A Dungeon Master prepares the adventure while leaving other people room to affect it. For an executive responsible for creative teams, the appeal is obvious. Set the conditions, make the goal intelligible, and allow someone else to produce the interesting surprise.
Enthusiasm did not exempt Hasbro from conflict. The proposed changes to D&D’s fan licensing agreement in 2023 produced a backlash and were dropped. Late that year, job cuts also reached the company’s games operations. By 2024, Cocks was publicly explaining the trade-offs behind a turnaround while insisting that the games had a future.
His early tenure also included an activist investor battle and the sale of the eOne film and television business in 2023. Cocks’s direction put more emphasis on play and on partners financing entertainment. The player promoted to chief executive had acquired responsibilities for which a persuasive campaign setting would offer limited assistance.
The objects that survived growing up
His office offers a less abstract account of the attachment. In a public tour of his collection, Cocks pointed out a portrait of Volothamp Geddarm, the fictional writer and occasional adventurer from D&D. The picture had appeared as a prop in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. A corporate office is a respectable place for a portrait; this particular sitter comes with rather more questionable references.
He also identified Axis & Allies as his favorite strategy game. The collection mixes current products and objects from Hasbro’s archives. These are useful details because they describe what he chooses to keep nearby. The relationship with the catalog did not begin with responsibility for its sales.
There is a social thread, too. Cocks has recalled competing with his future wife in a video arcade on their third date. Games recur in his account of friendship, courtship, and professional decisions. The hobby kept finding its way into the rest of his life.
Leave room for the inventor
In discussing creativity, Cocks has emphasized designers and product creators. His compact description of the customer relationship is “We’re handling memories.” It is a useful admission from someone running a business built around things that people can become intensely possessive about. A familiar toy can carry associations its owner would struggle to explain in a focus group.
He has also pointed to the importance of inventors outside the company. In a 2025 interview, he said more than half the revenue in Hasbro’s Toy and Games business came from brands and products originating as inventor concepts. Programs such as Women Innovators of Play and the Spark submissions platform seek to broaden that pool of contributors.
The everyday business is less romantic than a shelf of favorite games suggests. By February 2026, Cocks was talking about supplier diversification and flexibility in response to unpredictable tariffs. Getting a product made affordably is part of getting it played with. A promising concept has to survive production decisions before it can become anyone’s memory.
That gives his job an awkward breadth. He needs an opinion about creative freedom and another about supply chains. The shelf is where those conversations eventually meet.
The score in October
Hasbro’s October 20, 2026 results gave Cocks a favorable set of numbers to discuss. Third-quarter revenue rose 15% from the previous year. Wizards and Digital Gaming grew 31%. Magic alone generated $616.1 million in quarterly revenue, crossing $600 million for the first time.
Revenue growth, not profit margin. Figures reported October 20, 2026.
The qualifications matter alongside the growth. Results included about $55 million in tariff refunds, while the first nine months included a $56 million impairment related to digital games. A stronger quarter does not make every investment successful. It does show how consequential gaming has become to the company Cocks leads.
Two days after the earnings release, a WBUR segment aired his discussion of the importance of play with Tiziana Dearing. The public conversation still moved between the two versions of his job: explaining financial performance and explaining why anyone wants these products in the first place.
Another evening, another campaign
In a May 2026 interview, Cocks discussed bringing 3D-printed miniatures to London to paint in his hotel room. He also described a gaming table with a television set into it for interactive maps. This is a fairly committed interpretation of packing something to do in the evening.
His wider argument is that people keep playing as adults, and that Hasbro should keep finding worthwhile things for them to play. The formats can change. A childhood world can become a digital game, a collectible, or the setting for another gathering of friends.
The difficulty is earning the next evening. Affection for a familiar name may get someone to look. Their time is a separate matter. Cocks once found a game compelling enough to reconsider his career. He now runs a company that must persuade other people its games deserve a place in their lives. The invitation has to remain worth accepting.