WotC Hasbro CEO optimistic about AI in D&D and MTG’s future

[Mistwell]

That's a good point. Very few if any of the people I game with have any real interest in the existence of AI art or the presentation of diversity in RPGs.

I edited my post to be less verbose but yeah. A lot of the things we think are controversial here, the people I game with just don't care about.

 

[Charlaquin]

But there's not trusting and always assuming the worst. I don't trust corporations, heck I don't trust most businesses of any size.

But I also don't assume they're always out to screw everyone over.

Of course they’re not actively out to screw anyone over. They’re out to pursue infinite financial growth, and don’t care who gets screwed over in the process. Of course, the inevitable result of such reckless pursuit of an impossible goal is that everyone will eventually get screwed over, if we don’t keep them from doing so.

 

[Oofta]

...

I worry we're getting to the point where the background noise is drowning out all honest attempts at improvements.

Which is my issue as well. For a while it was crying "MICROTRANSACTIONS", now I guess it's "AI"! There's a reason we have the parable of the boy who cried wolf.

 

[J.Quondam]

But there's not trusting and always assuming the worst. I don't trust corporations, heck I don't trust most businesses of any size.

But I also don't assume they're always out to screw everyone over.

To be sure, "screw everyone over" isn't a goal of megacorps, so much as it's a side-effect of single-minded pursuit of profits über alles.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Which is my issue as well. For a while it was crying "MICROTRANSACTIONS", now I guess it's "AI"! There's a reason we have the parable of the boy who cried wolf.

Jury appears to still be out on that, to be fair. You're not the boy who cried wolf unless and until the thing you're crying about turns out to be nothing.

 

[Charlaquin]

Which is my issue as well. For a while it was crying "MICROTRANSACTIONS", now I guess it's "AI"! There's a reason we have the parable of the boy who cried wolf.

In the parable, there isn’t actually an emergency, and the boy is just saying it as a prank, so no one believes him when there is a real emergency. That’s not really analogous to this situation, because Chris Cocks has actively been discussing his intent to monetize D&D and mentioning D&D in discussing how Hazbro is looking in to utilizing AI.

 

[Oofta]

Of course they’re not actively out to screw anyone over. They’re out to pursue infinite financial growth, and don’t care who gets screwed over in the process. Of course, the inevitable result of such reckless pursuit of an impossible goal is that everyone will eventually get screwed over, if we don’t keep them from doing so.

So another "always assume the worst". Virtually all businesses have a profit motive. I assume most companies have at least some sense of enlightened self interest.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I mean, if he wants to do that the Universes Beyond stuff they've done for Magic include a whole lot of properties that already have licensed RPGs. Some of them have licensed RPGs that are compatible with 5e. Of the ones that they've used for Universes Beyond that don't have their own RPG I'm not sure how much interest there would be - is anyone clamoring for a Jurassic Park sourcebook? Or a Fortnite sourcebook? Maybe a League of Legends sourcebook I guess.

But hey - the Clue sourcebook for D&D might be kind of fun. At least for me. I'm not sure that literally anyone else on the planet would buy one though. (I'm still kind of stunned that they made a Clue set for Magic the Gathering - again something that I would suspect is marketed solely to try to get me to buy back into Magic the Gathering...)

Oh god, a Fortnite 5E sourcebook feels like both the worst possible scenario and the kind of thing someone who doesn't know anything about 5E or Fortnite thinks is a great idea.

A Clue sourcebook that focused on lots of practical advice on mystery adventures that wasn't just "disallow Circle of Truth" would be great, though.

 

[Oofta]

Jury appears to still be out on that, to be fair. You're not the boy who cried wolf unless and until the thing you're crying about turns out to be nothing.

So where have there been any indication of it being true or an issue? I could just as easily claim they're using 5G transmissions to to control our buying. I'm not reaching for my tinfoil hat and I won't be concerned about microtransactions (or nefarious use of AI) until it actually happens.

 

[Charlaquin]

So another "always assume the worst". Virtually all businesses have a profit motive. I assume most companies have at least some sense of enlightened self interest.

I’m not assuming anything. Chris Cocks literally said, out loud, that he’s been pushing for WotC to use a less cautious strategy.

go back to what I did when I started at Wizards of the Coast back in 2016. I was always used to games being a product-led organization. The studio led, and then you had centralized functions to help support the studio. Wizards was a marketing-led organization. It was more like Procter and Gamble than Electronic Arts. Marketing-led organizations have their benefits, but they tend to be a bit more defensive-oriented and share-oriented.

We totally flipped that and went back to a classic studio model. Put the product leaders in charge. Then we resourced them up. Hey, here’s the insights you need to understand your gamers. Here’s permission to break some rules, do some new things, shake things up. That did wonderfully at Wizards. We’re in that process now with Hasbro Games.

He’s just coming right out and saying that they’re changing models from one that engages in enlightened self-interest, to one that ignores the expertise of their marketing people in favor of throwing caution to the wind in order to sell more product.