Ryan Dancey & AEG Part Ways Following AI Comments

Ryan Dancey, the Chief Operating Officer of boardgame publisher Alderac Entertainment Group, no longer works for the company, following statements on social media where he claimed that AI could make most of the company's board games, and that D&D and Magic: the Gathering were the only new forms of gameplay in his lifetime. After another poster on LinkedIn claimed that "AI wouldn't come up with Tiny Towns or Flip Seven or Cubitos because it doesn't understand the human element of fun", Dancey responded that he had zero reason to believe that AI could not do such a thing.

"I have zero reason to believe that an Al couldn't come up with Tiny Towns or Flip Seven or Cubitos. I can prompt any of several Als RIGHT NOW and get ideas for games as good as those. The gaming industry doesn't exist because humans create otherwise unobtainable ideas. It exists because many many previous games exist, feed into the minds of designers, who produce new variants on those themes. People then apply risk capital against those ideas to see if there's a product market fit. Sometimes there is, and sometimes there is not. (In fact, much more often than not).

Extremely occasionally (twice in my lifetime: D&D and Magic: the Gathering) a human has produced an all new form of gaming entertainment. Those moments are so rare and incandescent that they echo across decades.

Game publishing isn't an industry of unique special ideas. It's an industry about execution, marketing, and attention to detail. All things Als are great at."

- Ryan Dancey​

The Cardboard Herald, a boardgame reviews channel, responded yesterday on BlueSky that "As you may have seen, [AEG] CEO Ryan Dancey stated that AI can make games “just as good as Tiny Towns or Flip 7 or Cubitos”, completely missing the inexorable humanity involved.We’ve spent 10 years celebrating creatives in the industry. Until he’s gone we will not work with AEG."

Today, AEG's CEO John Zinser stated "Today I want to share that Ryan Dancey and AEG have parted ways.This is not an easy post to write. Ryan has been a significant part of AEG’s story, and I am personally grateful for the years of work, passion, and intensity he brought to the company. We have built a lot together. As AEG moves into its next chapter, leadership alignment and clarity matter more than ever. This transition reflects that reality.Our commitment to our designers, partners, retailers, and players remains unchanged. We will continue building great games through collaboration, creativity, and trust."

Dancey himself posted "This morning [John Zinser] and I talked about the aftermath of my post yesterday about the ability of AI to create ideas for games. He's decided that it's time for me to move on to new adventures. Sorry to have things end like this. I've enjoyed my 10 years at AEG. I wish the team there the best in their future endeavors.

I believe we're at a civilizational turning point. That who we are and how we are is going to change on the order of what happened during the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions; and it's past time we started talking about it and not being afraid to discuss the topic. Talking about AI, being honest about what it can and cannot do, and thinking about the implications is something we have to begin to do in a widespread way. Humans have a unique creative spark that differentiates us and makes us special and we should celebrate that specialness as we experience this epic change.

For the record: I do not believe that AI will replace the work talented game designer/developers do, nor do I think it is appropriate to use AI to replace the role of designer/developers in the publication of tabletop games. During my time at AEG I developed and implemented polices and contracts that reflect those views. It's important to me that you know what I believe and what I don't believe on this particular topic, despite what you may have read elsewhere."

Whatever your position on generative LLMs and the like, when the COO of your company announces publicly that all of the company’s games could have been made by AI, it’s a problem. UK readers may recall when major jewelry chain Ratners’ CEO Gerald Ratner famously announced that the products sold in his stores were “trash”, instantly wiping half a billion pounds from the company’s value back in the early 1990s. The company was forced to close stores and rebrand to Signet Group. At the time the Ratners Group was the world's biggest jewelry retailer. Ratner himself was forced to resign in 1992. The act of making a damaging statement about the quality of your own company’s products became known as “doing a Ratner”.

Dancey was VP of Wizards of the Coast when the company acquired TSR, the then-owner of Dungeons & Dragons. He is also known for being the architect of the Open Game License. Dancey has worked as Chief Operating Officer for AEG for 10 years, and was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the company, second-in-command after the CEO, John Zinser.

 

[Swanosaurus]

Europeans, and others who live in areas with dense language heterogeneity, get their noses about US monolingualism, as if their tendency toward multilingualism is due to moral superiority rather than convenience.

I won't claim moral superiority, but once you end up learning several languages - for whatever reason -, you realize how rewarding it is. And the same goes for RPG systems - they do things differently, and like languages, they do illuminate each other. So in the RPG market as well as in the language "market", maybe it's a good thing if there's some moderate pressure to learn more than one (okay, RPGs are for fun; languages, often, are a necessity - but they can also be for fun).

 

[JDR]

It certainly isn't going to help Dancey in the job search within the games industry . . . or maybe it will! Dancey isn't the only person in the industry (seemingly) eager to replace creative workers with AI. He should probably apply back with Hasbro . . .

Maybe he can start a new company, he can call it AI Slop Games!

Dungeons and AI Slop!

 

[Dire Bare]

Well, to someone who isn't that interested in D&D, the difference boils down to "should we ruin your hobby?", or "Should we almost ruin your hobby?"

That's a take I have a hard time agreeing with.

WotC promoting D&D and working to keep it at the center of the industry by making it an open game . . . certainly incentivized publishers to create d20 products, but didn't prevent them in any real way from publishing non-D&D games. WotC didn't ruin anybody's hobby. The reaction some publishers had to the OGL maybe so . . .

Certainly after the OGL dropped, many publishers shifted gears to create D&D compatible games . . . some of them dropping their earlier, different games, but some maintaining multiple product lines. And tons of new companies came into being, new designers got into the industry, some older games saw a renaissance . . . there was a lot of churn and turmoil during the d20 boom, but ultimately the industry came out stronger and "system proliferation" actually increased post-boom.

Some non-D&D games (probably) didn't survive the d20 Boom . . . but others had new life breathed into them.

 

[Dire Bare]

I won't claim moral superiority, but once you end up learning several languages - for whatever reason -, you realize how rewarding it is. And the same goes for RPG systems - they do things differently, and like languages, they do illuminate each other. So in the RPG market as well as in the language "market", maybe it's a good thing if there's some moderate pressure to learn more than one (okay, RPGs are for fun; languages, often, are a necessity - but they can also be for fun).

I agree that learning and playing multiple RPG games is a way to improve your enjoyment of the hobby! I also think the hobby supporting multiple games is healthy for the hobby and industry.

Not that there is anything wrong with sticking with your favorite game to the exclusion of other games, D&D or something else.

But where should the "pressure" to encourage that come from? WotC? GAMA?

It's something I've been enjoying about actual play podcasts and also crowdfunding campaigns . . . two forces that seem to be dominated by D&D-compatible games, but also promoting a lot of non-D&D games as well.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I feel like this take doesn't actually understand how the market works, particularly not how it worked when most people obtained RPGs from FLGSes, not via Kickstarter, PDFs, and Amazon.

The OGL existing helped, for sure.

d20, on the other hand, basically bombed the entire industry, and whilst there were many survivors, and some powerful mutants among them, I don't think we can say it was a good thing.

WotC absolutely did make "so many pies", too, in the 3.XE era, it's wild to say they didn't. Indeed by the end of the d20 era, looking at most FLGses, the only major 3PP with a ton of product was Paizo, most of the others had failed or faded. And if OGL/d20 had been the only thing, Paizo might never have become particularly hugely successful (indeed I could easily see them having been absorbed into WotC at some point), the reason they became so huge was the insane missteps WotC made around 4E. That the OGL existed allowed Paizo to take advantage of those missteps, so again, yay for the OGL, but WotC were by then trying to get rid of the OGL for the first time.

I don't think the motivations matter all that much. The OGL in my opinion did a lot more good than it did harm. Like I said above, I owe my continued interest in the hobby to it, because it provides better options to play the kind of game I enjoy than the market leader did.

 

[overgeeked]

I was there. Yes, that was the plan.

I’m sorry to say The Evil Plan worked. All too well. Forcing the creative bankruptcy of an entire industry to line a few pockets. I hope whatever history books are written about this bit of gaming history remember it for the villainy it actually was instead of with the rose-tinted glasses of today.

 

[Parmandur]

Look... I like D&D, I liked 3E, I like 5E, I think the OGL was generally good for the community and the CC is even better...

However, I think it is also fair to take Dancey at his word at the time that marketplace domination and destruction of competition was legitimately his goal, particularly in light of Dancey's general corporate history: shennanigans in the TSR acquisition, his crash and burn leading to 3.5, the whole weird Eve Online situation, the Pathfinder Online disaster, the years of accusations of misogyny, and now this AI stuff...

Maybe the weird anti-competitive scheme was not an excuse Dancey was giving the Suits. Dancsy is the Suits.

 

[overgeeked]

You're right, and I'm fine with all of that. I'm not taking issue with the net effect of the OGL, it's great. I'm just taking issue with Dancey's arrogant rhethorics. To me, it sounds quite clearly as if he was saying: "the OGL will do away with tons of competing systems, leading to a gazillion more PHB sales!", and I'll assume he meant it. That this is not how it has turned out is a great boon.

Except that it has. All other RPGs are rounding errors compared to the popularity of D&D. Hell, some older editions of D&D are more popular than some “really popular” modern, in-print and fully supported games.

 

[Umbran]

I think this is wrong on the merits. Most immediately, Claude Code played a key role in the rover study. There is much more to say, but I'm not sure it is worth going into the details.

The costs and issues people are concerned about isn't in the code, it is in the training.

 

[Dire Bare]

Look... I like D&D, I liked 3E, I like 5E, I think the OGL was generally good for the community and the CC is even better...

However, I think it is also fair to take Dancey at his word at the time that marketplace domination and destruction of competition was legitimately his goal, particularly in light of Dancey's general corporate history: shennanigans in the TSR acquisition, his crash and burn leading to 3.5, the whole weird Eve Online situation, the Pathfinder Online disaster, the years of accusations of misogyny, and now this AI stuff...

Maybe the weird anti-competitive scheme was not an excuse Dancey was giving the Suits. Dancsy is the Suits.

What were Dancey's shenanigans during the TSR acquisition? How did Dancey crash and burn with D&D 3.5? What happened with Eve Online and Pathfinder Online?

Not that I'm doubting your list of negative Dancey events . . . I'm honestly not familiar with most things on the list!