Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks Talks AI Usage in D&D [UPDATED!]

Chris Cocks spoke about AI and D&D at a Goldman Sachs event.

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Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks is convinced that the Dungeons & Dragons franchise will support some kind of AI usage in the future. Speaking today at a Goldman Sachs event, Cocks spoke about how AI products could soon support Dungeons & Dragons and other Hasbro brands. Asked about whether AI has the potential to "bend the cost curve" in terms of entertainment development or digital gaming, and how it's being used in the toy and content industries, Cocks said the following:

"Inside of development, we've already been using AI. It's mostly machine-learning-based AI or proprietary AI as opposed to a ChatGPT approach. We will deploy it significantly and liberally internally as both a knowledge worker aid and as a development aid. I'm probably more excited though about the playful elements of AI. If you look at a typical D&D player....I play with probably 30 or 40 people regularly. There's not a single person who doesn't use AI somehow for either campaign development or character development or story ideas. That's a clear signal that we need to be embracing it. We need to do it carefully, we need to do it responsibly, we need to make sure we pay creators for their work, and we need to make sure we're clear when something is AI-generated. But the themes around using AI to enable user-generated content, using AI to streamline new player introduction, using AI for emergent storytelling, I think you're going to see that not just our hardcore brands like D&D but also multiple of our brands."


Wizards of the Coast representatives has repeatedly said that Dungeons & Dragons is a game made by people for people, as multiple AI controversies has surrounded the brand and its parent company. Wizards updated its freelance contracts to explicitly prohibit use of AI and has pulled down AI-generated artwork that was submitted for Bigby's Presents: Glory of the Giants in 2023 after they learned it was made using AI tools.

A FAQ related to AI specifically notes that "Hasbro has a vast portfolio of 1900+ brands of which Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons are two – two very important, cherished brands. Each brand is going to approach its products differently. What is in the best interest of Trivial Pursuit is likely quite different than that of Magic: The Gathering or Dungeons & Dragons." This statement acknowledges that Hasbro may use AI for other brands, while also stating that Wizards is trying to keep AI-generated artwork away from the game. However, while Wizards seems to want to keep AI away from D&D and Magic, their parent company's CEO seems to think that AI and D&D aren't naturally opposed.


UPDATE -- Greg Tito, who was WotC's communications director until recently, commented on BlueSky: "I'm deeply mistrustful of AI and don't want people using it anywhere near my D&D campaigns."
 

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Christian Hoffer

Christian Hoffer

KYRON45

Hero
If 6e won’t be online only….7e 100% will be.
What will that look like? Who knows?
But as long as people have a physical copy of the last “offline” set of rules no one will FORCE you to move to the online only version. That will be a choice.
 

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Hussar

Legend
Why focus on one or the other when WOTC can have both??
I'd argue that they've got the meatspace games zone locked in pretty tight. How many people are playing D&D face to face? I dunno, other than lots. They're apparently selling print books at a pretty good pace, and the 2014 PHB is probably the best selling RPG book in history.

I really don't think they are ignoring print so much as, "Well, we're pretty solidly established in live gaming - between organized play and various other initiatives like donating books to schools and whatnot - so, now that we've got that pretty much locked down, let's see if we can expand into digital, an area where there's still tons of room for growth."

I just don't get the doom and gloom idea that one must come at the expense of the other.
 

UngainlyTitan

Legend
Supporter
.....

A thought just occurred to me. In all this nonsense about the 3,700 copies of the PHB being sold, one nugget came out of that about how the core books are no longer carried in big box stores like Walmart and Target. About a year ago, WOTC switched distributors and those distributors don't seem to have the reach the old one did. Clearly WOTC has put a big focus on selling their books and digital books through D&D Beyond, which makes sense since their profit margin is way higher there. But I'd say being willing to pull your books from the two biggest big-box retailers in the US could show a shift towards a push to digital as well.
Are they really not distributing to the big box stores? or are they using a distributor that does not report to Bookscan?
 

UngainlyTitan

Legend
Supporter
I'd argue that they've got the meatspace games zone locked in pretty tight. How many people are playing D&D face to face? I dunno, other than lots. They're apparently selling print books at a pretty good pace, and the 2014 PHB is probably the best selling RPG book in history.

I really don't think they are ignoring print so much as, "Well, we're pretty solidly established in live gaming - between organized play and various other initiatives like donating books to schools and whatnot - so, now that we've got that pretty much locked down, let's see if we can expand into digital, an area where there's still tons of room for growth."

I just don't get the doom and gloom idea that one must come at the expense of the other.
People (as far as I can tell) default to looking at the world as a zero-sum game. If one thing gains, then it must be at our expense.
It is why the wargaming grognards back in the seventies denigrated D&D because if all these people are playing D&D they are leaving their hobby. Whereas in fact most of the new D&D players would never touch wargames.
A similar thing occurred later when the D&D grogs were complaining about Magic: The Gathering stealing the D&D players, or WoW or whatever.

You get a similar dynamic, with some political issues and with the online vs in person play. In person play has a lot of logistical issues and it can be difficult to impossible to find face to face players (depending on local factors). Online is easier to arrange as it mitigates a lot of time and distance issues. There are a lot of online players would be quite happy with a face to face game if it was possible.
But, I believe, that the online game, helps the face to face game because it keeps people in the hobby, to be available for potential face to face play, who would otherwise have drifted from the hobby.

One more thing, I think that a lot of the angst about these comments from Chris Cocks and others about D&D is because people here who hear these comments are passionate about the game, the ttrpg experience as played at the table (real or virtual) but I think that these executives are not really talking about the game, they are talking about the brand.
The brand is a bigger thing than the game and has a lot more opportunities to monetize, in my opinion.
 


Emerikol

Legend
A super intelligent AI is actually the least likely possibility seeing as generative AI is very, very dumb and in no way can think for itself.
In the near term. Also realize that when I say super intelligent, I'm not necessarily saying sentient. It could just be an AI that makes scientific discoveries without any sentience at all.

No, the real issues is their being by-design set up to eliminate human jobs, the horrendous toll they take on the environment to power, the glut of AI sludge content now filling the internet, their use in misinformation campaigns, the self-admitted need to steal content to train them, and the fact that these garbage generative AIs are poisoning the well against useful AI applications that do deserve to exist.
I don't see long term AI costing any more power than computers in general. I do see the workforce changing over time. When wagons stopped being used, a lot of supporting industries went out. No more wagon wheel makers, no more whip makers, no more... and when I say "no more" I mean as a major industry. I'm sure we have them all as a niche.

I do see, with our currently credulous society, that AI fakes will cause all sorts of problems and eventually become undetectable even by other AI's. It will make policing much harder as photos may not be solid evidence anymore.
 



Vaalingrade

Legend
When wagons stopped being used, a lot of supporting industries went out. No more wagon wheel makers, no more whip makers, no more... and when I say "no more" I mean as a major industry. I'm sure we have them all as a niche.
People keep making this terrible analogy.

Actual tech progression is different than the 'AI revolution' because actual tech progression has a purpose and solves real problems. Generative AI exists just to cut humans out of the process and save money for said techbro scumbags who don't seem to understand that their profits aren't actually bit mined out of the ether, but from consumers who make wages at the jobs they're trying to delete.
 

People keep making this terrible analogy.

Actual tech progression is different than the 'AI revolution' because actual tech progression has a purpose and solves real problems. Generative AI exists just to cut humans out of the process and save money for said techbro scumbags who don't seem to understand that their profits aren't actually bit mined out of the ether, but from consumers who make wages at the jobs they're trying to delete.
I am normally so with you, but on this I just don't see it.

We used to have to hand run credit cards by entering the number into the register and then running a press over paper with the card under it, then enter the paper into the register to print with the recite, then we needed you to sign it and manually try to check signature (good luck) then give one copy to the person and put one in the till... at the end of the night we had to organize all of them and give them to the manager in payroll office who would file them.
Today the customer taps the card. everything is handled by the computer... in fact you can go to a self check and not even need to have another human there.


My grandfather kept ledgers for his businesses, he needed 2 accountants to do it (one just for keeping paper work one for actually filing taxes) and at any point 1-3 book keepers under them (but most of those were also working as secretary so more like the book keeping was 1/3 of there job) His businesses never grew to cover the entire state I live in.
Today I myself (not a full CPA) can run all of what those people did through excel, quick books and an app on my phone... BTW I also manage part of payroll, with HR... The company I work for (mainly I work with a couple) is expanding beyond the tristate area... and I am doing what all of those people together did and more for it.
 

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