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.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Is he wrong though? I do not know enough about those game or the extent of front-running AI abilities.

I do understand companies wanting to let go of people not towing the company line or bashing them online. Is this what the kids call FAFO.

I'll still always be thankful to him for what he did with dnd and the 3e SRD/OGL.

If the AI hype is true, it should be possible and pretty much inevitable.

On the other hand:
Is there an AI that can take the rules of a game and play it in a viable way?
Can the AI produce from the rules a description of the underlying mechanics?
Can the AI produce permutations of these mechanics to produce game that is a variation of the original but still an enjoyable game?
Can the AI repeat this analysis over a number of games and combine mechanics to produce an interesting and viable game?
Can the AI understand the concept of fun?

 

[Micah Sweet]

He didn't say that, he said that AI (LLM) could do things as good as certain designers. And I think he's right.

But a game idea and/or initial design generally doesn't stop there, it goes through quite a few processes before it's released and many never go past those stages to release.

Heck, of those ideas he saw the AI (LLM) generate, how many were actually just as good? Of boardgame designers, how many ideas get pitched to boardgame publishers and get actually published? And just as with programmers and lawyers, you better have someone who knows what they're doing check the output, otherwise you're in for a hell of a problem!

Robots are something else btw. and in that particular case, robots do better work then the people they replaced. That's a hard fact, but very true. AI (LLM) isn't completely replacing humans, heck in most cases I do not trust LLMs without double checking everything and in quite a few cases that would mean more work then it would save.

Sidenote: On bgg these games score 7.2/7.2/7.4, from my perspective, these are pretty average games. Some people do really like certain average games (I really like Century: Spice Road for example, which scores a 7.3 on bgg).

AEG has made some very badly rated games the last 10 years, they've also milked their games pretty darned hard. Think of Thundestone Quest and Smash Up with oodles of expansions, Tiny Towns is currently at 5 expansions... And they also like to reuse their card crafting mechanic (see Mystic Vale). I wouldn't call AEG of the last 15-20 years the most... Creative in the first place.

I do have quite a few AEG games, but I already stopped backing them quite a while ago due to them keep expanding games (and me being a completionist), my Thunderstone Quest collection might be the size and weight of a person at this point... But these shenanigans do not motivate me to buy any future games from AEG. The Cardboard Herald I won't frequent either.

And boardgames is also a business, a high quality game does not necessarily sell well. While a low quality one might sell extremely well...

I liked AEG better when they were still in the RPG business. I love and loved L5R under their stewardship.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Oh, I don't doubt it's here to stay. I think it's going to be similar to the dot com bust though. It's not ecologically sustainable, but more importantly (to it crashing or not) is AI companies are investing in each other, just passing the dollars around to artificially inflate it's value. That's not sustainable either. Similar to how people put millions into a dot com that had no actual product or value. Sooner or later it will crash. Then, also like dot com, it will come back, but a more stable. That's my prediction anway.

Regarding Goldman Sachs, a 5 year timeline seems worrisome. Right now, the AI we use is riddled with errors and mistakes. I spend more time reviewing AI features and stories for errors than I would creating it from scratch. And inevitably some things will get missed.

For example. just last week my team has a project implementing a middleware service called ECPA. It's a newer service. We have another service called ECPR. When AI took the intakes and started creating features, it decided on its own to change ECPA to ECPR. If that went through and our developers got them, they would not only not code the right service, they would break the existing one, which would be a disaster. Then AI also doesn't know all the scenarios in which a user or client would use the system, so tons of missed workflows to validate.

I was joking with my business analyst that I just hope AI stays sucky long enough for me to hit retirement. This big push by senior management is just going to end badly if they force it to replace everyone when it's this broken.

How does this relate to the topic? I think Ryan might be correct--in 5-10 years. If you leave it up to AI to design an TTRPG, you're gonna have something that makes Synnibar look polished. AI just can't handle context well or inferences of intuition when understanding mechanics.

It doesn't matter, sadly, if AI is actually better. The people who control the money believe it is, at least in the short term profits arena they actually care about.

 

[TerraDave]

This isn't the first time that Dancey has stumbled his way into a major controversy. A few years ago, he had to apologize about his comments about Elizabeth Hargrave's comments about sexism in the tabletop industry. Perhaps Dancey should learn that not everything needs to be commented upon.

Board game executive apologises for sexist reply to Wingspan creator’s criticism of industry sexism

An AEG executive has apologised for sexist reply to a Twitter thread from Wingspan's creator discussing the lack of women in board game awards.

www.dicebreaker.com

There was also the GAMA email hacking:

Thread 'Dancey resigns as GAMA Treasurer'

Jul 30, 2004

From over on gamingreport.com - http://gamingreport.com/article.php?sid=13727&mode=thread&order=0
************************************
Ryan Dancey tendered his resignation as Treasurer of the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA), Thursday. Dancey, who was elected at the Annual Membership Meeting a month ago, disclosed to the board shortly after his election that he had penetrated the GAMA Board of Directors e-mail list and had been reading board e-mails for some time. He certified to the board that

no one else knew about this breach and that information gleaned from the action was...

• Rasyr
• Replies: 263
• Forum: *TTRPGs General

And I think there may have been a few other controversies.

Yet, overall, I remain a fan.

 

[Micah Sweet]

If the AI hype is true, it should be possible and pretty much inevitable.

On the other hand:
Is there an AI that can take the rules of a game and play it in a viable way?
Can the AI produce from the rules a description of the underlying mechanics?
Can the AI produce permutations of these mechanics to produce game that is a variation of the original but still an enjoyable game?
Can the AI repeat this analysis over a number of games and combine mechanics to produce an interesting and viable game?
Can the AI understand the concept of fun?

Does AI need to do any of those things to make the C-Suite more money?

 

[HatWearingFool]

I was joking with my business analyst that I just hope AI stays sucky long enough for me to hit retirement. This big push by senior management is just going to end badly if they force it to replace everyone when it's this broken.

I'm in the same boat. Just hoping I can hang on another 5 years. My sister who works in finance at a bank in Canada is also in the same boat. She says they've already eliminated 2 layers below her. She'd like to hang on another 5-7 as well but isn't sure, that will be possible.

 

[mamba]

Well, he’s wrong about something. Reading both statements, I cannot believe that he thinks both statements are true about the game industry: (1. that AI is great for the gaming industry because humans seldom innovate in that industry and 2. That he thinks humans are uniquely creative.)

I assume he thinks that humans are uniquely creative but that most games do not meet that threshold. He basically had two examples over 50 years which he held up as 'uniquely creative' when most games are just rehashes / variations on a ton of games just like them

 

[argokirby77]

Honestly, what disturbs me most about this is Cardboard Herald's response. I don't think publicly making an ultimatum helps the conversation. AI is here and getting better. And it is threatening the jobs of intellectuals. The idea that an AI doesn't understand the human element is just wishful thinking. AI is making music, writing novels, making movies, etc... And when it comes to making games, just look at all the apps on Google Play.

 

[sevenbastard]

He didn't say that, he said that AI (LLM) could do things as good as certain designers. And I think he's right.

What a leader says and what employees hear are two very very different things.

And it doesn't matter if he is right or wrong, your team is going to lose respect for you when you insult the work they do.

 

[Artamo]

I assume he thinks that humans are uniquely creative but that most games do not meet that threshold. He basically had two examples over 50 years which he held up as 'uniquely creative' when most games are just rehashes / variations on a ton of games just like them

I’m sure that’s the case but it’s also kind of a non-sequitur what he thinks about human creativity in a general sense. He was a COO for a game company and what mattered is his view on creativity within that industry.

It’s kind of like the VP of Customer Service for a company saying publicly that “our customers are stupid.” Well, I guess you just disqualified yourself from being VP of Customer Service then!