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.

 

[HatWearingFool]

Timely article about Meta hiring vfx artists to train the AI that will replace them…. Depressing stuff. (Sorry it’s behind a paywall)

VFX artists sound the alarm as Meta goes on an AI hiring spree - The Logic

The tech giant has been recruiting VFX specialists to help train and fine-tune AI systems that some fear could accelerate the decline of an industry already in crisis

thelogic.co

Edit: another timely article. This is why we need AI financial anylsyts! Look at this weak meat sack that had to be fired because they felt entitled to 8 hours of sleep every 24 hours… pfft, begging to be fired

A court will decide if bankers can be fired for demanding sleep

The jury trial, due to start next week, will add fuel to a simmering debate over working conditions for ambitious 20-somethings. Read on

financialpost.com

 

[Zaukrie]

To clarify, while I think computers will take over much of this work, Dancey is wrong about where they are now, and his comments are awful and disrespectful....

 

[GreyLord]

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.

Currently, yes. He is wrong.

AI can do many things, but it's not creative. Any creativity it has is based upon it being trained.

However, many new Boardgame ideas are not something some can be trained upon in coming up with them. I am a massive boardgamer and there have been so many new ideas and things that have come up over the past two decades that I would find it impossible for AI currently (no predictions on the future however) them.

Perhaps a boardgame like the Reiner Knizia games that are purelyl mathematical (I could see AI coming up with something like that) but games that don't rely heavily on logic or math are things I think AI would have problems with. Those games don't work because of the rules organized in such a way, but as others have mentioned, there is a human factor. The rules and theme are utilized in such a way, no matter how illogical, that it makes it enjoyable for humans to play. A game like the recent Dune: Battle For Arrakis has the mix in such a way that it would take a LOT more playtesting, human tweaking, and probably MORE effort if you utlized an AI to come up with the initial rules than it does for two humans to create the game (even basing it off of another game such as WotR).

Thus, I think Dancey was waaaay off base here in his statement, at least with the current abilities of AI.

It's like saying AI will replace DM's currently. AI is not currently able to be a full time DM for a Campaign in D&D...at least from what I've seen at the current time. Someone making that statement would probably infuriate a lot of people.

Edit Add: I would like to say that though I have over 700 boardgames, I really don't play AEG games. It may be that AI can replicate AEG games, but many of the games I have there is a human element that had to be playtested and seen which AI...simply cannot do at this point.

In addition, Ryan Dancey must have no familiarity in Board games if he labels MtG as a new type of gameplay but ignores other board and card games which have come about over the past few decades with just as much, if not more, innovative designs than MtG had when it came out.

 

[MacDhomnuill]

I love how he just pinballs through high level industry jobs doing either unremarkable or actively damaging work and then blows himself up by saying the stupidest takes in public. Lets see which gaming company hires him next since its clear hes blessed by the gods of failing up.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I love how he just pinballs through high level industry jobs doing either unremarkable or actively damaging work and then blows himself up by saying the stupidest takes in public. Lets see which gaming company hires him next since its clear hes blessed by the gods of failing up.

All he had to do to make a positive mark on the industry was champion the OGL.

 

[vrykyl]

My favorite part is that he feels like he needs to push back on "what you may have read elsewhere," when the part that we read elsewhere was his original post.

 

[Belen]

That's my fear, that civilization ends buried in AI-generated slop. Art, news, all content. I already feel that I can't trust anything that comes across my social media feeds.

A lot of organizations are killing themselves.

AI may be a threat some types of art like movies and TV because those media have been diving to the bottom.

I feel like this means that human service and connection will be important to the quality of experience in the future.

I know that we barely engage with some new content because it is so poor.

AI may be a threat because people feel like they are already not getting the best quality and customer experience.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

That was obviously written by AI (LLM)...

But they would be so right!

It's an IT tradition to dive in, head first, make permanent changes and then find out that things don't work as you thought they would. Quite often due to sales/marketing convincing a manager higher up in the foodchain. It sometimes happens that someone pulls on the emergency stop before that happens, but most often I'm hired after things have gone downhill to fix stuff... And not every company/manager is honest in the results of an IT project.

There's also a question of costs, risk, security, etc. Currently, most AI (LLM) services are selling their services drastically under cost. When they start asking prices to actually make a profit, that might kill AI (LLM) in certain cases as being more expensive then actual people... I've seen multiple US Tech companies raising their prices suddenly by x4 with very little notice...

First off, I think that the AI tech companies are following the typical US tech venture capital playbook, throw large sums of money at the problem, gain market share and then monetise it.
I am not at all sure it is going to work. For most of the last 40 years they have raised capital a essentially zero cost, I think that era is over.
If the AI companies are right and successful, it is questionable that there will be enough paying customers to pay for their service.
Will it work?
The pandemic revealed the fragility of just in time supply chains and minimal warehousing. And I would say that recent geopolitical events are causing many to question the strategic vulnerability of dependence on services provided by operators outside of one's legal and political reach.

 

[Blue]

Hard to keep your staff motivated when you tell them that robots would do a better job.

Which isn't what he said. Even the most uncharitable reading was that AI could do the same job. But even there it's not correct, because much of the staff are doing things besides board game design.

And, just as he mentioned how there's a lot of weeding through human attempts to find good games, there was no comment that AI would have a better hit rate, just that it could create it.

I've used AI while DMing, things like making up background nobles for a masquerade where I'd designed all of the major players. Having it make a large list and then a human curating it for the ones that were good saved me a bunch of time -- no, let me correct that, added detail that I wouldn't have had the prep time to add otherwise.

And it's the same thing here. Knowing what to ask, how to evaluate the options presented, how to pick pearls from chaff and build on it -- all those are very human skills when it comes to board games.

 

[Scribe]

As far as Dancey's comments go, yes it's basically saying "with two exceptions over 50 years, every one of you could be replaced by AI today." I'm sure he thinks he's speaking the truth and that everyone just needs to accept that. I'd like to think he's wrong, though I am still not adjusted to AI in our world.. partially because it keeps advancing (even if as I've heard LLMs are hitting a wall) (Remember a few years ago when "art" AI could at best make splotches on a screen and you'd have to imagine how they fit your prompt?).
But either way Dancey sure was, per OP, "doing a Ratner."

I'm not sure he's wrong, or if he is today, based on that rate of advancement, I dont think he will be for long.