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.

 

[Umbran]

My interest in the topic is that the anti-AI push runs the risk of being wrong, scientifically, about the nature of what it is criticizing. It's much easier to oppose AI if you think the output is always slop and it doesn't help productivity, because nothing much is lost by axing it.

Yes. But, in pushing back on the technical point, your argument looks like apologia.

Here's the thing: Production of scientific gen AI (for, finding tumors or driving probes on Mars) is disjoint from producing Midjourney or Claude. Frequently a different engine, totally different training, on (and this is important) much more focused data sets. It doesn't require stealing copyright protected data from artistic people, doesnt' threaten to steal common people's jobs, doesn't need the giant freakin' data centers that suck down more electricity than the Las Vegas strip, and it doesn't need the trillions of dollars of funding and balloon economics around its production.

And that means you can relax. The public does not care if a generative AI is used over at JPL, or at CERN, for arcane technical tasks. The public's reaction to the Groks, Claudes, and Midjourneys will not stop scientific use.

The scientific community doesn't have to try to sell to the public. It doesn't have to even use the term "generative AI" or "AI" at all. Which is actually good, because "artificial intelligence" is a marketing term that is, itself, scientifically inaccurate!

 

[darjr]

I was there. Yes, that was the plan.

I’m grateful for the good things the OGL helped. I definitely can see how this part of the plan helped get it approved.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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

Yes he is definitely wrong.

Particularly in this hysterical statement:

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.

Yeah sure right Ryan, the only two "new forms of gaming entertainment" in your lifespan have been D&D and MtG, which not at all coincidentally, are both games you've worked heavily on. Ego is definitely not the driving factor here lol.

I guess this is a pretty classic case of "either you die (or retire, in the case) a hero or live (or post, in this case) long enough to become a villain". Ryan really pushing for those villain creds even though his halo had recently be reignited by the OGL 2.0 deal.

EDIT - Also really fundamental problem is that the "ideas" for board games aren't at all what makes great board games. Any absolute moron can have "an idea" for a boardgame. Or movie. Or RPG. Or videogame. We've got a giant thread here of videogames people wish existed, but that doesn't mean we're providing some kind of value.

I include myself in the category of "moron" here for the avoidance of doubt - I could come out with boardgame ideas all day. Indeed, I've shot the shizz with a very smart friend over a few weeks doing precisely that a decade or so back, to the point where we were getting towards "should we actually make this". Then we started basic work on it and... you know what? IT'S REALLY HARD. It's really hard to make a good and compelling board game. Further, we could have re-themed the game we were working on trivially - so the "idea" barely mattered. Technically it was like space fantasy arena combat with a lot of lore, but like, none of that actually deeply mattered to the mechanics. It could have been Robot Wars, or a Roman colosseum or w/e.

The real deal of a making a great boardgame is actually design the nitty-gritty of that boardgame, much of which may be entirely independent of the "idea" of the boardgame, or may in fact reshape the "idea" of the boardgame.

 

[The Firebird]

Here's the thing: Production of scientific gen AI (for, finding tumors or driving probes on Mars) is disjoint from producing Midjourney or Claude.

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.

 

[Swanosaurus]

The downside here is that I believe that one of the reasons that the RPG as a category has declined so much from the early 90's relates to the proliferation of systems. Every one of those different game systems creates a "bubble" of market inefficiency; the cumulative effect of all those bubbles has proven to be a massive downsizing of the marketplace. I have to note, highlight, and reiterate: The problem is not competitive product, the problem is competitive systems. I am very much for competition and for a lot of interesting and cool products.

Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition News - Interview with Ryan Dancey: the D20 System and the Open Gaming Movement

But you do see how saying "the problem is competitive systems" (talking about the the problem of RPGs in general), taken together with the idea that you want to drive D&D PHB sales as high as possible, basically means that the best course of action is to do something that will drive all other systems than D&D from the market. Which might not be a problem for you if you like to play D&D; but if you're not into D&D, it sounds pretty offensive. Like someone saying "Look, it would be most effective if everyone were to speak English as their native language; we should try to achieve that, and as a logical result, all other languages will probably more or less disappear." I think its understandable that a lot of people would react poorly to that; and personally, I think it would be pretty sad if all other languages but English were to disappear, and also pretty sad if all systems but D&D were to disappear. Couching all that in the language of the alleged inevitability of economics doesn't make it better, but rather worse.

 

[Cergorach]

It wasn't a side-effect, because it didn't actually happen.

It was, however, his stated goal (at least as per the interview quoted). I'm just happy that he miscalculated.

That was never going to happen, no matter how you calculate it. Yes, a common engine with enough support will remove a lot of demand from the consumer base for specific engine solutions. It can be beneficial for both the consumer AND the publisher.

Most people hate MS and it's Windows monopoly, but we also don't want over 600+ actively supported Linux distros, as we see that with the paltry adoption of Linux on desktops/laptops, and most of them are even free!

But some still prefer something else from the mainstream and that section of the RPG space would be filled by other RPGs always.

I wonder how much of those statements are related to the pitch he made to WotC/Hasbro management for the OGL/SRD/D20 licenses...

I am involved in an AI project right now for the editorial office of the future but my main goal is human preservation so I am focusing on what work people will do now that the crap tasks are handled by AI. So many companies are looking at AI and not asking themselves how to expand their business now that a person’s time has been freed.

To many people see AI (LLM) as "Computer can now do everything that department can do, let's fire everyone!", it's not that black and white, at least not yet. And you still need people with skills, and no one things about how to get people with those skills when you loose people to age, accident, growth or just wanting to work somewhere else. When there are no more junior positions, where do you get new folks that can fill senior positions? Having worked for organizations where they didn't have juniors that could grow to seniors when things where going well, we were stuck in a period of time where you couldn't get seniors without paying a LOT of money, you needed to hire all juniors that didn't know $#!&, and when more then half your department is suddenly filled with people not up to the job, you have serious problems as a business. That will eventually cost more money then you saved in the first place.

The assumption that I'm an idiot that doesn't understand the tools is a failure on your part, not mine and not the AI in this situation.
I work for a company that uses neural nets, regularly hosts classes on how to use gen AI within the industry we sell to, I just hosted a course on how to structure reports so that AI summarizes them accurately.

Whenever an LLM fails its acolytes want the general public to think that it is the public's fault rather than the model's fault. They do this without introspection nor question. Because advocacy for AI in all situations is now the default within certain circles.

You know how LLMs are trained, so the LLM you used, when was it trained and on what data (last date)? Did it have functionality to browse the Internet to search for locations? Did you prompt it to do that if it had the capabilities? Did you give it an index location for the Goldne Pages or something similar?

Just as with a search engine, I get completely different results on how I parse the search. The same goes for LLMs, depending on the LLM and it's generation.

 

[bedir than]

You know how LLMs are trained, so the LLM you used, when was it trained and on what data (last date)? Did it have functionality to browse the Internet to search for locations? Did you prompt it to do that if it had the capabilities? Did you give it an index location for the Goldne Pages or something similar?

See, even after seeing my qualifications your assumption is that I'm an idiot that doesn't know how to use the tool.

It's never the tool's fault for being inadequete.

To be clear, I used an active search prompt. It did use that search, supposedly. It knew the region in question, and did that quite well including providing links to do further research -- which is how I found out it was wrong about them being open!

 

[Dire Bare]

I was there. Yes, that was the plan.

I miss the days you were creating content for WotC. Although I enjoy your work with MCG!

Was one of Dancey's goals to eliminate all non-D&D games? Or virtually so, at least?

Or was one of his goals to further cement D&D in the center of the industry, and lower the number of other, non-D&D systems? Reduce system competition? (not necessarily to zero, or close to)

While those might seem like different ways of saying the same thing, it feels like folks are leaning on the more negative, "evil" interpretation.

I don't see an attempt at lowering the amount of system competition that existed for D&D by making D&D an open game as an "evil" (or bad) thing. But perhaps something that wasn't as necessary for the success of D&D 3E as Dancey and Skaff thought.

While times have changed since the late 90s, I think the amount of "system competition" today has never been higher, and D&D seems healthy. The larger industry seems healthy. Maybe the "Skaff Effect" wasn't that accurate . . . or perhaps it was in the late 90s, and things have changed.

 

[Swanosaurus]

Was one of Dancey's goals to eliminate all non-D&D games? Or virtually so, at least?

Or was one of his goals to further cement D&D in the center of the industry, and lower the number of other, non-D&D systems? Reduce system competition? (not necessarily to zero, or close to)

While those might seem like different ways of saying the same thing, it feels like folks are leaning on the more negative, "evil" interpretation.

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?"

 

[dbolack]

Rolling Thunder.