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.

 

[Bill Zebub]

But the Ford Pinto...

Then I have my history wrong. I didn't realize that Ford engineers knew the Pinto was dangerous and built it anyway. I thought it was a design mistake. (And also the source of one of the funniest moments in the movie Top Secret.)

Sorry. Given that example, I interpreted your post to mean that "the profit motive results in crappy products".

 

[HatWearingFool]

Attempting to.

IMHO, it’s not being so much being creative as it is recycling. I’ll be (even) more concerned if/when tech creates a new genre of music, literature or visual expression not easily described as being derivative of another, preexisting one.

That said, most people probably can’t/don’t/won’t distinguish creation from remixing.

What was the last new genre of music that was not easily described as being a derivative of another pre-existing one?

I’m honestly curious because I can think of any. We’ve had new genres but it’s always been fairly clear (or so I thought) about what they came from.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I don't understand your point. It seems to me that builders motivated by profit seek to build profitable things - the beauty and quality of those things is at best secondary, perhaps even irrelevant. Maybe you know better, so please do enumerate these things, also explaining how you know the motivation of the people who built them. Thanks, BC

Anything I could suggest would be argued with. So just pick your own favorite beautiful, well-made product (that isn't a one-off item hand-crafted by love alone). iPhone 4? Manual transmission 2003 BMW 330i? Robert Kramer chef's knife? Vessl coffee grinder? Barr chisels? I don't know what you're into; what do you love?

I guarantee the people ultimately responsible for the design and quality of those products were trying to make money, meaning not just get paid their salary but trying to make more money by building a better product. Because they recognize that great products sell more.

 

[Barner Cobblewood]

What was the last new genre of music that was not easily described as being a derivative of another pre-existing one?

20th century "electronic" art music, especially early synthesis. Related to the invention of the magnetically driven speaker and recording technologies.

 

[Scribe]

I'm not sure what your point is here.

"It happened to blue collar workers, and enough people weren't upset about it, so now it's OK to do again to white collar workers?"

That's nihilistic and just means this pattern will just keep on repeating until everyone but a few now-offshore billionaires is affected.

I don't think the point is that its OK. The point is, its going to keep happening regardless. I've been in tech for decades, outsourcing was, and remains, a problem the entire time. I just keep laughing when I see the internal job postings at my work.

Interested in moving to Hyderabad? Eastern Europe? Hmm wonder what the average wages are there?

The only answer is to get set up on land, and unplug before its too late.

 

[HatWearingFool]

I can't remember or recall any time in history where artists just don't have a career choice any longer. All these comparisons I keep hearing about "eh, technology has replaced jobs in the past too" is apples and oranges to me. For the first time I can recall, technology is replacing human creativity as a whole.

Technology has definitely limited the number of artists we have/need over time.

Every family used to have someone that could play an instrument, it was an important part of filling time and providing entertainment. Recorded music and players basically wiped that out. I’m confident we have less musicians than at any other point in time.

The printing press basically wiped out illuminated manuscripts.

We have a lot less story tellers, dancers, etc because technology has made it so most people can now just see the very best of each. Many more preformed all over before mass media.

We still have creativities but a lot less people make their living or hobbies from it than before.

 

[The Firebird]

I don't think most of the AI talking heads are actually malicious -- although I can certainly think of a few that clearly are -- but they're almost all thoughtless about how ordinary people will be affected for years, maybe decades. If they wanted to pledge a percentage of their revenue towards job training, that'd go a long way to making them seem less hostile to everyone who's not them.

There have been some statements suggesting this idea in the long run, but I can't imagine anyone doing it seriously prior to profitability
.

I've been telling people for years to void tech and computer science because:

An interesting recent result is Anthropic's hackathon, where many winning entries were from folks with little programming experience but a lot of domain knowledge (e.g., a cardiologist). Whether the ability to make 'good enough' software extends to enterprise, I am not sure.

Yesterday Charles Urbach made a post about this, and I think he makes a very strong observation. This isn't just Ryan. There are several leaders of the industry making these pro-AI comments, and that's just...pretty depressing, actually. We were an industry founded on human creativity.

Can you share the post? I can't see it on Facebook (no account).

The only hope most creative's have (such as artists and game designers) is if people won't buy AI products, but I doubt that will happen. It's the same as the buy local/American campaigns that never really saved manufacturing jobs. Eventually the product will be good enough and it will be much cheaper.

I think creatives are in a stronger place than technical workers because they are trying to capture aspects of the human experience that AI won't be able to. Creativity is often about breaking rules in the right way and at the right time, and it has a level of taste that AI can't replicate.

The change is instead that many aspects of what are now collaborative creative projects may be done by an individual. Someone with an idea for a movie, for example, can now achieve it without the same budget and without collaborators. They can go solo, as writing a novel would be. (Obviously not entirely solo. Have some charity in your reading of this, please).

With technical workers, there are rules and clear standards of success and machines do better at these kinds of constrained environments. There was a recent finding that AI use intensified work (I think primarily technical work) because practitioners spent less time on relatively easy but time consuming tasks (e.g., data conversion) and more time making the hard decisions (e.g., prioritization) that AI couldn't. The harder-to-quantify something is, the harder it is to automate, so people whose job is to evoke feelings may have the longest legs of all.

 

[Bill Zebub]

The only answer is to get set up on land, and unplug before its too late.

THEN HOW WILL I ACCESS MY PDFs THAT I TRUST VENDORS TO STORE FOR ME FOREVER?!?!!?!?

 

[Scribe]

THEN HOW WILL I ACCESS MY PDFs THAT I TRUST VENDORS TO STORE FOR ME FOREVER?!?!!?!?

Digital isnt real, sorry.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don't think the point is that its OK. The point is, its going to keep happening regardless. I've been in tech for decades, outsourcing was, and remains, a problem the entire time. I just keep laughing when I see the internal job postings at my work.

Interested in moving to Hyderabad? Eastern Europe? Hmm wonder what the average wages are there?

The only answer is to get set up on land, and unplug before its too late.

Laying down and saying "this is inevitable" helps ensure that it is.