Hasbro CEO Says Everyone's Doing it, so They Need to use Generative AI to Keep Up
Hasbro CEO Says Everyone's Doing it, so They Need to use Generative AI to Keep Up
"We will deploy [AI] significantly and liberally internally."
You should never support the scumbags at Hasbro/WOTC if you are into tabletop games
Well to be fair, Hasbro is just a small startup. Of course they need AI to level the playing field with the other mega conglomerate in the board game space.
I'm just really hoping that whatever they intend to use AI for isn't art. Ideally there is enough backlash to this that they backpedal again for a year or so, but failing that, I do not want to see it touch the art at all.
In my opinion, WotC is an art company. I don't really see anything better in 2024 D&D 5e to what is expected in Tales of the Valiant 5e or is in Level up Advanced 5e, or for that matter, any RPG really. The only thing they excel on is the money behind them to have an entirely different relationship with artists. And that's not mentioning Magic the Gathering which needs the art even more.
There aren't that many avenues for AI in D&D. You can't really replace the game design due to the fact that AI can't really problem solve or innovate. It's already likely used internally by the finance departments etc, hell it's built into Microsoft programs, it course it is used. It can't really be sued to make the writing more efficient because the writing of a D&D book is sacred, you can't change the word prone to lying down for readability for example.
So it's likely coming for art or WotC are returning to the idea of AI DMs, which is silly and I have no interest in, and I can't imagine it being anything but a totally adjacent product to D&D.
I can't wait to see what evil and terrible way I'm proved wrong.
What terrible timing. The customers are increasingly suspicious of anything even labeled AI. Investors are pushing this, but even they are starting to get cold feet. It only makes sense if they can sell it, and they increasingly can't sell it.
These are the same geniuses who tanked their big Hollywood movie by changing their game license just before the movie came out, right?
Has a 7.2/10 and 91% Tomato score. Profited over 50 million dollars. Hardly a tank
It's a great movie, the best movie yet to come out under the Dungeons and Dragons name. However:
The film made $93 million domestically, which is not good compared to the $150 million budget. Luckily, its worldwide total was $208.2 million, but with marketing costs, it is likely the film did not break even.
https://movieweb.com/dungeons-and-dragons-sequel-unlikely/
It's often difficult to identify why a film didn't perform well, but fan anger over the licensing changes likely contributed, e.g. see: https://screenrant.com/dungeons-dragons-honor-among-thieves-box-office-bomb-reason/
The movie could have been a huge hit instead of just maybe breaking even. Trying to rip off the core fans right before it came out was a dumb idea.
Can I just use this opportunity to say that, while I enjoyed the movie, I spent the entire time waiting for the bard to use magic and it never happened? Because that really annoyed me. Don't call yourself a D&D movie and then have a bard that can't do magic. But somehow has a lute made of steel.
If every company started jumping off a bridge, would you follow? /s
In all honesty, just because other companies are using AI doesn't mean you should. Can't wait for the AI bro bubble to pop and fully deflate.
But think of the economy and the shareholders. We can not, I repeat; WE CAN NOT let them fail! /s
When do we eat?
AI is there to stay. You are living in a fantasy world.
That'll never happen. The promise for profits is too high. They'll just keep massaging it and "improving" it till it's too late.
Isn't AI pretty much the opposite of why someone would play a tabletop rpg game?
On one hand, yes, but ever since the earliest of CRPGs, many people have dreamt of a virtual table top game in which literally anything is possible like that of a proper table top.
Maybe, but among the rpgs, the Hasbro one is most LLM-like.
As one of the people leading the charge against Hasbro's use of AI art in HeroQuest, fuck you. We can tell the difference, the quality is garbage, you're stealing from qualified, skilled, hard-working artists, and we don't give a fuck about the shareholders; so knock it the hell off
In school they told us not to do drugs even if everyone was doing it...
Yeah, but drugs are awesome
Pretty much every kid that did D.A.R.E. when I was in middle school ended up smoking copious amounts of weed at the very least. D.A.R.E. shirts were a hot stoner commodity when I was in high school.
Guess they were wrong.
I actually can't believe CEOs are this stupid. We legitimately live in Idiocracy. Do they actually think pointing to a random part of their business and saying "AI it!" will do anything? They're probably going to use it for customer-facing generative AI or LLMs, which have already been shown to reduce customer enthusiasm! The companies who are going to be mildly successful with this will either put in the effort to find an actually useful use case for it, or will use it internally to remove like 60% of their workforce (most companies are too dumb for this, but the profits would be enormous if they ever figured it out).
Who knows how many companies have already done the latter part of your comment. We'd have no idea, we'd just see unemployment numbers rising.
Oh dear...
Hehe, whoops
Yeah, I've been boycotting Hasbro since the whole OGL 1.1 fiasco. Fuck 'em.
Even after they released the 5e srd under CC BY 4.0?
I was going to end my boycott once they did that.
But like... a week later? (I don't remember the exact amount of time, but I remember it being surprisingly soon on the heels of the OGL 1.1 debacle.) They pulled the whole Pinkertons/MTG bullshit. Had they not done that, I'd have bought more 5e materials, watched the D&D movie, and likely caught up on some Transformers movies by now.
At this point, I don't think much could end my boycott of WotC short of Hasbro selling off WotC and better people being put at the helm of WotC. I don't think much could end my boycott of Hasbro short of a huge shift in upper-level management at Hasbro.
What terrible timing. The customers are increasingly suspicious of anything even labeled AI. Investors are pushing this, but even they are starting to get cold feet. It only makes sense if they can sell it, and they increasingly can't sell it.
Stock pricing is still sky high, so clearly it is going strong /s
Fuck D&D, fuck Hasbro. There's plenty of better alternatives.
Shadowdark ftw
That's nothing. Wait until Mattel's AI Talking Barbie tells little kids how to kill their parents...
It will probably just talk them into having eating disorders
I mean... if everyone else is doing it, then market yourself as the only one NOT doing it. Making sure you are doing the same as everyone else doesn't sound like a recipe for success in their business.
It's PR speak for "We promised our shareholders layoffs for more profit".
Another day, another trend-chasing, creativity-hating corporation doing its thing. I really hope I can eventually get a cool art job despite all of this. Edit: Good thing I'm gonna try good ol' Mathfinder out once I graduate from my DnD 5e training wheels.
Everyone who is doing it is also fielding immense amounts of complaints from everyone forced to use it, but I guess we ignore those pesky details.
A quick reminder that there are other TTRPGs out there beyond D&D. I'm currently running a short campaign with Old School Essentials and it's pretty nice!
LLMs are absolutely brilliant for D&D. If you get writers block explaining the story so far you can get some amazing suggestions.
Obviously generating art if you're not that way inclined is also amazing.
Maybe if you're a GM looking for quick inspiration, but not if you're a for profit company whose job is to put out original content.
What're the LLMs even supposed to feed on if companies start putting out generated content? It very quickly implodes if this becomes the norm.
That's the great part! We make sure only rich people can access the best models so the poor people are forced to handmake
contenttraining data for us!
I feel like people are tearing you a new one for suggesting an actually useful and arguably ethical use of AI... If it isn't for profit, it isn't for the public, it's fine. The only real concern is energy usage which don't get me wrong is a problem but nerds getting past writers block isn't going to be a meaningful impact compared to massive companies running millions of prompts with their public facing help bots. GMs yoink content from other creators constantly sometimes nearly word for word. Not everyone has the time to sink into building a shiny and perfect original world and tools like AI let them spend the time they have actually playing with friends. Don't hate on people for liking or using AI for mundane personal stuff when the fight is with companies abusing these tools
I wouldn't say "brilliant" or "amazing" but I do agree with you. Helping me get passed writer's block or brainstorm ideas is the best use of AI in TTRPGs.
With that said though, fuck WotC and Hasbro. I've sworn off buying anymore of their shit since the OGL debacle. And they should actually pay writers and artists for their content, paid, free, or otherwise.
Yeah anyone who can afford to pay for the services of a creative absolutely should of course.
AI "art" is theft at every level.
A DM/GM using using an LLM will lose what makes their story theirs. It becomes hollow and heartless.
A corporation using either of those things simply doesn't want to pay artists and writers and will learn that AI is not the panacea to stockholder complaints they want it to be.
You know GMs will sometimes also use good old-fashioned directly stolen art from the Internet, right?
Whether it's AI generated or just ripped from Google images or from a fantasy novel, if it's for personal use, what difference does that make?
I do agree though that using AI for anything that is for profit is effectively a crime, especially huge corporations like Hasbro.