Since their very inception, Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering have been repositories of fantastic art handcrafted by skilled artists. There’s an entire Magic: The Gathering submarket where people buy full art to decorate their homes — needless to say, fans of these franchises enjoy their art.
This is why there has been so much trepidation around comments from the head of Wizards of the Coast’s parent company, Hasbro, Chris Cocks, regarding the use of artificial intelligence. Cocks is a wholehearted proponent of the technology, though he has been toning down some of his rhetoric lately, presumably because of fan backlash.
Hasbro’s CEO Loves AI, But He Knows Not Everyone Does
Windsoul Genasi by Goran Josic
In an interview with The Verge, Cocks admits that he personally uses artificial intelligence, but he cuts his enthusiasm with an acknowledgement that the Dungeons & Dragons community seems to have rejected the technology.
“I [use AI] all the time just for personal passion projects. [D&D] is kind of my jam, and I DM probably three or four groups. There is so much AI-based animation, images, text, sound effects and voice cloning on my PC, it would floor you,” Cocks says.
Tabletop role-playing games offer a wondrous opportunity to engage in collective storytelling with a group of people who have thoughts, ideas and impulses as multifaceted as your own. I know exactly what that needs — a vapid, limited language model trained on Reddit posts and the passion of other people.
If I can be dramatic for a moment, the use of generative artificial intelligence is the antithesis of everything that makes TTRPGs so pure and special. It’s a corruption of the creative spirit that everyone’s channelling when they sit at the table.
We can take some solace in the fact that Cocks seems to understand that the technology is very unpopular with the consumers of his products, and so Hasbro isn’t currently planning to utilise AI in these areas, emphasis on currently.
“From a creative context, I think you have to think about it very carefully. There are some brands that the audience, the creators, just don’t want it, so we don’t even have pipelines for our video games or for Magic: The Gathering or D&D,” Cocks explains.
The chief executive then adopts the typical corporate attitude towards AI, likening it to the “disruptive” rise of Napster in 2000. Cocks says the music industry is “more profitable than ever” because they figured out a way through music streaming, but when confronted with the fact that profits in the music industry have been centralised to a few companies, Cocks says everyone should “accept that.”
- Original Release Date
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1974
- Player Count
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2+
- Age Recommendation
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12+ (though younger can play and enjoy)
- Length per Game
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From 60 minutes to hours on end.
