The next fad after companion apps?
Integrating AI into electronic games is hard, let alone tabletop or board games, and Hasbro’s shown the capacity to fuck up the much easier task of “sit on the legendary DND IP, let it function, and just sit back and count the river of money that floods in to you as a result.” If Hasbro’s performance at operating the DND brand is anything to go by, traditional board game designers have not a lot to worry about in the near future I think.
But in typical fashion, hasbro understands nothing about d&d and will probably almost destroy their property, again.
Yep. There were rumors of them implementing AI DMs already around the time of the OGL fiasco. I predict that they will ham-fistedly implement some kind of AI tabletop system, it will be hilariously bad, and the evolution of DND into some weird no-longer-a-fad thing will continue apace (with the genuine tabletop fans moving to Pathfinder / Dungeon Crawl Classics / etc, and the casuals going back to just doing something else.)
I kind of expect them to fick it up so bad they sell it off and hopefully someone better acquires it then. But I doubt I’ll learn any edition past 5th. What I have right now does everything I need it to when I run a fantasy adventure
I definitely don’t assume that. In fact, I think they’re far more likely to make a ham-fisted mess of it.
I’m not trying to throw shade here at the 5e designers, who are clearly smart people who care about the game, but I would say the result of what Hasbro is doing with the brand is actually pretty un-mixed, of cash-grab content with clearly evident flaws, in contrast to systems like Pathfinder that are designed to be well-designed and enjoyable systems.
If you integrate the digital into an analog game, it’s no longer an analog game. It’s now a video game with a physical dongle. Looking at you LoTR:JtME!
Did it sold well?
Just… make… it… fun and I’ll play and don’t make me sign up for a service or give away my data.
An excerpt:
AI-driven game mechanics excite board game enthusiasts, opening doors to more immersive and realistic gameplay. By delegating behind-the-scenes decision-making to AI algorithms, players can focus on the action unfolding before them rather than getting bogged down by complex behavior cards or rule sheets. Xplored envisions a board game landscape that mirrors video games, where meeples and tokens become dynamic counterparts to the traditional controller.
While the promise of AI in board games holds immense potential for enhancing entertainment value, some cautious voices raise concerns about the potential impact on creative workers. Drawing parallels with the entertainment industry’s experimentation with AI-written scripts amid labor strikes, some fear that an AI-driven approach could lead to unemployment and obscurity for board game designers. Having previously flirted with the tech trend of NFTs, Hasbro is not immune to the allure of Silicon Valley’s latest golden geese, including Kickstarter and blockchain.
By delegating behind-the-scenes decision-making to AI algorithms[…]
This line is a bit confusing, because this doesn’t sound like it requires an “AI” in the LLM sense, it sounds like a few if-statements.
I would be curious to see how exactly an LLM could be integrated into a board game, but for that - as always - I’ll be keeping an eye on the indie space.
There’s no chance a corporation like Hasbro will do anything more than slapping the “AI” label on it and letting the shareholder dollars to roll in.
An LLM is a specific type of AI, and honestly one that’s a useless novelty at best and the death of information on the internet at worst. Machine learning has been used in chess for literal decades before LLMs, is Stockfish “a few if statements”?
