Hasbro CEO Says AI Is Something “You’re Going To See More Of” In D&D
It seems that D&D just can’t get away from the specter of artificial intelligence – only this time, the call is coming from inside the Hasbro.
It must be hard to be one of Wizard’s comms team. You spend months reassuring people that the company firmly believes that Magic: the Gathering and D&D are made “by humans, for humans” and that you will never use generative AI. Issuing statement after statement. AI art got used in a D&D book? Update the policy.
AI art got used in a Magic: the Gathering promo image? Update and reiterate the policy. To their credit, WotC tries to make it clear that they don’t want people using generative AI in their work.
But what happens when the CEO of your parent company says something like “using AI to enable user-generated content… I think you’re going to see that across not just like our hardcore brands like D&D, but also multiple of our brands”?
Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks Brings Up The Digital Future of D&D
In a call at a Goldman Sachs webcast as part of the Communacopia + Technology Conference, which has speakers from all around the tech industry, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks and CFO Gina Goetter gave potential investors a peek behind the scenes at how Hasbro is “using play” to “leverage its brands.” Cocks spoke about Baldur’s Gate 3 and the success that followed it, as well as Hasbro going “all in on digital” and outlining some of the current games they have in development. Spoiler alert: there may be another D&D game coming soon.
But towards the end of the webcast, Cocks took a question about “bending the cost curve”. And if you’re wondering what that means, that is Corporate Ratfink speak for “making things cheaper.” And it’s important to disguise that intention because if you make something cheaply, you’re not getting the good, quality ingredients that people want. Temu is a meme for something being a low-quality knockoff for a reason. But if you “bend the cost curve down,” you’re a financial wizard, Harry.
Anyway, answering this weaselly worded question, Cocks spoke about the potential of AI and its use in the company, saying that they’ve already been using it:
“It’s mostly machine-learning-based AI or proprietary AI as opposed to a ChatGPT approach. We will deploy it significantly and liberally internally as both a knowledge worker aid and as a development aid.
I’m probably more excited though in terms of the playful elements of AI.”
– Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks
Now you might be wondering, “what are the playful elements of AI?” Is it when they make killer robots that look like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Robert Patrick in real life? Because wouldn’t that be playful? Sure, we’re all getting brutally eviscerated by Skynet, but it’s doing it ironically.
But no, here Cocks is referring to using AI “in play” saying that he doesn’t want to be afraid of embracing what the customers are already doing. And then went on to imply that because people use AI playing D&D, that’s a clear signal to Hasbro/WotC that people want AI in D&D, despite the multiple posts and petitions and social media firestorms that arise any time AI comes anywhere near D&D:
“I play [D&D] with probably 30 or 40 people regularly. There’s not a single person who doesn’t use AI somehow for either campaign development or character development or story ideas. That’s a clear signal that we need to be embracing it.”
There Are Some Problems Here
First of all, I don’t actually think he plays D&D with 30 or 40 people regularly. Who has the time? Unless you’re somehow suggesting that the CEO of a billion-dollar corporation has enough leisure time for multiple games of D&D on the regular—but that would mean that he probably doesn’t work very many hours, and that can’t possibly be true.
Second of all, even if that’s true, that is a remarkably small sample size to make any kind of decision off of. Just because Bryce and Chet used ChatGPT to come up with names for fantasy cocaine that aren’t just “fantasy cocaine” doesn’t mean the community wants you to use AI. And it’s a little victim blame-y to do something that I’m sure your social media teams and community managers could tell you is unpopular, while saying “we only did it because you made us do it.” But, it seems like that’s the future:
“The themes around using AI to enable user-generated content, using AI to streamline new player introduction, using AI for emergent storytelling, I think you’re going to see that with not just like our hardcore brands like D&D but also multiple of our brands.”
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Still, it doesn’t sound like it’s jumping right into making D&D books with generative AI. I think they know very well that their customers don’t want that. But how AI and D&D will go together is something I guess we’re all going to learn.
What do you think? AI and D&D? Friends? Enemies? Enemies to Lovers?
