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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.
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2024
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Fuck AI
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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.
fan anger over the licensing changes likely contributed
I know that is the specific reason why I haven't seen it and still intend specifically never to.
(Ok, to be fair I was going to end my Hasbro boycott and see it when they backpedaled and did the dual OGL/Creative Commons thing, but then they pulled the MTG Pinkerton bullshit and that made it clear Hasbro had learned less than nothing from the OGL 1.1 blowback.)
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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?
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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.
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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
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.
Nah get the fuck out of my hobby with that stolen shit. If I learnt that my GM was using AI I'd be out of there so fast.
Yeah like people aren't using existing materials in their campaigns.
These are not the same. Here are some of the ways someone may be fine with reusing existing material while being against AI:
- Someone may value thoughtful and coherent world building, while feeling like the AI generated amalgamation dilutes the cohesiveness of the material.
- Someone can be for public sharing of ideas, while simultaneously against AI companies disregarding licenses attached to those ideas to build AI products.
- Someone can value the personality and individual perspective that a content author or DM injects into material and feel that AI-generated material lacks this character.
Don’t reduce the use of AI down to the reuse of material. It also averages out material into some sort of lowest common denominator - sacrificing exactly the things that many niche fandoms value: personality and imagination.
And getting suggestions to help form your story takes any of those away?
I agree with the licensing implications but I doubt many people seek licenses from these guys before taking inspiration.
To some people, yes. To others, no. You’re replying to specific people who seem to be against the idea, and I’m guessing for them it detracts significantly from the experience.
At the end of the day all of the concepts we have in fantasy are derivative in some regard, so the line will vary just like it will vary for people that want to do total homebrew vs following a book.
My group dabbled with AI when it was at its peak buzz, and if I’m honest, my head cannon sort of ignores those bits. They don’t carry the same authenticity that I came to expect from my group. It detracts from my experience because I play ttrpgs primarily to learn about my friends and how they’ve interpreted a shared world, not to hear algorithmically mid fanfic. I’m also not crazy about following a book. With a book, at least I know someone willfully released the work into the world and is getting appropriately compensated.
Their tongue in your teeth
Why speak your own words when they can be stolen for you, with great convenience
I said use it for suggestions to break writers block.
How is using ai for suggestions any different then taking ideas from other media?
Avoid the pain (and potential growth) of writers block by stealing
Why develop your own voice and experience a real emotion when a corporation can serve one to you
You getting story suggestions definitely implies doing that.
Reading, understanding, and synthesizing your own art from someone else's work is not the same thing as typing artstation artstation artstation artstation artstation artstation artstation artstation artstation artstation artstation artstation artstation artstation into a statistical machine.
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 ~~content~~ training data for us!
I thought it was obvious I was talking about personal use.
That was in no way clear
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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.
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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.
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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).
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Yeah, I've been boycotting Hasbro since the whole OGL 1.1 fiasco. Fuck 'em.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.