In a groundbreaking partnership, toy giant Hasbro has joined forces with Italian tech company Xplored, signaling a potential future where artificial intelligence becomes an integral part of board games. Adam Biehl, senior vice president and general manager of Hasbro Game, envisions a seamless integration of technology into analog gaming experiences, introducing innovative gameplay to players ...
Read more
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
@mo_ztt @dpunked that’s assuming they actually make something compelling which requires some level of competency that they have a mixed record in achieving.
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.