I would not publish a game under Fleming & Hound that uses AI-generated art. I want to get that out of the way because it’s a very emotional subject, and I get it.

Like many people in creative fields, I feel deeply ambivalent about generative AI.

On the one hand, society is only beginning to come to terms with how disruptive AI is likely to be to our economy, culture, and politics. The science fiction writer Ted Chiang has said that fears about AI are really fears about capitalism;1 if that’s true, then there’s a lot for us to fear.

Add to that the legitimate concerns about how these models are trained. It’s not clear to me that generative AI is a form of theft or plagiarism; it’s more complicated than that. But there’s no question that a lot of the tactics used to train the LLMs have been underhanded at best.

On the other hand… it’s hard to deny what an amazing tool AI can be. That almost scares me more.

Limelight and AI

If it should ever be published, Limelight will not use AI-generated artwork. But I have used ChatGPT in two ways to produce the prototype:

1. Generating names for cast members. Representation is important to me. I like the idea that gamers will see themselves represented in the games I design and that it will mean something to them. But like everyone, I have blindspots. So I used ChatGPT to randomly generate names for characters in the game to ensure adequate diversity and also to try to avoid stereotypes.

2. Generating temporary placeholder art for cards. The traditional way to get art for a prototype board game is to literally steal it — find an image online, swipe it, replace the image later in development. It seems to me using generative AI is at least better than that. The placeholder art is identified as being temporary and I disclose that it is AI-generated at the start of every playtest.

So I’ve made my peace with using AI in prototyping. Sort of. More or less. I’m sleeping at least 15 minutes a night, and only spending a couple hours a day worrying about the robot apocalypse.

And if I’m being totally honest, I had a blast last weekend using ChatGPT’s 4o model to generate 85 portraits for the characters in the game.

Since I first had the idea for Limelight, it has been my intention that each cast or crew member in the game should be represented by a theatrical caricature, as though they all have portraits on the wall at Sardi’s. I wanted to demonstrate that ambition in the prototype.2

Here are two things I discovered generating the temporary artwork for Limelight:

AI is getting pretty damn good.

In ChatGPT 4o, the people have the right number of fingers. In the hundred or so images it produced for me, I think perhaps two featured musicians with three arms, and getting the followspot operator right was a bit of a challenge. But for the most part, not bad.

Actually… better than not bad.

This art could absolutely be better. It feels generic with no particularly distinctive style or voice. ChatGPT is definitely no Al Hirschfeld. If Limelight becomes a viable product, I will want the art to be better: more expressive, more unique. But if I’m being totally honest… these images are pretty close to being “good enough.”

For example, this image made me crack up when I saw it. I love this guy’s expression, like he’s been waiting his whole entire life to go aggro on a set of drums, and his moment is just about to come.

And then there’s this one of a world-weary stage manager.

And this one, of a bassoonist, isn’t funny but I like that it does have at least a hint of Hirschfeld’s expressive lines.3 Also, I have no idea how to play the bassoon but to my very inexpert eyes her fingering looks at least plausible.

On the other hand…

AI is still pretty weird.

ChatGPT is the world’s friendliest black box. But the inner workings can be a little weird.

Our “creative collaboration” was humming along when, about 65 characters in, I came to a card depicting a pop star making her Boardway debut. I didn’t really have the words to prompt this properly. I’m just not “hip” or “with it” enough, as the kids say. So this is when I made my fatal mistake:

I suggested that the character could have a “Taylor Swift vibe.” I didn’t want a character who looked like Taylor Swift, or any pop star, for that matter. Just someone with a “Taylor Swift vibe.” Whatever that means.

And ChatGPT flipped out.

All of a sudden, I could barely get any prompts through. I would just get a notice that ChatGPT couldn’t generate the image because it would violate their content policy. I would ask why, and ChatGPT wouldn’t really know — because it seems the policy enforcer and the generator are separate processes, each mysterious to the other.

At first it was clear that it just didn’t want me generating images of Taylor Swift. It hadn’t had any trouble with my references to Buster Keaton or Al Hirschfeld, but apparently T. Swift was a bridge too far.

I explicitly wrote in my prompts that I wanted portraits of fictional characters who did not look like real people, but it didn’t matter. The enforcer had begun to suspect that every prompt was an attempt to create an image of Taylor Swift or some other equally litigious person.

An African-American Broadway technical director in his early 50s? No, could be Taylor Swift.

Redraw that dancer with his arms down by his side? No, Taylor Swift also has arms.

It was so strange to be in this ongoing literal conversation with ChatGPT where it would say, “can’t do that,” I would ask why, we would go back and forth a few times, and ChatGPT would essentially end up saying, “yeah, makes sense, I don’t know what to tell you, you’re right.” But what can you do? The black box confronted with another black box.

By the end, the process had become very slow and frustrating. Score one for the humans, I guess.

The part where I confidently predict the future

Just kidding. I got nothing.

Generative AI is going to keep getting better. Probably.

The economics of generative AI make it inevitable. Probably.

Eventually, the board game community will become more accepting of AI. Probably… in fact I think this might already be happening, grudgingly.

Generative AI will kill this industry and many others. Maybe. Or maybe it’ll usher in a new golden age of creativity. Or maybe both. Or maybe neither.

For now, I don’t feel the need to rush the future along. Generative AI gives you an incredible feeling of power and creativity… but also the uncomfortable feeling that every time you’re using it, you might be digging a grave. Possibly your own.

There is something electrifying about theatre.

As a high school student, it’s fair to say my attendance record was less than perfect. I went to a quarter of my French classes (and my ability to speak French today reflects this level of commitment.)

It’s not because I was lighting up in the smoke pit. I had a much more serious addiction. I was a theatre kid.

Theatre kids come in many different varieties. I dabbled in several of them. I hosted assemblies, I wrote sketches, I hung lights and wrapped cables. But the job I loved most was stage manager.

All those times I should have been reading Molière and conjugating verbs in the subjunctive mood, we would rehearse. And rehearse. And rehearse. Many many long hours.

But the charge in the air during a performance made it worthwhile. The risk of something going wrong in the middle of a show was more than balanced out by the chance that something magical might happen. That one, transcendent moment that would connect audience, performers, and the people backstage.

That feeling is what Limelight is all about.

Limelight is a push-your-luck deck-builder inspired by the unpredictability of live theatre. In Limelight, you stage a Boardway production (get it? Boardway?)

Over the course of three “Acts,” you will cast your show with an assortment of actors, singers, dancers, designers, craftspeople, and crew, each with their own set of strengths and weaknesses. You have three rehearsals to elevate the performances and smooth out the bumps in your show to make it the best it can be.

On Opening Night, it’s showtime. Draw from your Show deck to put on a performance that people will remember — for better or for worse. Impress the critics to win the game. But beware that an ill-timed Blunder may make the whole audience walk out.

I’ve been working on Limelight for about six months now, and I still consider it early in development. But I look forward to telling you more about this game as it continues to change and evolve.

I’ll be playtesting Limelight at Origins in Columbus next week and at Gen Con later this summer in Indianapolis. If you’re attending either of those events, stop by and try it out!

• Thursday at 8 a.m.

• Thursday at 8 p.m.

• Saturday at 8 a.m.

• Saturday at 4 p.m.

All playtests will be held in the First Exposure Playtest Hall at the Indiana Convention Center. Tickets are free but it’s smart to reserve an e-ticket in advance at one of the links above. Each Cola Wars playtest will include four players.

Come try out Cola Wars, tell me what you think, and get a very special gift for playing!

For the past several months, I’ve been designing a strategy board game called Cola Wars. In Cola Wars, you play as a 1980s marketing executive for a start-up cola brand competing against the evil CorpoCola (tagline: “Enjoy… or else.”) You build your brand by increasing your mental share and shelf share.

Yes, it’s basically “How Brands Grow: The Board Game.” I’m a nerd.

Anyway, the process of designing Cola Wars has involved a lot of reflection on the intersection between tabletop gaming and marketing, especially with respect to randomness.

There are many different ways to classify board games, but one of the most important — and hotly debated — dimensions is how much luck is involved in playing them.

Some games have very little luck at all. In chess, the only role luck plays – in theory – is in deciding who plays white. Snakes and ladders, on the other hand, is all luck. There is no strategy involved at all; you are completely at the mercy of the dice.

Most board games exist somewhere in the middle. There are winning strategies for Monopoly (although really only a few good ones) but also a great deal of luck (the dice and the chance and community chest cards and also whether you get to play as the best piece, the top hat.) The winner of a game of Monopoly might have had the best strategy or the most luck, but usually it will be a mix of both.

Modern board games are often said to belong to one of two categories, and while luck is not the only dimension that separates them, it is one of the primary ones.

Eurogames either involve very little luck or involve luck but before you make a move. For example, a roll of the dice or a draw of cards might give you a sheaf of wheat or a pig. But when you use that wheat or that pig, the results will be completely predictable. You can always turn two wheats into a pig, or two pigs into three bricks, or six bricks into a victory point, or who knows what. (Eurogames often seem to be about the lives of medieval peasants.) Some examples of Eurogames include Agricola, Carcassonne, or Ticket to Ride.

“Ameritrash” board games — the hobby insists that the term is not meant to be derogatory — generally have more conflict between the players than eurogames and a lot more luck. In an Ameritrash game, you might choose an action and then roll the dice to see if you are successful. Examples of Ameritrash games include Axis and Allies, Twilight Imperium, (arguably) Risk, or (arguably) Monopoly.

Put simply: Eurogames are about managing resources, and Ameritrash games are about managing risk.

Among the most “serious” board gamers, too much luck is considered a bad thing. Many gamers would prefer to have no luck at all and treat every game purely as a battle of wits. Others enjoy games with a lot of luck; there would be no Las Vegas if human beings didn’t enjoy the thrill of luck-based games, after all.

Board games and marketing have a great deal in common. Gamers and marketers alike use war metaphors; they both employ strategy; they both seek to “win” against competitors. But I can think of surprisingly few board games themed around marketing.

One of the few prominent examples of a marketing-themed board game is Food Chain Magnate. Food Chain Magnate is famous for being exceedingly complex and also completely devoid of luck. Here’s a telling quote from Reddit about Food Chain Magnate: “It is a Euro Game in [the same way that] a Monster Truck is technically a truck.”

You might place a billboard in a neighbourhood, and if there is a house in range of that advertising, they will buy your hamburger. Otherwise, they won’t. The game is entirely deterministic. The only variable is the choices the players make (and there are a lot of choices to be made.)

I enjoyed Food Chain Magnate the one time I played it, and I even spent way too much money to back the fancy reprint on crowdfunding. (No, seriously, an embarrassing amount.)

But Food Chain Magnate is nothing like marketing. Because marketing isn’t a Eurogame. It’s pure, unadulterated Ameritrash.

Roger Martin — the former dean of Rotman — distinguishes between “strategy” and “planning.” (He’s using those terms in a business sense, not an agency sense. I’m going to paraphrase him and, hopefully, not fully mangle his intentions.)

Planning is about what you can control. You can control timelines. You can control how your organization is structured. Most of all, you can control costs, usually. On these dimensions, the outcomes can be fairly predictable. Planning is a Eurogame.

Strategy is about influencing things you can’t fully control. Strategy involves making informed choices based on a theory of how you can win. You might have a theory that if you do X, then Y is more likely to result. But you can’t control what competitors do, or what consumers do, or the weather, or the stock market, or any number of a million factors beyond your control. Strategy is Ameritrash.

Planning is comfortable and safe. It tends to be what’s taught in business schools. Measure everything, control everything, and then you can make your numbers go up or down. It’s usually easy to do this by cutting costs.

But strategy, for all its unpredictability, is how real growth happens. Strategy acknowledges the importance of measurement and the need to control what you can control — but it also acknowledges that the things that matter most to your success are outside of your control. Sometimes even the “right” strategy, based on the best information available to you and flawlessly executed, can fail.

Because in real life, unlike in Food Chain Magnate, the cards are never all face up.

Many people, especially those in digital media, promise a vision of advertising that planners can love. Through the miracle of targeting, predictive analytics, or insert-buzzword-here, businesses can reach the right people at the right time and earn a guaranteed conversion.

Often these solutions offer what planners really need — numbers — without offering much in the way of what they’re supposed to be after, growth. A search ad may indeed offer an impressive conversion rate, but if it’s only “catching people as they fall” (that is, attracting buyers who were close to buying anyway) then its impact is going to be limited.

In Cola Wars, you set your strategy and there are many ways to tilt the odds in your favour, but it’s the consumer — represented by a set of ten dice — that has the last word on whether you succeed or fail.

In the playtests I’ve run for Cola Wars, some people don’t like this. After all, with this system, some people win who didn’t “deserve” to win. And some people with smart strategies lose out to an unlucky roll. Several playtesters have suggested that I move the dice rolls so that they happen first, and players can react to them already knowing the outcome.

If you work in advertising, you’ve probably heard something similar from your clients.

But the truth is, if we’re going to be effective in marketing, we have to be comfortable with the fact that much lies outside of our control. We can influence the most important factors driving success, but we can’t dictate them, and we rarely have the luxury of reacting to complete information.

Eurogames are fun. They’re also a fantasy.

It’s the 1980s, and you’re in charge of marketing for a startup brand of cola. The market is completely dominated by the evil CorpoCola. Over the next few years, you’ll run advertising, snag shelf space, and play a few sneaky tricks to try to control the market. Will you come out on top — or will CorpoCola reign supreme?

Objective

Cola Wars is played over six years, from 1980 to 1985. Each player is trying to win the most market share points by the end of the game. But if CorpoCola wins the most market share points, everyone else loses.

Premise

Cola Wars is fought on two battlefields: mind share and shelf share.

Mind share is about making sure that your brand of soda is easy to think of. After all, if people don’t think of your soda, they won’t remember to buy it.

Shelf share is about making sure that your brand of soda is easy to buy. If consumers can’t find your soda, they won’t buy it.

You win market share points by controlling mind share and shelf share.

Gameplay

Every turn, you play an Executive.

Executives can perform actions like running advertising campaigns, buying sponsorships, running sampling programs, or negotiating for shelf space in stores and restaurants. You can also send them on retreats so they come first in the turn order next year.

Alongside your Executives, you may also play Secret Formula cards that give you powerful abilities to gain an edge over your fellow players and CorpoCola.

Once all players have finished playing their Executives and Secret Formula cards, the Consumer dice are rolled in the Vending Machine dice tower to allocate market share points. Consumers are hard to predict — that’s why it’s important to own as many shelves and memories as you can.

About the project

Cola Wars is an early-stage medium weight strategy board game designed by me. It’s my first board game design.

About me

Cameron Fleming is an advertising strategist with more than 16 years of experience in advertising agencies in New York and Toronto. I started my career as a copywriter, writing ads for brands including Nikon, American Airlines, Six Flags, Mastercard and yes, very briefly, a certain fizzy drinks company. I also drink far more diet soda than is reasonable.