AI will ruin the Gen Con Geek List
We’re lazy. Whatever we do in life, if there’s a shortcut, we’ll take it. When we consider buying a new game, we look at the cover, see that amazing artwork, and that’s pretty much it—it’s going to be a brilliant game.
Am I exaggerating? Let the first person who didn’t get hyped about Scythe in 2016 when Jamie revealed the cover—and BGG literally exploded—cast the first stone…
Of course I’m exaggerating. I’m a columnist—I’m supposed to exaggerate a little. But let’s allow ourselves a moment of honesty today.
We see the box cover—we’re already excited.
We read the basic BGG description—it’s a deckbuilder set during the French Revolution, with a knives drafting mechanic for the guillotine. That sounds cool.
Photos of the components—cards, a board, a 3d cardboard guillotine—brilliant!
It’s rated over 7 on BGG—sure, just 15 votes so far, but still promising.
We’re ready. We add it to the wishlist.
This weekend, 621 new games and expansions are debuting at Gen Con.
No one is doing more research than that above—glancing at the cover, maybe checking the designer, and reading two short sentences on BGG. The Hotness ranking goes up, “Nature” gets 562 likes, but that doesn’t mean those 562 people have read the rulebook for it, watched a gameplay video on YouTube, or had the chance to try it at a con. That 562 likes aren’t exactly well-informed.
It got 562 likes because North Star Games is an awesome company and has a solid track record. Because Evolution (and the follow-up, Oceans) were phenomenal games. And players—rightly so—assume this new one will also be great. No research. A lot of trust and hype.
I’m not bringing this up today to criticize the hype, or the GeekList, or even our laziness. I love all of it. I’ve been an active part of this madness for two decades. I also buy games at Essen just because they look awesome. I scroll through the Hotness, I check likes instead of reading the rulebook.
And I love that crazy process.
But today, I want to paint a grim picture for you—a vision of AI killing all that fun. It won’t take more than 12 months before ChatGPT and Gemini and all the rest AI websites ruin it for us. Soon, you’ll ask AI to read the PDF rulebooks for all 621 Gen Con releases, ask to categorize them by genre, compare them with games in your personal collection, and then prepare you a list of the Top 25 games that best fit your board game tastes.
That damn AI will do what we’re too lazy to do—it’ll read the rulebooks, watch YT gameplay videos, and give us an educated like. AI will say: “Friend, here are 20 games you should look into from Gen Con. I don’t know if they have cool covers—but I read all 621 rulebooks and I do know mechanics of these 20 are a perfect fit for your collection.”
And just like that—AI will ruin the fun.
Because let’s face it. We are humans. We love the chaos of buying with our eyes and hope it turn out to be a great game…
I strongly believe that good board game is the one that tells a good story. You play it and suddenly you are sucked into it, you feel chills on the skin. Emotions grow. In a moment you defend castle. You hear roar of warriors. You smell boiling oil. You are into it.
That's how I design my games. I always want to tell a good story. I want players to be into it. As deep as possible.
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