Feedback from a board game publisher in the age of AI. Game design is a balance between AI optimization and creating emotion between players.
AI is everywhere: design, cinema, advertising, video games. Board games, often perceived as a craft bastion, in turn enter into this dynamic. Behind record sales in supermarkets and the professionalization of studios, a silent transformation is taking place: AI is reorganizing creation, accelerating prototypes and simplifying artistic direction.
As an author-publisher at Open World Éditions, I was able to measure this change very concretely during the creation of Pépite, released in October 2025. This feedback illustrates a broader movement: how a cultural sector, anchored in the physical and shared emotion, incorporates tools that optimize and sometimes replace certain stages while preserving its human dimension.
A bottleneck under pressure: AI as an organizational response
Creating a game requires a lot of work: imagining mechanics, testing rhythms, adjusting balances. Each step requires time and analysis. Until now, only physical, time-consuming sessions made it possible to identify flaws in a system. AI changes this equation.
In my case, it became a playful engineering partner, capable of exploring variations, detecting imbalances and proposing alternative structures. It accelerates the understanding of a system and reduces uncertainty in the early phases.
This efficiency becomes strategic in a competitive market. It frees up space for essential priorities: the feeling of play and the emotion around the table.
Artistic direction in the age of AI: a break in preparation, not in illustration
Visual preparation is probably the stage where AI introduces the most immediate value. For Pépite, I created a first universe using this tool: a revisited Wild West, more colorful and accessible. These images served as support to align my associates, our distributor Gigamic and the artistic direction.
This approach creates a common language, clear intention from the start and smoother collaboration. For Narcopolis, my first game, this phase required a lot of back and forth. AI shortens this cycle and makes everyone’s job easier. I reduced my artistic design costs by 70% and we reduced our discussion time on artistic design with Hadrien, the AD, by the same amount.
A strategic choice then arises: produce the entire graphics using AI. Feasibility is progressing rapidly, costs are decreasing and speed is becoming a strong argument.
After discussion with my associates and with Gigamic, another logic emerged. The board game lives thanks to shared emotions. The image supports this dimension. An illustrator brings a personal intention, a coherence and a singularity which shapes the identity of the game. This value remains essential for a cultural product.
More agile and better structured production
AI also restructures manufacturing: pre-designed prototypes, commercial documents, supports for distributors, preparation of versions.
The tool compresses weeks of micro-tasks, improves the flow of information and makes coordination more fluid.
For a publisher, this agility translates into shorter cycles, better testing capacity and faster decisions.
Emotion as a structural limit of AI
The AI simulates mechanics, calculates probabilities and explores scenarios. It doesn’t capture the mood of a table, the tempo of a game or the energy between players.
The value of a game is built in these interactions. Mechanics create structure, emotion creates experience. This frontier conditions the strategy of publishers: AI to accelerate and optimize, humans to give meaning.
A sector in gradual change
The transformation of board games is progressing step by step: digitalized distribution, automated communication, logistics enriched by data and now augmented creation.
AI is part of this trajectory. It invites each editor to choose what they delegate and what they preserve.
I believe in a hybrid model: AI to anticipate, structure and reduce uncertainties, humans to carry intention, coherence and authenticity.
This duo, which sounds a bit like a slogan, enriches the sector to make it more agile, without losing the heart of the fun experience: people gathered around a table.
