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"I don't think it'll ever replace a creative side of things."
Image credit: Larian Studios
Larian Studios' CEO Swen Vincke has joined the AI discourse, sharing his view on its role in game development. While Hasbro wants to jump on that bandwagon as soon as possible, Vincke is more reserved. He is not against using AI and sees its benefits, but his position is one you'll probably like.
"So my stance on AI is really straightforward," he said in an interview with IGN at GDC. "It is a tool that we use to help us do things faster. We have so much work that we're happy to take assistance from anything. I don't think it'll ever replace a creative side of things and I can put money where my mouth is."
So, the cohabitation of AI and human artists is possible and can be really advantageous, in his view, but there is no way we can just replace everyone with robots and be happy with the results.
Larian has an interesting way of dealing with overloads as well. You might expect it to delegate all the work to AI when there are not enough hands, but it would rather hire more people.
"So, for instance, concept art is a thing that's heavily under fire because of things like Midjourney. So we just added 15 concept artists to our team. And so this is exactly the opposite of what you would expect, right? Because it was a bottleneck in our pipeline. And the pipeline bottleneck in the past was we don't have the concept art coming fast enough, so the creatures are not made fast enough, so the technical animators can't rig it fast enough, so the animators can't do the monster fast enough so they run out of work, which is really the worst thing we want in a development environment. So that's how we solve that. We're hiring writers, so we're not having ChatGPT write their dialogues. However, I do want to say, I do see a usage of generative AI."
Image credit: Larian Studios
Even most anti-AI players agree that NPC dialogues are where AI would work great. Imagine having infinite possibilities and smart characters that react to their surroundings and behave based on their personalities, like what Ubisoft is trying to do with its NEO NPCs.
While Vincke agrees this is a nice place for AI, he doesn't believe smart NPCs can be made automatically.
"I think you can have reactive games and that's where it can have a place. So you can complement what's there already. So that's the thing that we should be exploring because how we'll make better RPGs. So what I think is, in the future, I don't buy the full NPC being generated, but most likely everything will feel the same. So I buy more that there's going to be something that's crafted, and then you'll have AI that plugs into it to augment it. And it should be done in such a way that it's invisible, so you don't know that it's shifting around. So I think that's the thing of the future. At least the short to mid-term future. Long-term, I don't know."
It's good to see a more down-to-earth view of what's happening around – not surprising from Vincke, though, as he is one of the developers who openly criticizes constant layoffs and corporate greed: "Greed has been f*cking this whole thing up for so long," he said recently.
He has much more to say about Larian and Baldur's Gate 3, so check out the full interview and join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.
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