Swen Vincke Sees Potential in AI Revolution. Baldur’s Gate 3 Dev Shed Some Light on Larian Studios' Future
Swen Vincke claims that there is currently so much work in gamedev that help from AI is welcome. At the same time, the Baldur's Gate 3 developer points out the limitations of artificial intelligence.
The use of AI in game development has been a widely discussed topic for many months, not just among players, but especially among developers. Some time ago, the CEO of Square Enix announced that the company intends to "aggressively" use AI in the production and publishing of games. Now Swen Vincke, the dev of Baldur's Gate 3, has voiced his opinion on the issue.
The CEO of Larian Studios gave an interview to the editorial staff of the IGN service. The interview discussed the topic of automating the game development process. The developer clarified that he understands the controversies surrounding AI, but he views artificial intelligence as a regular tool that can greatly alleviate the workload of developers who are already busy. Vincke emphasized that he doubts AI will ever be able to replace humans in tasks that require a creative approach.
AI is a very large subject. So the thing that's under criticism is generative AI, but there are a whole bunch of other things where you really want AI to be busy in your process. So my stance on AI is really straightforward. 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 -- he explained.
To support his point, Vincke mentioned Larian Studios as an example, where instead of using AI for creating concept graphics, they addressed staffing shortages by hiring 15 specialists.
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? -- added the dev.
Besides that, the Belgian studio has invested in experienced screenwriters, although they could have utilized tools such as ChatGPT.
Views on the future and reasons for abandoning D&D
Of course, the interview also included the topic of Baldur's Gate 3 and future projects of Larian Studios. Vincke revealed that the team has plans for two more games. For this reason, he wants to end his adventure with BG3 and "pass the torch to the next developer to pick up what is an incredible legacy."
In the same interview, Vincke explained that the decision to resign from BG occurred because Larian Studios aims to expand and experiment with new ideas that aren't feasible within the Dungeons & Dragons 5e system.
There were a lot of constraints in making D&D, and the 5th Edition is not an easy system to put into a video game, and we had all these ideas of new combat that we wanted to try out, and so they were not compatible. You could see the team was doing it because everybody felt like we had to do it, but it wasn't really coming from the heart and we're very much a studio all about being from the heart.
