During a visit to the studio behind Baldur’s Gate 3, MeinMMO editor-in-chief Leya Jankowski had the opportunity to ask studio head Swen Vincke about his thoughts on AI in game development. His views on this are pragmatic.
A few days ago, Larian Studios invited various content creators and media to preview the latest version of Baldur’s Gate 3 shortly before its release in August. During the visit, various things were shown:
- You get to play a crazy murderer, who is so cruel that even evil NPCs fear you.
- It is possible to spend an intimate night with a druid in bear form. Very intimate.
After I asked the chief developer Swen Vincke about the ultimate evil path in Baldur’s Gate 3, I took the opportunity to also probe him about his opinion on AI in game development.
We have been using AI for ages
MeinMMO: AI is currently a pretty hot topic. As editor-in-chief of MeinMMO, I personally think a lot about how we deal with it and try to gather various perspectives. What do you think about AI in game development?
Swen Vincke: It’s a tool like any other. We have been using AI for ages, wherever we can. We have things like automated testing or automated mocap cleanup.
At the moment, of course, everyone is talking about ChatGPT, which has the ability to generate stories. I think it gives you the ability to evaluate many parameters faster, which is a good thing. I don’t think it can write the stories that you [see in Baldur’s Gate 3].
The story team uses it, not to create direct scripts with it, but to simply try out a few things and get new ideas.
What do we do to get inspired? We go to various places, like the small castle we are currently sitting in front of. We go to libraries, we surf the internet, we travel.
It’s a tool to ask a few questions about where a story might go. Then you have cool ideas that you can use to create your own thing out of it.
AI serves as inspiration
MeinMMO: Personally, I like to use AI image editing, even just for fun in my leisure time. But there is also a big movement of artists who are afraid of tools like Midjourney. What do you think about that?
Swen Vincke: Actually just like with ChatGPT. It serves as inspiration. In the end, you still have your artists and an artist team figuring out how everything should look. I mean, people have been doing photo-bashing for years [a technique where photographic elements are added to digital drawings]. This is an advanced form of photo-bashing.
Photo-bashing will not be the element that defines the artwork. It is just a technique that has helped the artist get the inspiration to make their own thing.
If you are a really good artist, you will definitely see a difference. It’s simply different whether you have something man-made or something completely generated.
That even applies to the tools one uses. For example, if I do something with Midjourney, it looks completely different than if my art director does something with it. I am really bad at it, and he is so good. He knows how to communicate with the thing. And even then, he doesn’t use the images, but finds something interesting for himself, comes back, and shows me a piece of art that has nothing to do with the AI image.
MeinMMO: So you use it more for inspiration.
Swen Vincke: Automation in this industry, where so many things come together, is inherently a good thing. Would I automate my screenplay? No. Maybe for a generic NPC, I could imagine that. But even then, you will have no profound stories that can be told. We are not there yet. Maybe we will be one day, I don’t know.
With [Baldur’s Gate 3], we tried to give you a personalized scenario based on your decisions. If AI can help me automate part of the work so I have more time for the essential and for inspiration, then I am on board.
At this point, a thank you to Swen for taking the time to talk to me about AI in game development.
What do you think about the topic of AI in creative fields like game development?
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