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 outlets to check out the latest version of Baldur’s Gate 3 shortly before its August release. Various things were shown during the visit:
After interviewing lead developer Swen Vincke about the ultimate evil path in Baldur’s Gate 3, I took the opportunity to ask him about his thoughts on AI in game development as well.
We’ve been using AI for ages
MeinMMO: AI is a pretty hot topic at the moment. As the editor-in-chief of MeinMMO, I think a lot about how we deal with it and try to collect many different perspectives. How do you see AI in game development?
Swen Vincke: It’s a tool like any other. We’ve been using AI wherever we can for ages. We have things like automated testing or automated mocap cleanup.
Of course, at the moment everyone is talking about ChatGPT, which has the ability to generate stories. I think it gives you the opportunity to evaluate many parameters faster, which is a good thing. I don’t think it can write the stories that you [in Baldur’s Gate 3] see.
The story team doesn’t use it to script directly, but just to try things out and get new ideas.
What do we do to get inspired? We go to different places, like the little castle we are sitting in front of right now. 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 make your own thing out of it.
AI is for inspiration
MeinMMO: I personally like to use AI image processing, also just for fun in my free time. But there is also a big movement of artists who are afraid of tools like Midjourney. What do you think?
Swen Vincke: Actually just like ChatGPT. It is for inspiration. At the end you still have your artists and a team of artists figuring out how everything should look like. I mean, people have been photo bashing for years [eine Technik, bei der man fotografische Elemente in digitale Zeichnungen einbaut]. This is an advanced form of photo bashing.
The photo bashing will not be the element that defines the artwork. It’s just a technique that helped the artist get the inspiration to do his own thing.
If you’re a really good artist, you’ll see a difference too. There’s just a difference if you have something man-made or something completely generated.
This even applies to the tools you use. For example, when I do something with Midjourney, it looks very different than when my art director does something with it. I’m really bad at it and he’s so good. He knows how to talk to that thing. And even then he doesn’t use the images, but instead finds something interesting for himself, comes back and shows me an artwork that has nothing to do with the AI image.
See where the inspiration has led to in the Baldur’s Gate 3 release trailer
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MeinMMO: So you use it more for inspiration.
Swen Vincke: Automation in this industry where so many things come together is in itself a good thing. Would I automate my script? No. Maybe for a generic NPC, I would imagine. But even then, you won’t have deep stories to tell. We are not that far yet. Maybe one day we will be, I don’t know.
With [Baldur’s Gate 3] we tried to give you a personalized scenario based on your choices. If AI can help me automate some of the work so I can spend more time focusing on what matters and being inspired, then I’m in.
Thanks to Swen for taking the time to talk to me about AI in game development.
What do you think of the topic of AI in creative industries such as game development?
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