Larian Studios The Latest To Face Backlash Over Use of AI To Make Games

I guess I’m a masochist, so here we go. In my recent post about Let It Die: Inferno and the game developer’s fairly minimal use of AI and machine learning platforms, I attempted to make the point that wildly stratified opinions on the use or non-use of AI was making actual nuanced conversation quite difficult. As much as I love our community and comments section — it’s where my path to writing for this site began, after all — it really did look like some folks were going to try as hard as possible to prove me right. Some commenters treated the use of AI as essentially no big deal, while some were essentially “Never AI-ers,” indicating that any use, any at all, made a product a non-starter for them.

Still other comments pointed out that this studio and game are relatively unknown. The game was reviewed poorly for reasons that have nothing to do with use of AI, as I myself pointed out in the post. One commenter even suggested that this might all be an attention-grabbing thing to propel the studio and game into the news, so small and unknown as they are.

Larian Studios is not unknown. They don’t need any hype. Larian is the studio that produces the Divinity series, not to mention the team that made Baldur’s Gate 3, one of the most awarded and best-selling games of 2023. And the studio’s next Divinity game will also make some limited use of AI and machine learning, prompting a backlash from some.

Larian Studios is experimenting with generative AI and fans aren’t too happy. The head of the Baldur’s Gate 3 maker, Swen Vincke, released a new statement to try to explain the studio’s stance in more detail and make clear the controversial tech isn’t being used to cut jobs. “Any [Machine Learning] tool used well is additive to a creative team or individual’s workflow, not a replacement for their skill or craft,” he said.

He was responding to a backlash that arose earlier today from a Bloomberg interview which reported that Larian was moving forward with gen AI despite some internal concerns among staff. Vincke made clear the tech was only being used for things like placeholder text, PowerPoint presentations, and early concept art experiments and that nothing AI-generated would be included in Larian’s upcoming RPG, Divinity.

Alright, I want to be fair to the side of this that takes an anti-AI stance. Vincke is being disingenuous at best here. Whatever use is made of AI technology, even limited use, still replaces work that would be done by some other human being. Even if you’re committed to not losing any current staff through the use of AI, you’re still getting work product that would otherwise require you to hire and expand your team through the use of AI. There is obviously a serious emotional response to that concept, one that is entirely understandable.

But some limited use of AI like this can also have other effects on the industry. It can lower the barrier to starting new studios, which will then hire more people to do the things that AI sucks at, or to do the things where we really don’t want AI involved. It can make Indie studios faster and more productive, allowing them to compete all the more with the big publishers and studios out there. It can create faster output, meaning adjacent industries to developers and publishers might have to hire and expand to accommodate the additional output.

All of this, all of it, relies on AI to be used in narrow areas where it can be useful, for real human beings to work with its output to make it actual art versus slop, and for the end product to be a good product. Absent those three things, the Anti-AI-ers are absolutely right and this will suck.

But the lashing that Larian has been getting is divorced from any of that nuance.

Vincke followed up with a separate statement on on X rejecting the idea that the company is “pushing hard” on AI.

“Holy fuck guys we’re not ‘pushing hard’ for or replacing concept artists with AI.

We have a team of 72 artists of which 23 are concept artists and we are hiring more. The art they create is original and I’m very proud of what they do. I was asked explicitly about concept art and our use of Gen AI. I answered that we use it to explore things. I didn’t say we use it to develop concept art. The artists do that. And they are indeed world class artists.

We use AI tools to explore references, just like we use google and art books. At the very early ideation stages we use it as a rough outline for composition which we replace with original concept art. There is no comparison.”

Yes, exactly. There are uses for this technology in the gaming industry. Pretending otherwise is silly. There will be implications on the direct industry jobs at existing studios due to its use. Pretending otherwise is silly. AI use can also have positive effects on the industry and workers within it overall. Pretending otherwise is silly and ignores all the technological progress that came before we started putting these two particular letters together (AI).

And, ultimately, this technology simply isn’t going away. You can rage against this literal machine all you like, it will be in use. We might as well make the project influencing how it’s used, rather than if it’s used.