This morning, the news broke that Larian Studios, developer of Baldur's Gate 3 and the upcoming, just-announced Divinity, is apparently using generative AI behind the scenes. The backlash has been swift, and now Larian founder and game director Swen Vincke is responding to clarify his remarks.
There’s nothing to complain about here. Games require tons of placeholders, in art, dialogue, and code.
They will iterate dozens of times before the final product, and given Larian’s own production standards, there’s no chance anything but the most inconsequential or forgotten items made by an LLM will stay in.
It’s not like they are just going to do a visual spot check on each level to clear out the AI assets. They will probably tag it in the meta data as a placeholder. So some automated validation process can find every ai asset in a level. Not to mention game objects are wrapped in an object template. And then the template is used to place the object into the scenes. So they only have to replace the placeholder with the final object once in the template and then it will replace it everywhere the template is used.
Oh nooooo what will we do as a society If pewter mug number two worth 0 gold gets left in by accident? It’s literally the worst thing that could possibly happen in 2026. Nothing else could exceed the horror of a 50x50 pixel icon for worthless junk that was generated by a computer rather than a person. 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱
But what if they miss something and do X for something unimportant
Well it doesn’t matter that much, it’s unimportant
But what if they then change their minds and do X…
I dunno man, I think you’re worried too much about a studio that actively said they want to do right by people rather than the folks out there actively causing harm
Among the devs responding is a former Larian staffer, environment artist Selena Tobin. “consider my feedback: i loved working at @larianstudios.com until AI,” Tobin writes. “reconsider and change your direction, like, yesterday. show your employees some respect. they are world-class & do not need AI assistance to come up with amazing ideas.”
there’s no chance anything but the most inconsequential or forgotten items made by an LLM will stay in.
Concept art is not a placeholder. It’s part of the creative process. By using AI to generate text and images you already influenced the creative process negatively.
A lot of the industry artists are at the very least using AI to screw around with concept art for references. The kind of stuff where they used to use google to search. One of my friends fed a service a fairly raw hand-sketched drawing, told it how to finish it off, then asked it to put it in different poses at different angles, then used that to hand-make the character into 3D.
There are, of course, many artists who wouldn’t touch any of it with a 10-foot pole.
A few hours ago, reports surfaced that Larian are making use of generative AI during development of their new RPG Divinity - specifically, to come up with ideas, produce placeholder text, develop concept art, and create materials for PowerPoint presentations.
The actual quote from Swen is that they use it in the “ideation” phase of concept art. Basically: throwing shit on the wall and seeing what sticks. After that, the process is taken over by any of their almost 30 concept artists on payroll.
Idk but that seems pretty obvious to me from reading the quote by Larian CEO Swen Vincke that they used to, or are still using it to generate or “enhance” concept art and that’s it’s a highly discussed topic within the company?
What he actually said was that they use it in the “ideation” phase of concept art. Basically: throwing shit on the wall and seeing what sticks. After that, the process is taken over by any of their almost 30 concept artists on payroll.
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There’s nothing to complain about here. Games require tons of placeholders, in art, dialogue, and code. They will iterate dozens of times before the final product, and given Larian’s own production standards, there’s no chance anything but the most inconsequential or forgotten items made by an LLM will stay in.
Issue with non-obvious placeholder art is that it’ll easily fall through the cracks.
It’s not like they are just going to do a visual spot check on each level to clear out the AI assets. They will probably tag it in the meta data as a placeholder. So some automated validation process can find every ai asset in a level. Not to mention game objects are wrapped in an object template. And then the template is used to place the object into the scenes. So they only have to replace the placeholder with the final object once in the template and then it will replace it everywhere the template is used.
Oh nooooo what will we do as a society If pewter mug number two worth 0 gold gets left in by accident? It’s literally the worst thing that could possibly happen in 2026. Nothing else could exceed the horror of a 50x50 pixel icon for worthless junk that was generated by a computer rather than a person. 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱
It will begin with 50x50 pixel icons for “worthless junk”. It will end with big corporations automating everything, including the initial prompts.
Ah, the slippery slope fallacy on steroids.
They said they won’t do X
But what if they miss something and do X for something unimportant
Well it doesn’t matter that much, it’s unimportant
But what if they then change their minds and do X…
I dunno man, I think you’re worried too much about a studio that actively said they want to do right by people rather than the folks out there actively causing harm
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/larian-boss-responds-to-criticism-of-generative-ai-use-its-something-we-are-constantly-discussing-internally
Concept art is not a placeholder. It’s part of the creative process. By using AI to generate text and images you already influenced the creative process negatively.
A lot of the industry artists are at the very least using AI to screw around with concept art for references. The kind of stuff where they used to use google to search. One of my friends fed a service a fairly raw hand-sketched drawing, told it how to finish it off, then asked it to put it in different poses at different angles, then used that to hand-make the character into 3D.
There are, of course, many artists who wouldn’t touch any of it with a 10-foot pole.
The article doesn’t say Larian is using it for concept art.
Those were hypothetical statements from people outside the studio.
Literally the first sentence
You’re right, I missed that
The actual quote from Swen is that they use it in the “ideation” phase of concept art. Basically: throwing shit on the wall and seeing what sticks. After that, the process is taken over by any of their almost 30 concept artists on payroll.
Yes, So AI comes up with the basic concepts.
No, it doesn’t.
Doodles are not concept art. Ideation is not concept art.
Idk but that seems pretty obvious to me from reading the quote by Larian CEO Swen Vincke that they used to, or are still using it to generate or “enhance” concept art and that’s it’s a highly discussed topic within the company?
What he actually said was that they use it in the “ideation” phase of concept art. Basically: throwing shit on the wall and seeing what sticks. After that, the process is taken over by any of their almost 30 concept artists on payroll.