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.
Yeah, you clearly have no clue what you’re talking about, but just want to be outraged.
No, that’s not what they’re using it for.
Pre-concept art phase is when you grab literally anything to do a very generic “here’s my idea” demonstration. It can be a screenshot from a game you recently played, a cinema poster, a photo of your cat, something you found on DeviantArt or Pinterest, a doodle you made with a pencil, cloth fragment, an interesting rock you found on a stroll, simple render, anything.
But, getting all these takes a lot of time - you have something in your head and now you need to find an image or an item that will more or less represent it. So you spend hours on Google Images trying to refine your search, only so that you can then post it on the ideas board, and for it to be replaced completely by actual concept art.
This is where they’re utilising GenAI. And they’re not even replacing this process entirely, they’re using GenAI on top of everything else - basically, using all the tools available to speed up the process.
Concept artists then still take over (they have 27 of them and open positions to hire more - right now) and create concept art, which is then turned into assets by appropriate artists (they have a bunch of open positions for artists right now as well).
All this anti-AI panic has blown this so far out of proportion that it’s almost comical.
This right here. People who complain about this obviously don’t know how concept artists work.
At this stage in the process, AI isn’t replacing artists, it’s mostly replacing shutterstock and Pinterest.
They’re not using AI for free assets.
“Pre-visualization for concept art” is just a fancy way of saying “we want to use Keith Tompson’s designs, but we don’t want to pay his asking price.”
Yeah, you clearly have no clue what you’re talking about, but just want to be outraged.
No, that’s not what they’re using it for.
Pre-concept art phase is when you grab literally anything to do a very generic “here’s my idea” demonstration. It can be a screenshot from a game you recently played, a cinema poster, a photo of your cat, something you found on DeviantArt or Pinterest, a doodle you made with a pencil, cloth fragment, an interesting rock you found on a stroll, simple render, anything.
But, getting all these takes a lot of time - you have something in your head and now you need to find an image or an item that will more or less represent it. So you spend hours on Google Images trying to refine your search, only so that you can then post it on the ideas board, and for it to be replaced completely by actual concept art.
This is where they’re utilising GenAI. And they’re not even replacing this process entirely, they’re using GenAI on top of everything else - basically, using all the tools available to speed up the process.
Concept artists then still take over (they have 27 of them and open positions to hire more - right now) and create concept art, which is then turned into assets by appropriate artists (they have a bunch of open positions for artists right now as well).
All this anti-AI panic has blown this so far out of proportion that it’s almost comical.
This right here. People who complain about this obviously don’t know how concept artists work. At this stage in the process, AI isn’t replacing artists, it’s mostly replacing shutterstock and Pinterest.