Oh, boy, that interview has started a Discourse in the video game places I read.
Sounds like Swen is combining AI enshitification with pushing maximum grimdark...
Yeah, it's er... not great. I've maintained for a long time that Swen is essentially kind of an idiot who is good at basically two things - hiring the right people and keeping his company private (and he's potentially wavering slightly on the latter). But there have been signs he has Bad Ideas for a long time - I've mentioned more than once his obsession with grimdark, and his very strange idea that DOS2's setting and rules-set were both much better than BG3 (something he was so confident of, he was said at an event for BG3 - if I ever dig up the video interview where he says it again I'll add it here or something), his prevarication over exactly when and why and how they dropped BG4, and despite the fact that he's committed to keeping Larian private, he took a 30% investment from Tencent. Now, with the last they are shares that don't give any voting rights but will they want to change that? Hmmm.
He's got exactly the sort of "I'm smarter than everyone else!!!" mindset that often leads to thinking GenAI is an
unqualified good so long as he decides what it's used for. He trots out his usual "Well everyone at the company seemed fine with it!" line, but we know from from at least one former employee that people have literally left over the forced AI usage, and in this economic climate that probably means a whole lot more people are keeping their heads down and just going along with it. And it also calls into question his previous claim of "Everyone was delighted we were dropping BG4!". I mean, I've met guys like this in a business environment, and they can be a lot of fun, but you really don't want to disagree with them, because my experience is that they don't handle it well.
But I guess we'll see. So far Larian have made significantly better turn-based CRPGs three games in a row, each one really noticeably ahead of the previous one (despite Swen not thinking that), can they make it four? I think most of it will come down to who actually lead writes and designs the game, and as noted, if it's the BG3 leads (Chrystal Ding and Adam Smith), we're probably fine.
I am not saying it is inappropriate to discuss, or even for this thread. I am just hoping that this thread does not suddenly swell to 80 pages of people arguing about AI in gamedev instead of people talking casually about what video games they are playing, interested in, whatever.
I think the main issue isn't GenAI used for development yay or nay, it's "Is Swen gonna screw things up?". Because he's long had the potential to do so. His sudden enthusiasm for something that inherently runs against worker-first principles he's very publicly espoused is... interesting... in that light.
