Frost Giant CEO: Generative AI Can Help Bring Developers’ Grand Visions to Life

At Gamescom 2025, Frost Giant Studios CEO Tim Morten argued that generative AI could play a decisive role in helping developers bring ambitious ideas to life, while easing the financial and production challenges that often constrain creative projects.

Morten, a veteran developer and former production director on StarCraft, stressed that AI should be seen as a tool to support, not replace, human creators. Quoting John Carmack’s long-standing view on automation, he emphasized that technology does not eliminate jobs but rather frees developers to focus on different challenges. For Frost Giant, which is currently working on its debut real-time strategy title Stormgate, the stakes are clear: the studio is attempting to deliver a grand-scale vision on limited funding, and Morten believes AI can bridge that gap.

The industry, however, remains divided on the technology’s impact. In the 2025 State of the Industry survey, conducted with 3,000 developers, only 13 percent said they believed generative AI would have a positive effect, while 30 percent said they expected it to be negative. Morten, by contrast, has placed himself firmly among the optimists, insisting that the right use of AI can enhance games without undermining the role of artists and designers.

Frost Giant has already incorporated AI into development. For Stormgate, the studio used external AI tools to animate character portraits, an area where internal resources were stretched too thin. According to Morten, early playtests showed that players generally welcomed the animated faces during dialogue sequences, even though a vocal minority criticized the approach. “We tested with the AI portraits. We tested without them. We found that having the characters’ faces animate when that dialogue is playing added to the game,” he said.

Looking forward, Morten predicted that AI adoption will become unavoidable. He noted that nearly every developer he speaks with is already using some form of AI in their work and exploring ways to expand its role. He advocates for training AI models on developers’ own assets, which he argues protects intellectual property while ensuring consistency in quality.

“Over time, this is one hundred percent the direction the industry is heading,” Morten concluded, underscoring his belief that AI will not only optimize workflows but also enable studios to fully realize the scale of their creative ambitions.