In an era of heavy cost cuts and diminished workforces, generative AI and its implications for content businesses such as film or music is an inescapable topic of discussion and uncertainty.
And the gaming sector is no exception. At GDC last week, VIP+ spoke with a dozen folks across the video game industry who shared their perspective on how AI does or doesn’t serve their work.
AI can’t be ignored by anyone working in the games when the top financial powers in gaming pay close attention to innovation on the tech side.
“That’s a fundamental part of any evaluation, I think, is to understand what the future pathway is and whether it’s sustainable and whether the team is being really innovative and prudent and disciplined in their approach to technology,” said Brian Ward, CEO of Savvy Games Group, the gaming arm of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
“I would say the game teams are starting to embrace a lot of AI tools,” said Tim O’Brien, chief revenue officer at Savvy-owned Scopely, which recently struck a deal to acquire Niantic’s gaming assets, including “Pokémon Go.”
UGC-oriented companies are understandably enthusiastic about generative AI, given the ability to give creators more options to work with on their platforms.
“The spirit of all the work that we do with AI … is giving creators the tools to accelerate the work that they’re doing so that they can focus on elements of the campaign or execution that are probably going to prove more valuable than just sitting there and crafting like a standard asset,” said Todd Lichten, head of entertainment partnerships at Roblox.
At the start of GDC, Roblox introduced its Cube 3D foundational model for generative AI, which can create 3D material and environments directly from text prompts. Per Roblox, users being able to do the same from image inputs within Cube 3D is also planned.
But folks working directly with established brands within Roblox are on a different playing field and must be careful how they use AI.
“It’s not a one size fits all,” said Nic Hill, head of interactive and co-founder of Sawhorse, a studio specializing in brand-partner experiences on Roblox, such as one for “Wicked” ahead of the Universal film’s release last year. “[Gen AI] is not gonna give me the perfect witch hat … what we would do is potentially use that as a starting point, bring it in, and then artists would manipulate it and really add all the textures. So that saves time and it saves money.”
As for Rebecca Liao, co-founder and CEO at Saga.xyz, AI is the backbone of her company’s work, as is blockchain. Through “Saga Origins,” Liao’s flagship product, licensed assets are turned into what she calls “AI agents,” which communicate directly with users as animated characters that guide them through a variety of games and help create their own assets, distributed through the platform’s ledger.
“Our goal is to not just make sure that these AI tools are available to developers and creators, but you immediately have just much more effective rails to monetize,” said Liao, explaining how “Saga Origins” effectively grants creators their own blockchain-backed creative assets.
However, the use cases for AI get more complicated at the traditional studio level. Dan Prigg, EVP and head of studio at Skydance Games, likened the adoption of new AI tech to making a new game outside of any basis of familiarity.
“I would never do a new team, a new game mechanic and a new IP at the same time, it just screams like disaster,” said Prigg. “Just do one and then make sure the other two are things that you already do.”
Hakan Abrak, CEO of “Hitman” studio IO Interactive, thinks AI affecting the industry is inevitable but doesn’t see much use for it at the asset level.
“It’s undeniable that’s going to have an impact,” said Abrak. “We’re really thinking first and foremost about boosting the tools and making our employees more efficient with that, rather than thinking that we’re just going to make all the assets with AI.”
Peter Whalen, senior game director for “League of Legends” spinoff “Teamfight Tactics” at Riot Games, is also mainly interested in AI as a support tool for his colleagues.
“If there are ways that we can use AI to enhance developers’ lives and make our job easier, absolutely… that sounds really cool,” said Whalen. “Some of the generative space that people have started to play in, [they’re] generating concept art or generating music. That’s just not somewhere that we’re excited to play in yet.”
Like “League of Legends,” “Teamfight Tactics” is massively popular, counting more than 300 million players worldwide.
Still, Riot Games eliminated more than 500 roles a year ago, contributing to the start of what ended up being more than 14,000 layoffs across the gaming industry in 2024. Dramatic reductions in workforce make it substantially difficult to maintain a steady output of gaming content and experiences, enabling use cases for AI as a support tool to take the edge off.
In fact, one top mobile game can’t maintain its scope without AI.
“Streamlining is much less important for us than trying to handle scale,” said Todd Green, general manager of “Candy Crush” at King, Activision Blizzard’s mobile division that made the jump over to Microsoft with the rest of the company in 2023.
“We now have more than 18,500 levels in ‘Candy Crush Saga,’” said Green. “What we’re actually doing now is adding AI into that loop when we’re doing the level optimization … We just can’t handle that scale of levels with a human team of any sensible size, [despite] thousands of people working on it.”
Chris Hewish, chief strategy officer at gaming commerce firm Xsolla, also highlighted AI’s scale advantages.
“We are big proponents of AI,” said Hewish. “It’s not that AI is going to mean that we can downsize the company, right? What it means is we can do 10x what we did previously with the same amount of people.”
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Still, the human concern laden in widespread adoption of emerging AI tech wasn’t absent from the conference when it came to those working heavily on the talent and creative side. Since July 2024, SAG-AFTRA has been striking against top publishers in the gaming space over concerns regarding the use of generative AI.
While not a member of SAG-AFTRA, “Khazan: The First Berserker” English actor Ben Starr defended the guild’s strike and the artistry inherent in lending one’s voice to a game.
“I feel like we want to make sure that, as performers, our work is being valued and isn’t being utilized for free by other people to other people’s advantage.”
“There is, unfortunately, a lot of prioritization of shareholders and of money over the employees who make the games,” said Kim Belair, co-founder of narrative design and consultancy firm Sweet Baby Inc., which worked on “Marvel’s Spider-Man 2” and “Alan Wake 2.”
“It is so important to have a crafted experience,” Belair said. “There is no getting away from the reality that human stories are always going to be at the heart of it.”
