‘Some Studios Won’t Survive’ as AI Takes Over Gaming, Says Google Cloud Exec
Generative AI is triggering an industry-wide reckoning in gaming—and a few studios received’t survive the fallout.
That’s the warning from Jack Buser, international video games director at Google Cloud, who says the {industry} is coming into an upheaval as large as any in its historical past.
“A few of these recreation corporations are going to make it, and a few of them are usually not,” Buser informed Decrypt. “And a few are going to be born by means of this revolution.”
Buser, a 30-year {industry} veteran, works with publishers and studios to undertake cloud infrastructure and AI, from scaling multiplayer methods to analyzing participant knowledge and testing generative instruments. That function places him on the intersection of massive tech and recreation growth, the place studios connect with Google’s servers and AI fashions to construct, or maintain, their titles.
He identified that AI is arriving simply as builders face mounting monetary stress and shrinking participant engagement with new video games.
“Over half of play time is in video games greater than six years previous,” he stated. “So for those who’re making a brand new recreation, you’re competing for lower than half of the obtainable play time. And for those who’re the creator of a kind of older video games, you’re struggling to maintain it related and preserve gamers engaged.”
Following many years of progress, the worldwide video games {industry} dipped post-pandemic, with revenues falling in 2022 earlier than recovering. In 2024, it generated $182.7 billion, up 3.2% from the 12 months earlier than. Revenues are anticipated to rise to $188.9 billion in 2025, a 3.4% enhance.
“You’ve a damaged enterprise mannequin, and the result’s layoffs, recreation cancellations, and different issues throughout the video games {industry} in recent times,” Buser stated.
Nonetheless, Buser believes generative AI could possibly be the {industry}’s approach out. A Harris Ballot commissioned by Google discovered that 9 out of 10 builders are already utilizing AI instruments in some a part of the manufacturing course of.
“When you go use case by use case in your growth pipeline, from idea to high quality assurance, and also you assault each use case with AI, you may have fairly a radical discount in growth time,” he stated.
Builders are testing generative instruments geared toward altering how video games look, really feel, and evolve in actual time. Buser known as this the period of the “residing recreation”—titles that use AI in actual time to investigate participant habits and generate new content material on the fly. Not like conventional video games, which depend on patches and downloadable content material (DLC) drops, these methods might adapt in minutes fairly than months.
“Take Darth Vader in Fortnite, for instance—the participant response was sturdy,” Buser stated. “We’re simply scratching the floor.”
However the rollout wasn’t easy. When Fortnite launched an AI-powered Darth Vader earlier this 12 months, the bot spewed racist and homophobic slurs earlier than Epic Video games shortly patched the system.
Not everybody welcomed the experiment. Following the discharge, SAG-AFTRA filed a labor criticism towards Epic subsidiary Llama Productions, accusing the corporate of changing voice actors with synthetic intelligence with out union consent.
“This cost considerations the union’s important function in negotiating phrases regarding the alternative of bargaining unit work with AI expertise,” a SAG-AFTRA spokesperson informed Decrypt. “We’re very supportive of AI instruments to boost the viewers expertise, however employers can not implement all these makes use of with out coming to the union first and bargaining phrases.”
Buser drew comparisons between the elevated function of AI and earlier shakeups in gaming historical past—moments when technological shifts redrew the {industry} map. Some corporations tailored to the transfer from cartridges to CD-ROMs. Others didn’t.
“You will note some corporations that didn’t make it,” Buser stated. “And then you definitely see different simply large recreation corporations in the present day that had been what I’ll name CD-ROM-native. That is the very same factor taking place now.”
