‘Some Studios Gained’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 gained’t survive the fallout.

That’s the warning from Jack Buser, world video games director at Google Cloud, who says the {industry} is coming into an upheaval as large as any in its historical past.

“Some of these game companies are going to make it, and some of them are not,” Buser informed Decrypt. “And some are going to be born through this revolution.”

Buser, a 30-year {industry} veteran, works with publishers and studios to undertake cloud infrastructure and AI, from scaling multiplayer techniques to analyzing participant information and testing generative instruments. That position places him on the intersection of massive tech and recreation improvement, the place studios connect with Google’s servers and AI fashions to construct, or maintain, their titles.

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He identified that AI is arriving simply as builders face mounting monetary strain and shrinking participant engagement with new video games.

“Over half of play time is in games more than six years old,” he stated. “So if you’re making a new game, you’re competing for less than half of the available play time. And if you’re the creator of one of those older games, you’re struggling to keep it relevant and keep players engaged.”

Following a long time of development, 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 have a broken business model, and the result is layoffs, game cancellations, and other problems across the games industry in recent years,” Buser stated.

However, Buser believes generative AI may very well be the {industry}’s method out. A Harris Poll commissioned by Google discovered that 9 out of 10 builders are already utilizing AI instruments in some a part of the manufacturing course of.

“If you go use case by use case in your development pipeline, from concept to quality assurance, and you attack every use case with AI, you can have quite a radical reduction in development time,” he stated.

Developers are testing generative instruments aimed toward altering how video games look, really feel, and evolve in actual time. Buser referred to as this the period of the “living game”—titles that use AI in actual time to research participant conduct and generate new content material on the fly. Unlike conventional video games, which depend on patches and downloadable content material (DLC) drops, these techniques may adapt in minutes reasonably than months.

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“Take Darth Vader in Fortnite, for example—the player reaction was strong,” Buser stated. “We’re just scratching the surface.”

But the rollout wasn’t easy. When Fortnite introduced an AI-powered Darth Vader earlier this 12 months, the bot spewed racist and homophobic slurs earlier than Epic Games shortly patched the system.

Not everybody welcomed the experiment. Following the discharge, SAG-AFTRA filed a labor complaint in opposition to Epic subsidiary Llama Productions, accusing the corporate of changing voice actors with synthetic intelligence with out union consent.

“This cost issues the union’s essential position in negotiating phrases in regards to the alternative of bargaining unit work with AI expertise,” a SAG-AFTRA spokesperson informed Decrypt. “We are very supportive of AI tools to enhance the audience experience, but employers cannot implement these types of uses without coming to the union first and bargaining terms.”

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Buser drew comparisons between the increased role of AI and earlier shakeups in gaming history—moments when technological shifts redrew the industry map. Some companies adapted to the move from cartridges to CD-ROMs. Others didn’t.

“You will see some companies that did not make it,” Buser stated. “And then you see other just massive game companies today that were what I’ll call CD-ROM-native. This is the exact same thing happening now.”