How developers are using AI right now

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At Pocket Gamer Connects Nordics (October 20th and 21st), we’ll be hosting the AI Gamechangers Summit, delving deep into how AI technology is being used in the games industry.

Kicking off proceedings we have former Take-Two Interactive head of AI and LuDic AI founder Luke Dicken hosting a session on ‘Surviving The AI Hype Cycle - A Pragmatist’s View’. 

Throughout the Summit we’ve also got the likes of Wooga’s Holger Wurst, Game Makers of Finland’s Wilma Ramona Ikäheimonen, Gamepack Studio’s Ruslan Zelenskyi and others discussing topics including how AI impacts artists, AI-assisted development and the role of agents in making games.

With the impending Summit and recent, rather dramatic talk about AI (somehow LLMs will kill us all and they must be slowed down as said companies launch new tools, raise billions and ramp up IPO plans), we’ve been speaking with games companies about how exactly they are harnessing the tech right now.

"More shots at goal"

MTG president and CEO Maria Redin, who oversees a portfolio of developers including Plarium, Snowprint Studios, InnoGames and others, said for new game development, studios can start building games “fundamentally different today”.

“What used to be maybe one games team making one game like a year ago, you can actually make three games now because you size them differently, you actually leverage tools in a different way, so you can fundamentally rewrite the whole work process in new games development. 

“So that gives us more shots at goal, we can test more ideas. We can kill more ideas, and, in a perfect world, also come faster to launch.”

Over at South Korean publisher NC, which has been busy expanding its mobile casual division, Veroplay CEO Anel Ceman told PocketGamer.biz that NC has developed its own LLM models and has been working on AI for 15 years. So AI is at the core of the company - it’s not a superficial integration. 

On the user acquisition side, he claimed the tech enables them to produce creatives at 70% to 80% of the typical cost. “We can do it cheaper, faster, probably better.”

Curiously, for all the talk of Chinese developers leveraging AI, Hypergryph co-founder Ryan, whose studio is working on Arknights: Endfield, claimed the title uses almost no AI. However, that game began development before the current hype around generative AI.

We raised the question of how AI enters the production workflow for new games versus existing games to Redin.

“We already have an existing production chain. To your point, you have very well functioning processes and structures, and you are not rewriting that from scratch. 

“But you are adapting and tweaking every single process within and embracing the tools available to make sure you can run faster, you can produce more content, you can do more testing.”

Data analysis

We’ve also been speaking with a number of developers across the Nordics about AI. Fingersoft chief growth officer Daniel Rantala said the tech is primarily used across programming, data analysis and visualisation, error-proofing and other time-consuming or automatable tasks.

"We continuously try to find where AI fits in our operations, and we back those use cases with tooling and access to AI systems.”

Mikael Gummerus, the chairman and co-founder of Drive Ahead developer Dodreams, said the biggest difference AI has made for the studio is in data analysis and turning that data into actionable suggestions.

"We have significantly reduced the amount of manual work involved, as well as the number of separate systems we need to use. The process now costs less, produces better-quality analysis and, importantly, gives us suggestions and perspectives that we simply did not have the manpower to uncover before.”

However, he said the same kind of leap has not been made in Unity development or artwork, with more incremental gains rather than transformational ones.

Julicia Studio founder Hind Toufga, from her vantage point of working across different studios, gave examples of where she saw AI integration in development.

"Studios are increasingly looking at AI for areas such as coding support, automated testing and QA, localisation, data analysis, concept development and repetitive production tasks.

"For me, the most interesting part isn't AI replacing creative talent, but how it can allow smaller teams to work faster and give developers more time to focus on the parts of game development that genuinely require human creativity and judgement.”

At ChinaJoy this year, AI was a clear major talking point as session after session in the various side summits (including our own PGC Summit Shanghai) dived into practical use-cases. Speakers discussed how AI can be used to reduce production costs and in areas such as prototyping, localisation, art and more. Developers were happy to go on stage and show short cinematics, art work and user interfaces, all created using AI.

Mattel163 COO Devin Nambiar told us that AI has “already moved the needle in several areas”.

"On monetisation it has helped us with both prediction and creating a more efficient content pipeline. Our pLTV modelling and ROAS prediction employ AI to help us dynamically adjust our UA plans to maximise paid and blended ROAS across a variety of channels, which is paramount in this highly competitive UA environment."

He added: "On the content side, using AI to guide portions of our live content creation, work alongside our designers to create new, engaging mini-game content and aid with localisation efforts has helped improve the efficiency of our overall live content pipeline - including limited-time content, seasonal content and innovative mini-games.”

Outside of all of the hype around the AI hyperscalers - with all the doom and the often-times nonsensical PR machine around them - AI tech is clearly working its way into how studios build new games.

Learn more at PGC Nordics on October 20th and 21st.

For even more on AI, you can also sign up to the AI Gamechangers newsletter here.