With millions of players of all ages playing video games, the gaming industry is a high-profile one.
Worth $219bn in 2023, the video games industry is set to reach $337bn by 2030, according to GlobalData forecasts.
Video games are constantly evolving due to changing player expectations, new monetisation and distribution channels, and technological progress. Artificial intelligence (AI) is perhaps the main technology theme disrupting the industry. The 2024 State of the Game Industry survey, which questioned more than 3,000 game developers, revealed that AI is used in 49% of respondents’ workplaces. However, AI has its controversies and one of the main ones is the threat it poses to developers’ jobs.
Sony’s CEO thinks AI will not replace the human factor in gaming
Sony’s PlayStation is the most popular home-based gaming console. Thus, when one of Sony’s joint CEOs speaks about the gaming industry, people tend to listen. In December, Hermen Hulst spoke of how AI will impact game developers and to what extent he thinks it constitutes a threat to their jobs.
Hulst stated that although he acknowledges that AI is a game changer, he believes it will not fully replace human developers. He argued that for success, gaming companies must find a balance between AI-facilitated innovation and the human touch.
AI can transform the game development process
AI is ubiquitous in the video games industry. With its generation and automation capabilities, generative AI can save gaming companies money and time in game development. It allows developers to generate content continuously, ensuring games remain fresh.
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By GlobalDataThrough generative AI, game developers can offer unique gaming experiences. For instance, it can make the previously scripted non-playable characters smarter and more realistic and even give them personalities.
GlobalData expects that gaming companies will focus on using no-code AI tools that use natural language instead of complex codes. Generative AI can, indeed, perform a considerable portion of human developers’ jobs cheaper and faster. However, GlobalData argues that it has not yet reached 100% accuracy and its employment impact is still limited to collaboration and productivity enhancements.
Thus, relying fully on AI may not be best for companies at this stage.
Augmented by AI, the fear of job losses looms large in the industry
The gaming industry is no stranger to mass layoffs. Reportedly, in 2023, over 11,000 people working in gaming lost their jobs, while this number was 13,000 between January and October 2024. The reason behind these huge numbers was that gaming companies realised that they overexpanded during the pandemic when the demand for gaming-related products and services was unusually high. These layoffs may continue and The 2024 State of the Game Industry survey revealed that 56% fear future layoffs.
GlobalData highlights the increasing use of technologies like AI as another major reason behind the decline in video games-related active jobs. The 2024 State of the Game Industry survey also suggested that 84% of developers carried ethical concerns regarding AI use in the industry while some feared it could lead to more layoffs.
As AI can speed up processes and reduce costs through its creation capabilities, it certainly poses a threat to developers’ jobs. Nevertheless, generative AI is still in its early stages and has yet to prove its long-term value to the gaming industry. We are also still at the beginning of a long AI roadmap and, therefore, it is ultimately hard to predict how AI will affect gaming jobs.
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