With the proliferation of AI in practically every industry at the moment, it’s not surprising to learn that around 94% of games studios are using AI technology in some capacity. The new statistic comes from the VAIA Report, a report carried out by industry consultation company Vivrato. The company polled 101 industry professionals (all who answered with confidentiality) between April and September this year and found the above percentage.
As VGC reports, individuals were given a 44-question guide and were asked a series of questions based on nine stages of game production. These included concept phases, pre-production, live operations, and even monetization. Of the developers interviewed, 97% stated they had used AI in some form, and 94% said AI was used in at least one of the nine phases outlined in the questionnaire. On the bright side, when asked to rate out of 10 how deeply AI had been integrated into their production pipeline, 52% of participants rated it at a 3/10 or lower.
The report does suggest that European studios are deeper into AI adoption, however. 70% of participants from European studios stated AI was used in art, assets, and animations, while only 53% of North American participants reported the same. It doesn’t break things down further, but it’s interesting to see that North America isn’t on the uptick. I would have figured that wasn’t the case considering 50% of the world’s data centers reside in the US.
Vivrato CEO, Adam Boyes, said, “We’ve noticed this year, public discourse and definitions about AI in games usually defaults to generative AI – chatbots, image generation and synthetic voices. However, we know that studios use AI in a variety of ways, from machine learning that predicts player churn to rules-based automation in testing, with very different results. That makes now the right moment to set a clear baseline, so we created VAIA, a dedicated research vertical within Vivrato to track and measure what is actually happening behind closed doors.”
While it’s nice we know exactly how AI is being used in these studios, it’s still awful that such a high percentage of them have adopted the tech at all.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
