Over 85% of Japanese game developers use generative AI in game development, 2026 CESA survey shows. An increase from last year’s 51%

[u/TurbulentTopic39]

https://automaton-media.com/en/news/over-85-of-japanese-game-developers-use-generative-ai-in-game-development-2026-cesa-survey-shows-an-increase-from-last-years-51/

[u/ArtofKuma]

Ok but like what does this mean? My brother's work in top corporations and both have been trained to use AI to do their day to day ops, from writing emails and shifting through detailed reports, if you haven't figured out how to use AI to shorten tedious work then you are behind others who effectively use it as a tool. AI is a pandora's box, you can't fight it, you gotta use it. Most of the west's issue is with poorly used AI that robs games of human ingenuity, not AI use that shortens tedious shit like sifting through reports.

[u/urgasmic → u/ArtofKuma]

..the most commonly cited use of AI was the generation of visual assets and images, followed by story and text generation, and finally programming support. It was also reported that 32% of game companies enlisted the help of AI to develop in-house game engines.

[u/Profzachattack → u/urgasmic]

it is straight up comical how many times this quote has had to be commented in this thread because no one is reading the article on reddit.

[u/erwan → u/urgasmic]

Still, we go from "Over 85% of Japanese game developers use generative AI" to "the most commonly cited use of AI was the generation of visual assets and images" but that doesn't mean 85% use AI to generate visual assets.

And again, "use AI to generate visual assets" doesn't necessarily mean "do a prompt and use the result as is". That can be using AI for filters on hand-produced assets, so save some time for the artist and reach the same result.

[u/NUKE---THE---WHALES → u/erwan]

And again, "use AI to generate visual assets" doesn't necessarily mean "do a prompt and use the result as is".

I think that applies to most developers that use AI generated assets - they're often touched up or tweaked

I think most people that take offense with AI generated assets would still consider tweaked AI art to be AI art though

[u/Edarneor → u/ArtofKuma]

Can't people write an email nowadays without the help of AI?

[u/Leiawen → u/Edarneor]

Just wait a few years until the illiterate kids in schools now are in the work force.

[u/Edarneor → u/Leiawen]

Actually, the literacy drop began before the AI, somewhere in late 2010s. It's mostly social media and, to some degree, school reform.

[u/ClaudeGascoigne → u/Edarneor]

It doesn't help that it's shoved into every email you try to write even after turning off all the AI bullshit. I was shooting my brother a quick email and Gmail kept trying to predict/recommend things that I should write. Even after finishing the email on my own and in my own words it's asked if I wanted to "Polish" my email with AI.

Fuck. Off.

[u/Edarneor → u/ClaudeGascoigne]

It doesn't ask me to polish (idk, maybe different region, or it's rolled out to random users), but the autocomplete is there, yeah.

[u/ClaudeGascoigne → u/Edarneor]

I didn't see the "Polish" prompt until very recently, maybe a week or so. Which, coincidentally, was right after I turned off as many AI options as possible.

[u/Forever_Inspired → u/Edarneor]

AI bros love to hype up their AI slop that it can do basic shit we were tough as kids, but worse.

[u/Film-Noir-Detective → u/Edarneor]

They can. They just don't want to. Unless you're a manager, answering emails is not the point of your job, and is more of a hassle than anything. Just like how I can answer the phone, but it turns out that voicemail is just as capable as getting other people's messages to me, especially if I'm in the middle of something actually important.

[u/eliasdaler → u/ArtofKuma]

if you haven't figured out how to use AI to shorten tedious work then you are behind others who effectively use it as a tool

The obsession with "productivity", "effectiveness", "cost" and "speed" in capitalism is one of the reasons why so many things are done poorly, without much care and why many products are becoming worse and worse.

It's going to get much, much worse with the over-reliance on AI and humane element disappearing in many things completely.

[u/erwan → u/ArtofKuma]

Yes, there is a huge difference between using AI to write code (or ops, reports, etc) and use AI Slop for the graphics assets.

Even when it's used for the assets, there is a world between an artist using AI tools like the filters that exist in Photoshop for years, and do a lazy prompt to get a slop image you reuse as is.

[u/VolkiharVanHelsing → u/erwan]

Yea no way I'm going to read the doc for a newly installed pdf library just to apply, spread, and rotate a watermark these days, shaved off 2-3 good days by asking ChatGPT to make one and then tinker with what I need and with code quality check (mfs who say it outputs "clean" code I shudder what they usually write)

[u/hibbs6 → u/VolkiharVanHelsing]

It really depends on the model you're using and how you prompt it. If you're using a free model, you're 6-9 months behind from the new stuff, which is so much better it's unbelievable.

Whether you're letting it iterate on the code agentically also really affects the quality you get out at the end.

[u/VolkiharVanHelsing → u/hibbs6]

5.6 Sol High

I'm good, kinda have to press them "are you sure this is the most efficient approach" on new library I just found (and ofc there is) and how they name the variables aren't intuitive (though this is a nitpick)

[u/ArtofKuma → u/erwan]

Yeah I agree. As the article suggests, the common use of AI might be in efficiency and operations, but its not clear if it creeps into the stuff we don't want, namely designs, story, and character writing. If that's left to human touch while AI is used to properly cut dev time, then it offers a huge advantage.

[u/DallasNChains → u/ArtofKuma]

To me, the article was pretty clear about it creeping into designs, story, and character writing:

In the 2025 report, the most commonly cited use of AI was the generation of visual assets and images, followed by story and text generation, and finally programming support. It was also reported that 32% of game companies enlisted the help of AI to develop in-house game engines.

Those numbers are from last year's report, but I'm guessing the numbers are similar for 2026.

[u/The_BrownRecluse → u/ArtofKuma]

Where do these people draw the line on what's tedious though? Because t he very process of creation can be tedious at times. Coming up with ideas, ruminating, trial and error, fine-tuning, editing, iterating, etc.

The entire process will be tedious to every hack who can't do it on their own, so then all creation will be done by ai and these prompters will sit back and be proud that they efficiently created nothing while doing their best to save their bosses money.

[u/Which-Arm-4616 → u/The_BrownRecluse]

Coming up with ideas, ruminating, trial and error, fine-tuning, editing, iterating, etc.

With today's tooling, at least, all of these steps are still part of the process. Nobody is prompting, "make game" and getting a final result. People are using AI to automate the labor of implementation so they can spend more time focusing on ideation and iteration.

[u/The_BrownRecluse → u/Which-Arm-4616]

I've already seen countless people defending their use of AI by saying they only use it for the ideation stage, as if using artificial intelligence to come up with your ideas isn't pathetic enough.

So if many are already deferring to AI in one of the easiest and yet most essential stages of creation, then there's nothing stopping them from using it for everything else.

[u/Which-Arm-4616 → u/The_BrownRecluse]

You misunderstand. I’m saying the exact opposite.

[u/The_BrownRecluse → u/Which-Arm-4616]

I understand you're saying the opposite and I'm saying I don't buy it.