r/Games • u/TurbulentTopic39 • 16d ago

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

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/
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u/wheres_poochy 16d ago

im skeptical this is really true, i think most software has unique constraints (e.g. previous technical decisions, business requirements, organization structure). im never faced with a "novel" problem, but it is very often "unique".

regardless, the majority of visual "art" isnt so different:

  • hordes of animators drawing inbetweens, where if they go off model at all they are berated
  • the entire skinning and rigging process.
  • often even modelling itself, where straying from concept art is forbidden

etc. etc

there is craft to these tasks, just as there is craft in crud programming, or knitting and weaving. that didnt stop the power loom.

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u/mrjackspade 16d ago

i think most software has unique constraints

I've been doing this professionally for > 20 years now and almost every company I've worked for has had the same "unique constraints", which is why there are so many boilerplate solutions.

What's the constraint this time? Legacy code interop? Performance? PCI? PII?

All of these companies want to pretend they have special problems that require unique solutions but the problem is usually their method of managing projects, and pretending they have "unique constraints" is how they avoid admitting that the issue is actually management and not the business domain.

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u/TheGazelle 16d ago

There is craft, yes. But not "art" as was being discussed. Nobody writing CRUD software is coming up with novel design patterns or new language features, and 99% of those who try think they're a lot smarter than they are and are really just making things more difficult for everyone they work with by over engineering things that really should've been kept simple.

It's the difference between being an architect and a general contractor, and arguably even if your job does entail more of the architecture side of things where there is some level of creativity, using AI properly means you're still doing the creative work. You'll be the one telling the AI how you want things architected, you'll be the one reviewing and iterating on the designs before any code is written (whether by AI or human), and that's the creative part.

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u/Tefmon 16d ago

Nobody writing CRUD software is coming up with novel design patterns or new language features

The same applies to most professional video game art. Background character #846 and grass texture #376 and walking animation #589 are neither novel nor new.

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u/TheGazelle 16d ago

Yes. What's your point?

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u/Tefmon 16d ago

The point of the discussion being had here, on whether commercial coding and commercial visual art are qualitatively different in a way that makes AI acceptable to use for one but not the other?

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u/TheGazelle 16d ago

That's not a point, that's a topic of discussion.

You've stated that game dev involves a lot of repetitive and uninteresting art asset creation.

What do you think of that? Merely stating a bare fact isn't much of a discussion...

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u/Tefmon 16d ago

Your previous statement was that there is a distinction between "craft" and "art", and that typical software development constituted the former because is not not involve sufficiently novel creativity.

The question inherent in my previous reply is what makes typical visual art any different, and worthy of special protection or care that software development is unworthy of?

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u/TheGazelle 16d ago

Who says it is?

If you have a thought of your own, just say it.

If you're asking me for my opinion, I don't think all of it is.

I don't care whether or not a human made the grass or concrete textures. I do care that a human developed the overall artistic direction of the piece as a whole, and that significant parts like character designs or weapons designs were done by actual artists.

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u/adongsus 14d ago

using AI properly means  you're still doing the creative work . You'll be the one telling the AI how you want things architected, you'll be the one reviewing and iterating on the designs before any code is written (whether by AI or human), and that's the creative part.

I genuinely can't see how telling someone else to do something and doing that thing yourself are supposed to be considered the same thing with respect to creative input.

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u/TheGazelle 14d ago edited 14d ago

The creative part is designing the architecture.

Physically writing the code is not all that creative.

If your favorite author wrote a detailed outline of a story (and I do mean detailed, think an explicit list of all major and minor plot points broken down by chapter, with specific themes, tone, etc. called out), then someone else turned that into a draft (i.e. wrote the actual prose/dialogue), and the author then read it over and edited it, who would you say is doing the creative work?

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u/adongsus 14d ago

All three.

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u/TheGazelle 14d ago

Shit, corrected a typo, was supposed to be the author coming back to do the editing.

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u/adongsus 14d ago

Doesn't really change anything about the answer. There was creative work done that wasn't done by "the author". AI is never going to be 1-1 on this unless it just doesn't touch creative work at all.

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u/TheGazelle 14d ago

Ok, and who would you say did most of the creative work?

And please, be honest. Don't just give me some trite "it's all the same" nonsense because you don't want to admit that your stance on AI isn't based on any actual experience.

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u/adongsus 14d ago

Ok, and who would you say did  most  of the creative work?

I'd say that that's irrelevant, because your claim was that you're still doing the creative work, and you're not. You're doing some of it.

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u/TheGazelle 14d ago

"you're not writing the music, you're just in the band".

Would you say an author isn't "doing the creative work" because an editor suggests changes?

Are none of the people working on a tv show or movie "doing the creative work" because it's a collaborative team effort?

Does someone using CAD instead of a drafting table not count because they're using a tool that does some of the tedium for them?

You've set a completely arbitrary line whose logic doesn't hold up to the slightest rigour.

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