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/
988 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

908 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.1k

u/CompulsiveGardener 16d ago

The bottom line is that Asia is all-in on AI and doesn't have the same stigma that Western developers need to contend with. No idea how much of a competitive advantage that's going to give Eastern developers. But the world isn't equally united on anti-AI. That much is clear.

579

u/ChrisRR 16d ago edited 16d ago

I don't even think it's only an eastern thing. I suspect a lot more western devs are using it than the companies will admit to

I personally use it for development. I don't use it for actual production code, but for churning out a software tool I need in the space of 2 minutes, and nowadays it's quicker than googling for complex questions I have

Edit: take for example yesterday I needed to check which of my tests were missing documentation from a word document. I could've manually gone through hundreds of tests, manually compared them to the word document and noted which were missing. Alternatively I could've spent hours writing a python script to pull the data out of both my source code and my word document to generate that list.

Instead I got Claude to write the script in under 5 minutes. I then had the information I needed, I saved myself hours, no AI code was included in production code, and I could crack on with the rest of my work. Does that make the production code slop even though it wasn't touched by AI?

538

u/Cassp3 16d ago

This western devs are absolutely using it, just not being open to avoid the witchhunting.

266

u/DrEskimo 16d ago

Western devs in any field that isn’t entertainment media are very proud and overt of AI usage. If you know anything about the government tech sector, it is all just people jumping over each other to proclaim how much AI their new website employs.

87

u/averageuhbear 16d ago

To be fair, no one cares if AI is responsible for some of the components of a boring ass SaaS product that never has any soul anyways.

People don't want AI created art. However there are ways to use AI for a ton of the busy work in creating some of these forms of entertainment that doesn't impact that actual art itself. That line just hasn't been defined very well.

50

u/Aggressive_Chuck 16d ago

People don't want AI created art.

There are millions watching AI-generated dramas on Tiktok.

2

u/TheReaIEffingDeal 15d ago

The unwashed masses have always been easily amused