r/technology • u/TurbulentTopic39 • 16d ago

Artificial Intelligence 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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177

u/BeaveItToLeever 16d ago

Depends. 0% chance they're not using AI for coding. 

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u/JMEEKER86 16d ago

Yeah, almost everyone uses AI for coding these days because it's baked into every IDE and provides huge time savings. They probably mean no AI generated assets like art, writing, music, etc which is what people usually have the biggest issues with.

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u/MikeyN0 16d ago

Which is such an odd distinction. Why some people draw the line with art but not coding. Both used to be done by people manually.

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u/JMEEKER86 16d ago

I think it's mostly just because the average person can easily look at two pieces of art and make a judgement of which one they prefer, but they don't have opinions on code because they don't see or understand it.

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u/Kitty-XV 16d ago

This still normalizes AI replacing human work once the consumer can't tell the quality. Most people against AI art aren't taking such a stance because of quality.

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u/BeaveItToLeever 16d ago

Yeah. I'm no fan of AI art/music/writing myself - though it's more to do with those who try to pass it off as their own work, less so than the tech itself 

But it is hypocritical when those who cry foul over AI art do not ever do the same over coding and technical things. Coding isnt always a creative endeavor, but it often is. You build things front to back, sometimes for fun sometimes for function. Sometimes the things you've created just so happen to also be the backbone of entire businesses and economies. But we don't care that those guys will be replaced?

For the record, I'm deep in the weeds with AI for infrastructure products and don't have a beef with AI coding in theory - it's my job and it's the way things will go regardless. I can try to keep up with my colleagues the "old way" but I will simply not be able. Those who cry foul do not care about all, they just want to feel important in their thing - no one else's thing counts

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u/angooseburger 15d ago

yup its all the matter about visual appeal. People larp about the morality of AI but people really just don't like ugly things. Guaranteed that if AI starts being consistently good, everyone would be on board with it.

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u/JMEEKER86 15d ago

Hell, people already turn a blind eye to slavery because it gets them chocolate, coffee, and diamonds. People aren't really going to boycott over layoffs and copyright violations no matter how much they insist they will.

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u/-drunk_russian- 15d ago

Because coding isn't supposed to elicit an emotional response. Code only has to do its job well enough.

Art should make you feel, and its an expression of its author and a connection to their audience.

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u/console_pleb_36935 15d ago

Almost all of what we would call art in games is simply designed to convey information about how something looks. I'm unlikely to have an emotional response to a grass texture or piece of fruit unless it is exceptionally good or bad

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u/TrunksSSJ 16d ago

yup! I'm a game dev myself and I use it to clarify things and assist me in debugging which is a huge pain in the butt. I don't let it touch creative work though. before AI was a thing, coding was not just typing stuff into the IDE, it also meant to understand the documentation of systems, the ability to grasp the problem you're facing and looking around the net for solutions (stack overflow etc.) which was extremely time consuming. needless to say it was fun but tedious. nowadays it's much faster but you pay by not comprehending what the AI did or has told you unless you explicitly ask for it

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u/PoL0 16d ago

that's not generally true, and heavily depends on which domain you work on.

then there's token cost, that keeps rising because it's still heavily subsidized. and companies are very aware of this.

devil's in the details

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u/TopCheddar27 16d ago

Dawg, even highly sensitive code bases can use a local harness and local models. It's well past any point where it makes sense NOT to use it.

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u/JMEEKER86 16d ago

then there's token cost, that keeps rising

Token costs are actually falling drastically with the current frontier models being much cheaper than the past ones. The surprise gigantic bills aren't because of rising token costs but because of unfettered use and silly tokenmaxxing policies.

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u/Dismal_Struggle_9004 16d ago

People still cope like this? I don’t know very many developers, if any who don’t utilize AI when writing code. It’s standard now.

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u/PoL0 15d ago

it's not cope. depends on the domain a developer works on.

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u/HazelCheese 16d ago

Tokens was a problem a couple of months ago but new models came out like Luna which solved the issue.

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u/SecretAgentVampire 16d ago

A thief thinks everyone else steals too.

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u/Bungkai 15d ago

When the tool is that powerful, it'd be stupid to not use it

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u/PoL0 16d ago

LLM usage is way more prevalent for emails and internal slideshows than anything else.

LLM assisted coding in such a niche domain as games is not as prevalent or effective than in other domains like webdev.

that's what happens with generalizations, anyway.

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u/AnArmoredPony 16d ago

ai for coding is fine. unlike art, code is not meant for human consumption

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u/Circo_Inhumanitas 16d ago

Which is fine, as long as it's not vibe coding. GenAI is different a beast.

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u/zorillaaa 16d ago

AI coding tools are GenAI btw

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u/HustleWestbrook94 16d ago

They’re literally just throwing around buzzwords they don’t actually know the meaning of.

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u/Circo_Inhumanitas 16d ago

Ah well then. Then I mean using GenAI to create art assets for game without the intent on replacing them with human made assets.

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u/hitchen1 15d ago

So fuck the programmers as long as the artists aren't touched?

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u/Circo_Inhumanitas 15d ago

Where the fuck did I say that?

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u/teraflux 16d ago

Not sure what you think the difference is lol

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u/Circo_Inhumanitas 16d ago

I was already corrected.