The tool remains mainly used for research
Let’s start first with the subject of AI, which has been on everyone’s lips for several months. We know that part of the industry has already adopted the tool and uses it frequently, but it remains to be seen how often and for what tasks.
We then note that 36% of professionals surveyed say they personally use generative AI in their workwhile 52% say they work in a company that uses this technology. There are, however, many nuances to be made here, since it is employees directly linked to game development who use AI the least (30%), compared to 58% among publishers and partner agencies. Another interesting fact, generative AI is used more by older people (46% versus 34%), and especially by managers (47%) than by juniors (29%).
As for what tasks the tool is used for, what emerges here is that research and brainstorming are the main reasons behind employing generative AI (81%). Only 19% of users use AI to generate assets, while 47% use it for coding assistance and daily tasks like emails.
And if everything is being democratized, 52% of respondents think that generative AI has a bad impact on the industry (especially employees directly threatened in the visual and narrative branches), compared to 7% who believe the opposite (which is less than the 13% last year).
An increasingly uncertain future for young people in the industry
How can we not link this growing fear of AI to that of layoffs which have been more frequent since the end of the Covid bubble. Among those surveyed, 28% say they have been laid off in the last two yearsand this figure is even greater (33%) if we only count employees working in the United States. Worse, around 50% of employees work in a company that made layoffs last year. This poses a problem for the future generation, who are increasingly uncertain about opportunities in the sector. 74% of students say they are worried about this.
To stem this problem, unionization can be seen as a solution and this is wanted by 82% of Americans surveyed. Especially among young people under 24, none of whom were against unionization.
Finally, let’s tackle a slightly lighter subject with the results of the survey concerning more technical aspects, such as the fact that 42% of employees use the Unreal Engine compared to 30% who stay on Unity. Between the PS5 and the Xbox Series, it is the Sony console which is popular here for working on it (47% against 40%)while interest in the Steam Deck is growing, to the point where it would be the fourth most used platform by developers. And this is in contrast to a VR market which is shrinking more and more, with only 8% of employees working on a VR project.