Ahead of the full report’s release in December, the Japan Computer Entertainment Suppliers Association (CESA) released a preliminary summary of its recent key findings on the state of game development earlier this month. It includes a particularly noteworthy figure suggesting that 85.8% of Japanese game developers actively use generative AI in their work.
These figures come from a survey of game developers conducted at the Japanese game developers conference CEDEC and represent a significant increase over the findings of last year’s report, which indicated that only 51% of developers were using the technology. This usage covers both asset generation, as well as using tools like ChatGPT, Copilot and others for more generic administrative work. (Japanese studios’ use of AI to generate assets has come under scrutiny in recent weeks following a presentation by Dark cloud And Professor Layton (level 5 developer that fans suspected of being riddled with AI-generated images.) Among those who use the tools, 63 percent say they use the technology daily, while 22.8 percent use it only occasionally. A further 8.6 percent reported that their companies had introduced guidelines regarding the use of technology. A total of 1,349 developers responded to the study.
According to the survey, most of them said they saw a benefit from using the technology. Many noted that it reduced production time and costs, with 837 saying it developed creativity and 738 saying it reduced technical barriers. However, only 147 respondents said the technology actually benefits the end-user experience.
There are a few caveats to consider regarding this investigation. It is made up of individual developers, meaning it can have many developers from the same company with identical policies, and does not take into account the distribution of overall AI usage by company. In CESA’s survey of its member companies, 74% say they have policies on the use of generative AI. There was a roughly even split between companies that were not using generative AI (27 of the companies surveyed) and those that were using it in some form (26). Only 12 companies used it for visual assets, and even fewer for things like story, localization, quality assurance, or programming.
The use of generative AI in the Japanese gaming industry is certainly on the rise, but more notable is how companies are establishing firm policies governing how it can be used and implemented. Many of these policies came in response to comments and concerns shared online from players. Although support for these technologies is strongest in East Asian countries like South Korea and Japan, global backlash, as seen in games like Crazy Taxi: Around the Worldsuggests that video game companies will need to be more thoughtful about implementing AI than companies in some other industries that are rushing to leverage it for productivity gains and headcount reductions.
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