That new, unapologetically derivative open world game or umpteenth shooter sequel you’re currently addicted to? It was almost certainly made with a little help from AI, according to Google Cloud’s global director for games Jack Buser.
In an interview with Mobilegamer.biz, Buser claimed that pretty much every major video game studio is using the tech behind the scenes, whether they’re willing to admit it or not.
“I think what players don’t realize is that their favorite games right now were already built with AI,” Buser told the outlet. “Those games have shipped. We did a survey around Gamescom last summer with studios all over the world. Roughly nine out of 10 game developers told us ‘yeah, we’re using it’.”
Buser acknowledged that some surveys showed this share to be much lower, at around 40 to 50 percent. But that sizable gap, he charged, is “basically the developers’ willingness to tell you whether the fact of the matter is it’s being used.”
It’s unclear which specific surveys are being referenced, but a recent one conducted by GDC showed roughly half of game developers think AI is bad for the industry, while just over a third said they used AI for work. Those figures capture how polarizing AI remains in games, as it does in the arts and entertainment broadly. Gamers erupted in fury last month when Nvidia revealed a new graphics feature that used to AI to essentially yassify games, with the backlash so overwhelming that it appeared to rattle CEO Jensen Huang. Storefronts like Steam have drawn a line in the sand by mandating that developers disclose if their games use AI-generated content, a measure that many gamers approve of — but that some gaming CEOs don’t.
To support his claims, Buser pushes a common pro-AI argument: that it speeds along development and frees up time for developers to focus on more important stuff. Capcom, best known for its “Resident Evil” franchise, is one major studio using AI this way, he claims.
“One of the big problems that they have is they’re building these massive worlds and they’ve got to fill it with content,” Buser explained. “Just coming up with all the ideas for every pebble by the side of the road, every blade of grass, and having all those art reviews, the manual labour just starts piling up in preproduction.”
But with AI, gamers “will start to realize this is actually helping me get my favorite games faster,” he told Mobilegamer.biz. “And I’m also getting more innovation in the industry because there’s more room to take risks, and now it’s not seven years waiting for one game, but that studio can make five games.”
Buser has an angle here: the studios, he claims, are using Google’s AI tools, like its image generator Nano Banana and its Gemini chatbot, so it’s worth taking them with a heathy degree of skepticism. He isn’t the first person with inside knowledge of an industry claiming it has a dirty AI secret, and he won’t be the last. That said, there’s almost certainly a degree of truth to what’s he peddling; a third of developers saying they use AI is still a lot of developers, and many CEOs remain hellbent on forcing their underlings to use the tech.
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