Gamescom Dev speaker survey identifies potential impacts of AI on team structure and productivity
Gamescom Dev has released its annual speaker survey results, showing that 83% of respondents expect AI to impact team structure or productivity. Nearly half of the 100 speakers surveyed identified AI-assisted development as the most significant industry trend for the next three years.
Amidst these insights, the developer landscape sees another major shake-up: Supermassive Games has announced a third round of layoffs in three years, potentially affecting up to 75 positions.
AI as the top trend
The survey included 100 speakers from Gamescom Dev. Almost half (48%) named AI-assisted development as the most significant trend for the next three years, ahead of hardware and RAM price increases (28%), the creator economy (7%), and user-generated content (5%).
Opinions on implementation vary: 34% believe code and production would benefit most from AI assistance. However, 30% prefer minimal AI involvement in development, down from 33% last year.
Regarding jobs, 36% think AI will change roles rather than reduce team sizes, while 33% expect smaller teams. 14% anticipate higher individual output, and 17% do not expect workforce reductions.
Major industry challenges
More than half of respondents identified economic uncertainty as the biggest challenge, followed by market saturation (38%), discoverability (35%), and rising development costs (30%).
To improve discoverability, respondents want greater transparency in platform algorithms (32%), better storefront recommendations (22%), and more curated editorial coverage (21%).
Opportunities and business models
Looking ahead, 37% of respondents view smaller development teams as the greatest opportunity, followed by community building and new publishing models (both at 15%).
In terms of dominant business or monetisation models over the next three years, digital and physical premium games led with 29%, followed by live service (24%) and free-to-play with in-game items (21%).
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