<span style="font-weight: 400;">2025 is set to be a major year for the gaming industry. A recent DFC Intelligence report predicts that the video gaming industry will bounce back after a difficult two years of revenue decline, with 2025 being the beginning of a record period of growth. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Recent global issues and the increasing popularity of mobile gaming all contributed to this. However, the report shows how the public still has a huge appetite for video gaming alongside other forms of entertainment. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">While the industry is recovering, video game developers still face challenges keeping up with technological advances and the consumer demand for high-performing games. Major gaming companies are struggling to complete games on time due to the vast resources needed to create modern titles. Most famously, Cyberpunk 2027 was released before it was finished to appease shareholders, destroying the developer’s reputation. As a result of these pressures, artificial intelligence (AI) is now seen as an important tool in video game development.</span>

<a href="https://wnhub.io/news/marketing/item-43130" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="font-weight: 400;">A Unity report found that 62% of the companies</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> surveyed already used AI in their workflows. A majority of these companies said that working with AI allowed them to improve their operations. With 2025 gearing up to be an important year in video game revenue, it could be even more significant in terms of the impact of AI in video game development. </span>
<h2><b>AI in Gaming</b></h2>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">AI has been an important game development technology for quite some time. Game developers currently use AI primarily to create realistic environments, such as pathfinding AI, to create paths for NPCS, and natural language processing (NPL). </span><a href="https://www.mongodb.com/resources/basics/what-is-artificial-intelligence" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="font-weight: 400;">MongoDB’s guide to AI</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> explains how NPL allows AI to seamlessly produce output in human language. In gaming, this allows developers to create interactive dialogues between the players and characters. The biggest developers in the industry are always keen to highlight the evolution of their AI characters to create a more realistic and immersive gaming experience. </span>
<h2><b>How AI Will Impact Game Development in 2025</b></h2>
<h3><b>Speed Up Development</b></h3>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">As noted in the introduction, developers are struggling to finish big games in time due to the sheer size of modern video games, particularly AAA titles. The MIT Technology Review recently highlighted how many studios use generative AI tools like Midjourney to create in-game environments, with Ubisoft already experimenting with AI to create different basic dialogue options. As we move into 2025, a team at Roblox is developing a generative AI that allows developers to make 3D environments and scenes instantly with nothing but text prompts. This will allow developers to speed up the most time-consuming aspect of video game creation: building an environment from scratch. </span>
<h3><b>AI-Driven Storytelling</b></h3>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">An article </span><a href="https://leonidasgorgo.medium.com/beyond-pixels-the-game-industrys-next-big-innovations-for-2025-9230e847f874" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"><span style="font-weight: 400;">titled </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Game Industry’s Next Big Innovations for 2025</span></i></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> outlines how developers will start to integrate AI into storytelling. For example, developers can use ethical AI to create complex narratives that encourage players to explore moral dilemmas. AI-driven procedural storytelling will enable games to generate unique stories that adapt to each player’s choices. This will make video games much more organic and personalized as the game will evolve with the players instead of just following a pre-programmed plot. </span>
<h3><b>Opening Up the Indie Game Industry  </b></h3>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">With AI becoming a tool that game developers can use, we can expect an influx of smaller indie video games. James Hughes, Marketing Director at London Card Show, </span><a href="https://techround.co.uk/guides/experts-comment-predictions-for-gaming-in-2025/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"><span style="font-weight: 400;">spoke to TechRound</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> about how AI will impact indie game developers in 2025: “On the indie side, we’ll see experimentation flourish, especially with AI and procedural generation advances. Indies will push boundaries in emergent storytelling, procedural world-building, and dynamic gameplay.” With big studios struggling to finance and develop AAA games, the indie scene is set to become even more dynamic and exciting in 2025, with AI opening up the industry to more creatives. </span>
<h3><b>Push Back Against AI</b></h3>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">While the integration of AI into the development of video games has led to many benefits, there is still a pushback among many developers that will continue into 2025. There is a fear that AI will replace the human element of game design, with Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto promising not to use AI in any future game development. He argues that Nintendo has a history of going against the crowd, with </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">the Nintendo Switch</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> famously combining console and portable gaming in contrast to the high-power consoles being developed by Sony and Microsoft. Miyamoto believes that the human element of game development makes their games unique and popular with audiences of all ages. While indie gamers will have more options to create video games, for developers who work in big companies, a lack of job security in 2025 is expected to be a huge issue and will impact many workers.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">As we move into 2025, the gaming industry is set to undergo more transformations as AI is further integrated into the industry. For more on the latest video game news, do visit </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">our Gaming section</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">. </span>