Google executive responsible for AI has a solution for the game industry's problems, and you're not going to believe this but it's AI

Jack Buser is Google Cloud global director for games, a role in which he "enable[s] transformation of game industry developers, publishers and platforms with AI and cloud solutions." And from that lofty perch he has devised a solution for the woes plaguing the videogame business. Can you guess what it is? I'll tell you: It's AI.

In an interview with GamesIndustry, Buser said the videogame business is "finally returning to revenue growth," but at the same time profits are declining, games are being cancelled, and layoffs continue to sweep the industry. The only real growth is coming from Roblox and China, and if you're not in one of those categories, "odds are you're struggling to some extent."

"Once you start to look underneath the surface of what's going on in the industry, you realize like, oh my gosh, we are in trouble," Buser said, referencing the decimation of the game industry that kicked into high gear in 2023 and hasn't eased up since.

"This is not a sustainable business model. We have to transform as an industry to meet this moment so that we can drive into the future. And so that frames up why this is such an important time in the industry."

Thus, AI: Buser said aspects of the business including marketing, business strategy, and analytics are being "accelerated radically with AI," and he also believes that embracing AI will reduce development times and costs, and enable smaller studios to compete more directly with the major players.

"A general trend we're seeing is the very large game companies are thinking about their development pipelines, reducing iteration time," Buser said. "But we're seeing the long tail, as well as the sort of torso of the industry start to realize that with AI, they can punch way above their weight, way above their weight, and they can actually compete with some of these larger budget games by leveraging AI."

Buser said AI is rather like Iron Man's suit—"put it on and see what types of superpowers it's able to grant you"—but he gives up the game a little bit near the end of the report. After saying the game industry is "broken," which is why we've seen tens of thousands of layoffs over the past few years, he explicitly positions AI as the solution to the problem—for the business. For the people who work in it? Well, not so much. But that's not the fault of AI!

"For somebody who's in a studio worried about their job, the existential nature of the games industry right now is putting a lot of pressure on these studios, and that is outside of anything to do with AI," Buser said.

"If anything, AI is going to help us right-size these business models. It's going to help us create a healthier industry, not just for the big players, but for small players as well. And I think if we have a more nuanced understanding of how it's actually being used and refine our language a little bit about how we discuss these things, it's easily one of the most important things we can do as an industry right now."

The giveaway is of course Buser's use of "right-size," a euphemism for laying off even more people—defined by the Cambridge dictionary as "the process of making a company or organization a more effective size, especially by reducing the number of people working for it." The goal, in other words, is not to protect people, but to protect profits—understandable from the perspective of a Google executive, I suppose, but not a solution I have much interest in.

Buser's previous gig was "global director for all games business development activities for Stadia," and we all know how that turned out: An overhyped promise of a bold, accessible future for gaming that never went anywhere except, eventually, away. It's not hard to see parallels with the relentless push for AI-driven game development, which we're repeatedly assured is an inevitable future: Yes, it may be useful for specific tasks like software debugging, but it has yet to come close to delivering on the hype. (I'm still waiting for an update on Elon Musk's promise to release "a great AI-generated game" by the end of 2026.)

I do agree with Buser that the conversation would be helped immensely by using better, more precise language in place of the catch-all of "AI": Technological advancement has always been an essential part of game dev, and that that's going to continue to be the case moving forward. He might even be correct in his broader thesis, to the extent that maybe the videogame industry as a whole can start making more money with less effort by leaning heavily into AI garbo: After all, if there's one thing we've learned from the advent of reality television, it's that creative bankruptcy will not prevent you from making serious bank. Sure, we all end up playing Courtroom Chaos Starring Snoop Dogg, and that'll suck, but at least the money guys will be alright.