In a report released on September 16, the Japanese game industry talent consulting team Hiraku Agent A large-scale survey of 1008 game industry professionals in Japan was conducted to examine the impact of the spread of “AI-related technologies” on talent skills and job openings in the Japanese game industry, and to compare the results with those of a similar survey conducted in 2024, thereby revealing what kind of impact AI technology has had on the entire industry over the past two years.
When asked what game companies value most when recruiting talent, the answer chosen by the most respondents this year was “past work experience and skills,” accounting for 32.9% of the total, followed by “ability and willingness regarding new technologies (including AI)” at 30.8%, while “understanding of the company’s own games” ranked third at 27.9%.
Meanwhile, in the 2024 survey, the top three were “past work experience and skills” at 35.1%, “favorite game genres” at 26.3%, and “communication skills” at 25.1%. Therefore, the results of this year’s report clearly show that the Japanese gaming industry has begun to place increasing emphasis on the development of “AI technology.” In fact, when asked how much importance their company places on related technologies, 34.1% of respondents chose “very important,” while those who chose “quite important” also reached 57%.
However, the reason AI-related technologies often provoke strong controversy and backlash among the public mainly stems from people’s concerns about their “replaceability,” and this report seems to make this issue even more evident. When asked which job openings have decreased after the widespread adoption of AI, about 44.6% of respondents mentioned relatively simple art work such as “game background and prop production,” followed by 37.2% for “assistant-level programmers” and 28.8% for “testing and debugging personnel.”
Regarding this phenomenon, Hiraku Agent said that Japanese game companies used to assign this kind of work to less experienced newcomers, but as AI technology became more widespread, demand in this area began to decline, especially for work that is highly repetitive and easy to automate. Therefore, they believe that the biggest impact of AI technology on the Japanese game industry is that it further raises the barrier to entry, requiring job seekers to demonstrate more specialized technical knowledge or possess additional value beyond “basic production work” in order to stand out.
Meanwhile, demand among Japanese game companies for roles that can effectively use AI technology is also increasing. In a related question, 45.9% of respondents chose “senior art directors capable of correcting and guiding content generated by generative AI,” followed closely by 44.1% who chose “AI engineers and technical artists capable of integrating AI into the development environment and production pipeline,” while third place, “creators capable of using AI tools to rapidly produce results,” accounted for 34.6%.
Moreover, the organizer of the Tokyo Game Show, the Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association (CESA), recently released its fiscal 2026 game industry survey report, and the results show that the proportion of Japanese game developers using “generative AI” has reached 85%, a quite significant increase from 51% last year.
Source: KOCPC Chinese