In the panel “AI, data and the release race”, I talked with people from technology and analytics companies about how products are built in the online games industry today. Below are a few topics I deal with every day as a team lead.
Release pace matters
The market has changed a lot. Instead of a few big titles a year that are expected to earn for years, a steady release pace and good positioning of every game matter more and more. For my team that means over 50 releases a year — so the production and release process has to run like a well-oiled machine.
When there are more and more games
The flip side: game libraries are growing so fast that players struggle to find a specific title at all. That is another reason why production alone is no longer enough — how a game gets noticed matters too.
AI and the Game Jam
At the end, we discussed whether AI will let very small teams build big products. I talked about the internal Game Jam I organised at the company: small teams built playable games from scratch in just over twenty hours — with art, sound and levels. And that was before the latest AI models were released.
Those games looked good, sounded good, had levels and, above all, were playable.