If the past two years of the game AI competition mainly focused on cost reduction and efficiency enhancement, then by 2026, the role of AI in the gaming industry has undergone a qualitative change: it is not only an "accelerator" on the production line but also the "infrastructure" that reshapes core experiences. Recent industry data show that artificial intelligence has fully penetrated the entire industrial chain of game development, distribution, and operations, driving the competition logic into a "critical turning point."

Development Side: From "Repetitive Labor" to "Industrial Efficiency"

In game industrial production, AI is gradually replacing high-time-consuming and mechanized tasks. Taking Tencent's full-chain AI creation solution VISVISE as an example, this system has completely solved the technical bottlenecks in traditional art production through a modular toolchain.

  • Extreme Efficiency: For example, complex multi-layered skirt modeling traditionally required several days of manual work, while VISVISE's automated processing achieves a success rate of 80% to 90%, compressing the overall time to the "minute level."

  • Practical Scale: Currently, VISVISE has been applied in nearly 100 game projects, including Peace Elite, Honor of Kings, PUBG Mobile, King of Glory, and League of Legends Mobile, with production efficiency increasing by more than 8 times.

Not only big companies, but the AI application rate across the entire industry has reached 86.36%, showing that AI technology has become an essential option in areas such as art assets, scene design, and animation pipelines.

Operation Side: From "Data-Driven" to "Experience Enhancement"

The influence of AI in the game operation stage is shifting from the back-end to the front-end of player experience. Tencent's AI Companion System in Peace Elite is a typical example of this transformation:

  • Broad Coverage: This feature has already covered over 100 million users, with the peak number of concurrent users exceeding ten million.

  • User Conversion Model: By continuously iterating based on real match data, the AI companion not only provides companionship for players but also successfully solves a long-standing problem in game operations—converting a large number of inactive players due to "fear of confrontation" into high-activity, high-retention paying users.

  • Deep Interaction: In addition to basic gameplay, AI NPCs and AI teammates with long-term memory are redefining social boundaries within games, evolving games from "numerical competition" to "intelligent interactive experiences."

New Industry Landscape in the "Critical Turning Point"

Industry insiders point out that as AI becomes widespread in the development stage, "saving costs" is no longer the core competitive advantage for game companies. The efficiency leveling brought by AI is forcing enterprises to seek new barriers:

  1. AI-Native Experience: The focus of competition is shifting toward "AI-native games," where game logic, level design, and interaction experiences are not pre-written but dynamically generated by AI, becoming the core differentiator in the industry.

  2. Integration of Talent and Technology: The next turning point lies in how to smoothly integrate AI tools with existing production workflows, and how to continuously activate IP value through AI in the long-term operation of enduring games.