Recently, game industry consulting firm Vivrato released the VAIA report, in which 94% of surveyed game studio decision-makers stated that their companies use AI in at least one stage of production. However, the actual level of AI integration into production workflows remains limited.
This survey is based on 101 confidential one-on-one interviews conducted between April and September 2026. Respondents were senior executives or decision-makers at studios, with companies primarily headquartered in North America and Europe. Each interview used the same set of 44 questions, covering nine production stages including concept design, pre-production, live operations, and monetization.
In the survey, 97% of respondents said they had used AI in some form, and 94% stated that AI had been integrated into at least one production stage. However, when rating the depth of AI integration into production workflows on a scale of 1 to 10, 52% of respondents gave a score of 3 or lower, indicating that widespread use does not necessarily mean AI has become core production infrastructure.
Usage also varies by region. Among European studios, 70% of respondents reported using AI for art, assets, and animation, compared to 53% in North America. Adam Boyes, founder and CEO of Vivrato, noted that AI here includes not only generative chat, image, and synthetic voice technologies, but also machine learning for predicting player churn and rule automation in testing phases.