In Summary
- Game engines are breaking boundaries as versatile 3D creation engines across multiple sectors — 58% of survey respondents use them outside gaming.
- Generative AI is moving from experimentation to “business essential” — with 70% of respondents using it in their workflows — yet debates about its adoption strategy, ethics, and overall value continue.
- It’s media and entertainment, not gaming, that’s leading the AI transformation playbook across industries, with 86% of M&E respondents leveraging generative AI across content creation.
Studios continue to ship innovative titles under tighter budgets and smaller teams, leading to an emerging industry pattern: teams standardizing on a fewer set of tools, working through their AI strategies, and treating asset pipelines as product-critical systems.
We highlight these themes and more in our 2025 State of Game Technology Report. Below, we explore key findings from our survey of over 520 industry experts, including insights into the future of gaming, emerging game development trends, the top challenges across industries, and more.
Read on or jump to the section that interests you.
Table of Contents
Game Development Trends to Know: What’s In the 2025 Report?
Watch industry experts from Perforce and JetBrains discuss the key findings of our 2025 State of Game Technology report and their predictions on the future of gaming:
What are the Top Trends in Game Development for 2025?
Here are the key findings from this year’s report:
- Game engines are redefining what teams can accomplish across industries.
- Generative AI (Gen AI) is shifting from experimentation to an essential business capability.
- The economic climate and funding constraints continue to shape decision-making across all sectors.
- Talent shortages are the biggest barrier to innovation.
- Teams struggle with collaboration challenges, with persistent issues around remote work and sharing assets.
For our 2025 report, we surveyed over 520 practitioners, senior management, and executives in game development, media & entertainment, education, automotive, architecture/engineering, and manufacturing. They came from 49 countries across 6 continents.
We wanted to assess the impact game development technology is making across industries, as well as identify the key challenges faced by organizations. We also asked open-ended questions about what they would change in their respective industry, and what they’re most excited about.
Download our full report for more findings and analysis by experts from Perforce and JetBrains.
Here is a quick look at three key findings.
1. Game Engines Cross Industries
Real-time game engines have evolved into versatile 3D creation engines across sectors, driven by increasing project complexity and growing consolidation of tools. 18% of survey respondents now leverage game engines for VR/AR, 14% for visualization and simulation, 14% for 3D art creation, 12% for film and television, and 11% for education.
“The widespread adoption of commercial engines like Unity and Unreal has led to a noticeable homogenization of games — it’s often trivial to tell which engine was used just by looking...The industry is slowly trading expertise for convenience — and paying for it in quality.”
- Response from an Executive in Game Development
Why Are Other Industries Adopting Game Engines?
Other industries are adopting engines for the same reasons studios do: faster iteration of creative assets, higher fidelity, and a unified toolset.
For example, film production teams are using Unreal Engine for pre-visualization and lighting, and real estate developers are creating immersive digital twin experiences.
For gaming industry leaders, this means engine decisions are now shaping enterprise-wide workflows beyond traditional audiences. When a game engine becomes the shared runtime and authoring surface in growing variety of use cases, it will drive innovations in digital content creation (DCC) tools, build systems, compute, version control, and review tooling.
2. Generative AI in Gaming Moves Closer to Maturity
Gen AI use increased again in 2025, with 70% of respondents leveraging these tools, up from 65% last year. Gen AI platform choice also diversified:
- ChatGPT: 46%
- Google Gemini: 15%
- Anthropic Claude: 11%
- DeepSeek: 10%
- GitHub Copilot: 12%
What are the Top Challenge for Generative AI in Gaming?
At the time of the report, insights from JetBrains show that survey respondents seem dissatisfied with text-to-image models, with the popularity of tools like DALL·E, Midjourney, and Adobe Generative Fill dropping significantly since last year.
“One of the key barriers to the wider adoption of generative AI in game development is the current gap between AI-generated content and production-ready assets...If generative AI tools can improve their ability to create usable materials and models directly compatible with engines like Unreal, it would dramatically accelerate full game development. At that point, I believe the true competition in the industry will shift from technical implementation to innovation and creativity.”
- Response from a Lead Programmer
3. Generative AI in Media & Entertainment Grows Fastest
Media and entertainment (M&E) adopted Gen AI the fastest, with 86% of respondents integrating it into workflows. The need to deliver more content faster, with lower production costs, is the main driver of supercharging creativity with AI.
How is Media & Entertainment Using Generative AI?
Like game development, M&E requires high-volume content pipelines amidst their creative tasks. M&E teams report broad gen AI use across creation and operations:
- Content creation: 44%
- Imaging and prototyping: 35%
- Code review, generation, and testing: 33%
- Process automation: 28%
Research and development: 26%
Today’s Preferred Game Technology Toolkit
Version control systems are crucial to the structure of organizations, with 86% of respondents using version control to store and share source files and art assets. Perforce P4 gives global teams a version control foundation without limits, with the speed, scale, and control no other system can match.
Try Perforce P4 for free for 5 users — no limits on features or functionality.
GET IT FREE
📘 Related Resources: Game Development Resources for Indies to AAAs 🎮
The Future of Gaming: What Do Game Creators Predict?
We asked our respondents working in gaming to share their predictions on the influence of game engine technology and generative AI on their industries.
It was an open-ended question, and survey respondents could write in their answers. We received a variety of answers, such as:
- “Game Engines are much more friendly now, and many more toolsets, plugins, integrations, etc., exist. There has never been an easier time to use any Game Engine, big or small. I personally think that the traditional ‘engine’ is on the way out. With things like Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, and the rise of “content generation games,” players can build a game in their favorite games.
- “In the next several years game development will go down much the path of web development and shun in-house solutions in favour of conformity at the cost of performance.”
- “Currently, the biggest hurdle for AI in indie film VFX with green screens is the lack of a dedicated all-in-one software. I’m forced to juggle multiple programs to achieve the desired results. A single, purpose-built AI tool for entire movies would streamline the entire VFX process, making it significantly more efficient and accessible.”
- “I’m really curious to see if some tools will integrate AI in order to assist us in the creation process (generates some shapes from prompt in order to have a base and remodel it, or an AI which can automate some process like generating shapes following splines, etc.). It can save time for small team or solo dev like me who are not expert in making 2D/3D assets, but we have to create them.”
What Is The Future of Game Development?
The future of game development will see game engines sitting at the center of more industries and internal creative workflows. Gen AI will increase iteration volume across code and content, and the industry will look to M&E as an example of what gen AI adoption looks like at scale.
Chris Perez, Jase Lindgren, Anastasia Kazakova, and Aleksei Koniakin discuss these findings and the challenges impacting the future of gaming in our webinar, The 2025 State of Game Technology Report - Trends to Know.
Get the Full Report for Game Development Trends & Insights
For 30+ pages of actionable insights on game development trends, the future of gaming, widespread organizational challenges, and more, download a full copy of the 2025 State of Game Technology Report for free.
Back to top
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the future of gaming?
The future of gaming will shift how game engines and generative AI are used. Real-time game engines will cross into other industries as shared platforms across game development, VR/AR, simulation, and media production. Generative AI will accelerate innovation and development velocity in both code and creative content — evidenced by discussions around Google’s Project Genie announcement — forcing teams to invest in stronger pipeline controls, asset traceability, and scalable versioning.
What is the future of game development in 2025?
The future of game development in 2025 follows three trends: engine technology expands beyond games into VR/AR, visualization, simulation, and film workflows; generative AI moves from experimentation to integrated production tasks like code review, testing, and content creation; and entertainment teams adopt Gen AI at scale, which may lead to pipeline and operational governance challenges for businesses.
What are the game development trends in 2026?
Game development trends in 2026 will increase both asset volume and workflow complexity. Teams will generate more variants, prototypes, and intermediate assets, often with AI assistance. This shift exacerbates the challenges of weak asset management, unclear ownership, and missing provenance. Studios should plan for auditability, stronger review gates, and clear separation between sandbox work and production repos.
How do game engines influence the future of asset development outside gaming?
Game engines influence the future of asset development in adjacent sectors through growing use as a common runtime. Teams in media and entertainment, education, and automotive are adopting engines for faster iteration and real-time feedback. This cross-industry adoption pushes engine choices to affect storage, build systems, content review, and integration standards, not only gameplay.
Is generative AI a real game development trend or still mostly experimentation?
Generative AI has moved into real workflows with business impacts. Teams use Gen AI for code generation, code review, testing, and content creation, which ties directly to production throughput. The main limitation of Gen AI now involves governance and operational control, including data boundaries, accuracy risk, and the ability to track how an asset was created and approved.