85.8 percent of Japanese developers use generative AI

The Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association (CESA) released a preliminary summary of game-development conditions early this month. The full report is not due until December. An IT Home article on October 1 relays one figure from that summary: 85.8 percent of Japanese game developers are already using generative AI actively in daily work. The data come from a developer questionnaire at the CEDEC conference. Last year, 51 percent of developers were using the technology.

The uses include generating art assets and using tools such as ChatGPT and Copilot for ordinary administrative work. Among respondents who already use generative AI, 63 percent said they use it every day and 22.8 percent said they use it only occasionally. Another 8.6 percent of respondents said their company has issued guidance for the technology. The article does not say whether that 8.6 percent is a share of all responses or only of current users. The survey collected 1,349 individual developer responses.

Most respondents said the technology is useful. Many said it shortened production schedules and lowered development cost. Of those responses, 837 people said AI expanded creative room, and 738 said it lowered the technical threshold. Only 147 said it improved the experience of ordinary players. On this questionnaire, the change people report is larger on the production side than on the player side.

The individual questionnaire cannot be rolled up into a company adoption rate. It surveyed developers as individuals. Several employees of one company are counted separately, even if the whole company follows one policy, and the survey cannot report AI use at the firm level.

A separate CESA survey of member companies gives a different picture. Seventy-four percent of member companies already have a generative-AI policy. Among the companies surveyed, 27 are not using generative AI and 26 are using it in some form, so the two counts are roughly even. Only 12 use AI for visual art. Fewer use it for scripts, localization, testing, or programming. A high rate of daily individual use is not the same as member studios putting generative AI into art and production.

Outside those figures, the IT Home article comments that acceptance is relatively higher in South Korea and Japan, and it cites public backlash to a Crazy Taxi title as a reason studios should not chase throughput and cut staff the way some other industries do. That comment is the article’s, not a comparison in the survey summary.