{"id":1560326,"date":"2026-04-22T19:59:03","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T19:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/r2hgdVUsYUZtcLPEwUvZER"},"modified":"2026-04-22T19:59:03","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T19:59:03","slug":"google-executive-responsible-for-ai-has-a-solution-for-the-game-industrys-problems-and-youre-not-going-to-believe-this-but-its-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/google-executive-responsible-for-ai-has-a-solution-for-the-game-industrys-problems-and-youre-not-going-to-believe-this-but-its-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"Google executive responsible for AI has a solution for the game industry’s problems, and you’re not going to believe this but it’s AI"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jack Buser<\/a> is Google Cloud global director for games, a role in which he “enable[s] transformation of game industry developers, publishers and platforms with AI and cloud solutions.” And from that lofty perch he has devised a solution for the woes plaguing the videogame business. Can you guess what it is? I’ll tell you: It’s AI<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In an interview with GamesIndustry<\/a>, Buser said the videogame business is “finally returning to revenue growth,” but at the same time profits are declining, games are being cancelled, and layoffs continue to sweep the industry. The only real growth is coming from Roblox and China, and if you’re not in one of those categories, “odds are you’re struggling to some extent.”<\/p>\n

“Once you start to look underneath the surface of what’s going on in the industry, you realize like, oh my gosh, we are in trouble,” Buser said, referencing the decimation of the game industry that kicked into high gear in 2023<\/a> and hasn’t eased up since. <\/p>\n

“This is not a sustainable business model. We have to transform as an industry to meet this moment so that we can drive into the future. And so that frames up why this is such an important time in the industry.”<\/p>\n

Thus, AI: Buser said aspects of the business including marketing, business strategy, and analytics are being “accelerated radically with AI,” and he also believes that embracing AI will reduce development times and costs, and enable smaller studios to compete more directly with the major players.<\/p>\n

“A general trend we’re seeing is the very large game companies are thinking about their development pipelines, reducing iteration time,” Buser said. “But we’re seeing the long tail, as well as the sort of torso of the industry start to realize that with AI, they can punch way above their weight, way above their weight, and they can actually compete with some of these larger budget games by leveraging AI.”<\/p>\n

Buser said AI is rather like Iron Man’s suit\u2014”put it on and see what types of superpowers it’s able to grant you”\u2014but he gives up the game a little bit near the end of the report. After saying the game industry is “broken,” which is why we’ve seen tens of thousands of layoffs over the past few years, he explicitly positions AI as the solution to the problem\u2014for the business. For the people who work in it? Well, not so much. But that’s not the fault of AI!<\/p>\n

“For somebody who’s in a studio worried about their job, the existential nature of the games industry right now is putting a lot of pressure on these studios, and that is outside of anything to do with AI,” Buser said.<\/p>\n

“If anything, AI is going to help us right-size these business models. It’s going to help us create a healthier industry, not just for the big players, but for small players as well. And I think if we have a more nuanced understanding of how it’s actually being used and refine our language a little bit about how we discuss these things, it’s easily one of the most important things we can do as an industry right now.”<\/p>\n

The giveaway is of course Buser’s use of “right-size,” a euphemism for laying off even more people\u2014defined by the Cambridge dictionary<\/a> as “the process of making a company or organization a more effective size, especially by reducing the number of people working for it.” The goal, in other words, is not to protect people, but to protect profits\u2014understandable from the perspective of a Google executive, I suppose, but not a solution I have much interest in.<\/p>\n

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