The Future of AI in Mobile Gaming

Expert Opinions on AI’s Growing Mobile Gaming Impact 

AI, ranging from narrow to superintelligence, is an incredible human creation with boundless potential. Already common in industries like transport and finance, its influence in mobile gaming is undeniable, revolutionising game design, balance, and personalised player experiences through NPCs.

To predict the future of AI and its role in our lives is anyone’s guess. And because ChatGPT and the like have been made publicly available since late 2022, we’ve begun introducing it to our daily routines. 

But, as the future remains murky on how it’ll be utilised, we wanted to hear from the experts in the mobile gaming industry. We listened to the thoughts of those who design, create, develop, test, and market our apps and games to see where they stand on AI, its implementation and future in our industry.

AI’s Influence on Game Design & Mechanics

The Future of AI in Mobile Gaming Development

Kicking things off with mobile game art and design, we gathered insights from those shaping our games at justDice. As AI continues to influence how games look, feel, and play, we speak to Hossam, one of our technical game artists, and Stephan, one of our game designers, to understand their thoughts on this transformation:

Stephan, Game Designer: AI has great potential to accelerate mobile game development massively. Content can be created and adapted with significantly less time and human resources. The increased accessibility benefits smaller studios or individual developers, and larger companies can fill the skilled labour pool gaps.

However, a technology capable of producing quality content so quickly also has the potential to displace entire professions, especially considering the rapid development that AI programs have achieved across all sectors within the last few years. 

Hossam, Technical Game Artist: I think we’re entering a new era in development and design. AI will revolutionise workflows, help make everything move faster and be produced in larger quantities. It might even take away roles and introduce new ones. I’m also worried about its legal and ethical validity, which is still a grey area for most of us. However, if regulated and trained on legally and ethically appropriate materials, I think it can help remove repetitive and tedious tasks.

Evolving AI-driven Features in Gaming

Stephan: AI will be used increasingly in-game art, especially in concept art, but also when you want to copy a particular style or quickly create many different versions of a game graphic. Animations, 3D modelling or marketing visuals are also possible fields. And I do not like to say it, but I can already have AI programs suggest complete game concepts, including core loop, meta gameplay and monetisation.

AI’s Potential to Transform Gaming Experiences

Hossam: Yes, if things keep moving in their current direction. The market might eventually get saturated with a high quantity of games quickly, with questionable variety and quality. If done right, it can help human developers focus on delivering unique and enjoyable experiences to the players. At the same time, AI takes care of the more tedious aspects of development.

Harnessing AI for Player-Centric Marketing Strategies

The Role of AI in Player Acquisition & Retention

As we delve deeper into AI’s influence on the mobile gaming industry, its role in player acquisition and of traditional design skills come into focus. Yoav, our Head of Marketing, shares his thoughts on the evolving landscape of user acquisition through AI. At the same time, Salma, our Principal Designer, offers her perspective on the balance between AI tools and the heart and soul of design. Here’s what they had to say:

Yoav, Head of Marketing: AI has been around in the mobile UA space for some time, although not as sexy and straightforward as generative AI tools like ChatGPT. In the mobile marketing space, we can already see the usage of algorithmic buying through networks and media exchanges for a few years now, where we bid on impressions, and the AI algorithm runs its predictions as to which users best suit our ads.

AI technologies will bring advanced data analysis, personalisation, and automation to our marketing processes in the next years. For example, generative AI will be able to digest big data and then communicate based on prompts with quick ideas and suggestions, allowing us to improve our analysis time and be faster in our decision-making processes.

Traditional Design Skills in the Age of AI Tools

Salma, Principal Designer: Blood, sweat, and tears are part of the journey and fun of being a designer, and it’s how we learn and develop our skills. It will become much more difficult to stand out If everyone with a Photoshop license / MidJourney account is an “Artist”, but then again, it’s what great designers have always done throughout the years: they develop their iconic style.

However, it needs to be more concise in how the work would look. From an artwork perspective, I still need to process and work on whatever Midjouney/Photoshop spits out to make it “Production-ready”. Also, it’s a matter of pushing AI to produce stuff to your personal taste and needs, so you need to have good taste to begin with 😀 

I worry that with all these available tools, we lose touch with the fundamentals of design, design thinking and all the other fancy words associated with this line of work.

AI-Driven Decisions in Game Analytics

The Future of AI in Mobile Game Data Analysis

Processing mobile game data can be complex and challenging, but AI is ready to shape the future of business intelligence. Daniel, our Senior BI Analyst, shares his insights on pairing traditional techniques and modern AI-driven tools as this world undergoes big changes.

Daniel: Historically, data analysis in our context often leaned on more straightforward statistical techniques despite the emergence of new ML algorithms. However, the start of BI tools streamlined data analysis, simplifying complex tasks. As AI technology, like LLMs, advances, there’s exciting potential for allowing non-technical persons to engage with more data-driven queries. This progress also opens doors for developers and analysts to work more efficiently and effectively together.

Powering Game Tech with AI Innovations

AI’s Potential for Game & App Performance & Scalability

Mark, justDice’s Backend Lead, envisions AI tools like CoPilot AI boosting backend efficiency by handling mundane coding tasks. “This shift allows the development team to concentrate on innovative solutions and intricate problems”. Mark further suggests using AI-driven tools for unit and integration tests to enhance Backend Services quality and reduce manual testing time.

György, Snr. Backend Developer identifies two key AI applications. Firstly, streamlining coding by AI tackling tasks like data mocking and string manipulation. Secondly, using AI to combat fraud among players earning real money, and enhancing user support by crafting personalised, AI-generated email responses. Additionally, AI could infuse more interactivity into games, with real-time NPC responses to user queries.

Mark and György’s insights indicate AI’s potential to reshape backend processes, improve user experience, and encourage new ideas, showing the industry’s shift toward intelligent automation.

AI in Mobile Gaming

In conclusion, the gaming industry is on the brink of an AI revolution. What that means exactly remains to be seen, but we know that big transformative changes are on the horizon. AI has enormous potential in mobile gaming, particularly in game development workflows and backend scalability, but we must remain cautious. The echoed thoughts between designers, artists and marketers that AI could overshadow their skill sets. But from a technical standpoint, AI’s potential to increase not only efficiency but also user experience, signifies a change is coming.  

Can human creativity coexist with this AI-infused landscape, with apps and games only improving? Ask us in a few years…