AI & Gaming in 2026

Let me catch you up on AI 2025 and what that means for gaming in 2026.

The No.1 expert for AI on LinkedIn, Allie K. Miller, just dropped a 5000-word summary of 2025 in AI. I transferred what that means for gaming.

First, it's important to note that AI is developing on the technology layer, whereas games are the application layer. As such, they are logically already trailing the developments of the technology layer by a bit. That means the review for AI for 2025 might just serve as the outlook for AI in gaming in 2026.

So let's get started.

If 2024 was the year of "Look what this chatbot can do!", 2025 was the year of agents.

The "Copy-Paste" Wars: Innovation is moving so fast that features are being cloned in weeks, not years. DeepSeek (China) dropped a model that cost peanuts to train (officially), and OpenAI/Anthropic copied their "visible thinking" UI faster than you can say "copyright"

The Rise of the "Romantic Agent": 72% of teens now have an AI companion, and nearly 30% of adults are in "it’s complicated" relationships with AI. What this comes down to is Memory. Memory is the new "stickiness"; if the AI remembers something you already forgot, it has crossed the uncanny valley for you.

The Talent Gold Mine: AI researchers are now being paid like pro athletes. If you aren't offering a 8 to 9-figure package (yes that's double to triple digit millions) you can't afford the top talent.

The Gaming Angle

For gaming studios and tech leads, 2026 won't be about better graphics, it'll be about autonomy and intimacy.

1. NPCs are getting "Souls" (and Memory)

The newsletter highlights that "AI that remembers you is fundamentally different."*

The Gaming Angle: Stop building NPCs with static dialogue trees. The 2025 trend of "Memory-First AI" means players will expect NPCs to remember their play style, their previous choices, and even their tone of voice across multiple sessions. If 72% of teens are using AI companions, your next RPG lead better be a sophisticated LLM with a long-term memory buffer.

2. "Weeks, Not Years" for Assets & Code

Allie notes that Claude Opus 4.5 and Claude Code are crushing SWE-benchmarks (coding tasks).

The Gaming Angle: Your "Technical Debt" just got a massive discount. Tools like Claude Code allow for "Minority Report" style development—voice-dictating entire app/game modules while on a walk. For studios, this means the "3-year dev cycle" is under fire. If you aren't using agentic AI to handle the "boring" refactoring and bug-squashing, your competitors will.

3. The End of the Manual Tutorial

Gen Z has officially stopped Googling; they just ask AI.

The Gaming Angle: If players get stuck on Level 437 of your game (looking at you, Bubble Shooter), they won't look for a Wiki—they’ll ask their integrated AI assistant. Which they can dial in as to how much help is given, subtle hints or hold-my-hand-walkthroughs, both completely context aware.

4. Agentic UGC

AI agents are now completing 4.5-hour autonomous tasks in one go. No more forgetting what you just told it two messages ago.

The Gaming Angle: Players will soon be able to give a high-level command ("Build me a Lovecraft-themed dungeon with three bosses") and an AI agent will handle the level design, asset placement, and balancing in real-time. The "creator economy" in games like Roblox or Fortnite is about to go nuclear. Who will come up with a platform where this is front and center?

5. A Hidden Champion speaks up

Typing seems to become the biggest bottleneck of the AI era. We will be limited by how fast we can type. And what's faster than typing? Enter voice input. Wispr and similar tools are for Allie and upgrade, like virtual keyboards on smartphones have been from physical keyboards. This one sounds like the 2000s all over, but this time the low- to non-existent failures rates in speech recognition backs it up.

The Gaming Angle: Not only in production, but also in final product. You now have a second controller to design for - “Get med pack!” Will always be quicker than opening the inventory. And no more radials to tell the NPCs what to do. Just tell - tell them.

Final Verdict for Gaming Execs:

If you aren't building for a world where players expect a persistent, remembering, and proactive virtual world, you're building for 2023. The "stickiness" of AI-driven companionship is the new frontier of player retention.

Some astonishing numbers around AI in 2025:

AI is still a hardware game. 92% of US GDP growth in the first half of 2025 came from data center investments.

In the US, Big Tech committed over $405 billion in AI capital expenditure this year, a 62% increase from 2024

At $5T market cap for Nvidia, there are only 3 countries with stock markets worth more in the world (US, China, Japan).

Electricity consumption of data centers rose 4x faster than the rate of total electricity consumption.

And lastly, one point from myself:

Not just since the latest drama around the award taken from Expedition 33 for use of AI in pre prod it's been very clear that gaming has a difficult relationship with AI. Just like it had with mobile games at some point. Or with microtransactions.

How can an industry as forward and as dependent on technological advancements as games are, be so divided on this defining topic of our decade? It's because games have always lived at the frontier between tech and creativity. And people are rightfully weary of the creative part being attacked. I just wish more people could look at it this way:

"If the output gets 100 times more, isn't quality getting 100x more important to stand out? The point is to use AI for quality, not quantity."

About and contact to Frederik Hammes

Frederik Hammes has been active in the gaming industry for nearly 20 years.

From QA at EA, to Managing Director at Travian Games und Studio Partner at remote control productions he has started his career at this very publication, GamesMarkt.

He is currently advising founders and CEOs on AI, product and personal branding strategy.

Contact him via:
www.linkedin.com/in/frederikhammes