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87% of game developers are already using AI agents and over a third use AI for creative elements like level design and dialogue according to a new Google survey

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Fully 87% of game developers are already using AI agents. That’s according to a new survey from Google Cloud and The Harris Poll of 615 game developers in the United States, South Korea, Norway, Finland, and Sweden. It’s also just the tip of the AI-berg.

Some of the tasks completed by AI aren’t immediately worrisome and you’d think will speed up development and reduce costs. The report says AI is proving useful for automating “cumbersome and repetitive tasks”, freeing developers to focus more on creative elements.

For instance, 47% of developers reported that AI is, “speeding up playtesting and balancing of mechanics, 45% say it is assisting in localization and translation of game content, and 44% cite it for improving code generation and scripting support.” Overall, 94% of developers surveyed, “expect AI to reduce overall development costs in the long term (3+ years).”


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That could help keep smaller developers in business, it might mean niche game titles are more viable, and so on. But it’s only part of the picture. Arguably one of the great fears among gamers is that game design, stories and dialogue will be replaced with the sort of AI slop that’s now bunging up YouTube and social media.

Well, slop or not, AI is increasingly being used for those purposes. Google’s survey found that 36% of respondents are using AI for dynamic level design, animation and rigging, and dialogue writing, while 37% of developers report they have, “enhanced experimentation with new gameplay or narrative concepts.”

Will today’s games be among the last to be coded, written and voiced by humans? (Image credit: rmk1234, CD Projekt Red)

The report is pretty granular about many aspects of game design and development and makes for an intriguing read. Overall, Google is nothing if not upbeat about the implications of all this. Of course it would be, considering it is one of the largest AI researchers on the planet. It has skin in the game, and it’s trying to sell AI to the world.

“Overall, the research found widespread adoption of gen AI in the games industry—and a surprising level of optimism for it. AI is already making a big difference in developer workflows, including productivity and creative tasks.

“Developers also see promising possibilities with AI agents and other emerging AI tools to accelerate game development and enhance player experiences,” the report says.

Of course, the end game, pun very much intended, of all this is presumably games fully AI generated in response to user prompts. “I want to play a first person shooter set in ancient Rome, but with modern weapons, procedural crime elements and Disney characters,” or whatever. And off you go.

Of course, except the one bit that almost definitely won’t be doable is the Disney characters due to IP ownership. Unless you pay extra for the Disney AI gaming subscription or similar. But you get the idea.

If that puts the burden on users to come up with game narratives, semi-curated games where the basic premise is tweaked by user prompts might make more sense for most mainstream gamers. But the main point is that it might all be AI generated one day. At which point will there be a submarket for “artisanal” hand-coded games with human-written narratives, real voices and the rest? All of this is to come, much is to be decided. But the the direction of travel looks pretty unambiguous, and a little icky.

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"We believe these restrictions harm creative expression." The reaction to the UK's Online Safety Act
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“We believe these restrictions harm creative expression.” The reaction to the UK’s Online Safety Act

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“This is not a law fit for purpose,” says the journalist and game developer John Szczepaniak. “This is idiocy and insanity of the highest order.”

Szczepaniak made the game Lady Priest Lawnmower as a joke – riffing on the ZX Spectrum’s similarly silly Advanced Lawnmower Simulator. But when the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) came into effect in late July, he found that British users of itch.io could no longer access his author page.

“It’s all just a parody,” Szczepaniak says. “But as you can see Lady Priest Lawnmower is deemed adult, and if only one game is deemed adult your entire profile page is blocked.” He believes the game tripped an alarm because it features kidnapping. “What about the original Donkey Kong, where Pauline is kidnapped?”

Lady Priest Lawnmower on Itch

Leaf Corcoran, itch.io’s founder, has said that author pages containing NSFW or adult content will remain blocked in the UK – until the site finds a ‘digital ID’ partner that can provide an age verification solution they’re happy with. In the meantime, itch.io is encouraging developers to submit an appeal if they think they’ve been incorrectly targeted. “I refuse to do this. This entire OSA banning nonsense should never have taken place,” Szczepaniak says. “I want the OSA laws repealed!”

The OSA is a set of laws intended to protect users online. It puts a new onus on game developers and platform holders to prevent children from accessing anything harmful or age-inappropriate. It requires that parents and kids are given clear and easy ways to report problems, and that adults be given more control over the type of content they see.

Frustration and panic

This change has been a long time coming – visible on the horizon and well-signalled by the UK government – but its arrival has led to a wave of frustration and panic among those who make games and run their associated communities. “While we will always comply with legal requirements, we disagree with this policy’s approach,” writes itch.io’s Corcoran. “We believe these restrictions harm creative expression and make it harder for independent creators to reach their audiences.”

Ofcom, the UK’s independent regulator of online safety and enforcer of the OSA, now has dedicated members of staff who are focused on and engaging with games companies.

“I think that’s possibly why we as an industry feel a bit more exposed, just because this is one of the first times that a regulator has paid attention to us from day one,” says Isabel Davies, a senior associate at the tech-focused law firm Wiggin. “Whereas normally what happens is social media companies get hit with a new piece of legislation, and we get somewhat taken along for the ride.”

Since the video-game boom of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments and regulators have started paying special attention to the interactive arts. “We’re on a lot more people’s radars,” Davies says. “I think the OSA is just a prime example of one of those situations.”

The Act was passed in 2023, and Ofcom has been consulting with companies inside and outside the games industry ever since. “We weren’t completely caught off-guard,” Davies says. But in the last few weeks, a requirement for companies to protect children from certain ‘legal but harmful’ content has come into force.

“This is one of the first times that a regulator has paid attention to us from day one”

Isabel Davies, Wiggin

“That was also the same time that pornography sites were told to start age-blocking kids, which is why I think this has caused such a kerfuffle,” Davies says. “And one of the things that I think has been oversimplified is that you see some commentators out there saying you have to do age assurance in all cases.”

Age-gating might be a great help in compliance with the law, but in many instances, it may also be overkill – even for game services that include user-generated content, chat, and community features.

“What you do have to do are your risk assessments,” Davies says. “Assess your risks properly and work out what measures you need to employ that may or may not involve age assurance. There may be other ways you can achieve certain goals to protect people.” If a games company is already employing great moderation tools and parental controls, for instance, it might meet many of its obligations that way. “So it’s really important for any service, including games, to not jump the gun with any of this.”

John Szczepaniak’s Itch author page is blocked in the UK

Even when age-gating is necessary, there’s room for nuance. One example of a thoughtful approach to compliance is Newgrounds, the venerable browser game portal. Despite missing Ofcom’s most recent deadline, the site has been working with the UK regulator for the past year. Its plan involves a number of smart assumptions – for instance, that any UK user with an account more than ten years old or access to a credit card is already over the age of 18. “Regardless of age verification, these overhauls have been benefitting the site with better performance and will make NG easier to maintain into the future,” says founder Tom Fulp.

As Fulp notes, however, this invention was born of sheer necessity in the face of more expensive solutions. “We are not planning to offer things like ID checks or facial recognition because these require us to pay a third party to confirm each person,” he writes. “Because Newgrounds runs at a loss and doesn’t monetize users very well, this is not an option for us. As Wired noted, Big Tech is the only winner of the Online Safety Act because smaller websites can’t afford to keep up with this sort of regulation.”

Administrative burden

One of the louder criticisms of the OSA is that it’s particularly unfriendly to smaller companies, for whom simply parsing the thousands of pages of official guidance is a lengthy and disruptive process. “Certainly for me as a lawyer, I’m aware that there is a lot to get through,'” Davies says. “So as someone who isn’t in this area, I can completely understand why they’re probably thinking, ‘What is this!?'”

It’s perhaps not surprising that this administrative overwhelm – along with the prospect of fines capping at £18 million or 10% of annual global turnover, whichever is higher – has frightened some companies into temporarily suspending services in the UK while they figure out the details. And it’s important to note that the OSA arrives against a backdrop of wider moderation and censorship concerns. Platforms like itch.io have been scrambling to address the complaints of prudish payment processors, which has led to some developers suffering a double blow when it comes to discoverability.

Robert Yang, whose games about gay culture sometimes involve nudity, was already subject to a delisting on the itch.io store. And in the course of researching this piece, GamesIndustry.biz discovered that his creator page is currently inaccessible in the UK as well. “I wasn’t aware,” Yang says. “I’m obviously not happy. I have plenty of games that aren’t adult games too.”

Such shotgun measures only feed fears that spaces for risk-taking art are being squeezed, and that the ability of video games to carry messages will suffer as a result. “My silly little amateur games are an insignificant casualty in a much greater fire that has obliterated freedom of expression and freedom of thought in the UK,” Szczepaniak says.

“When GDPR came out in 2018 there was a massive panic, and it took everyone a while to get their heads around things”

Isabel Davies, Wiggin

Yet Davies hopes that in the long term, working with the Act will become more straightforward. “When GDPR came out in 2018 there was a massive panic, and it took everyone a while to get their heads around things,” she says. “My hope is that as time goes on, compliance will get a bit easier. It will become a bit more of a known thing. People will have gone through the process. But as of right now, I think for many indies it will feel like a big burden. Which is why it’s important to speak to your trade bodies, your advisors and communities about this.”

Davies recommends the digital tools that Ofcom has published on its website to help navigate the risk assessment process. “I would say it’s a starting point, it’s definitely not the be-all-and-end-all,” she says. “But it’s a really helpful way to get your head around, ‘OK, what is Ofcom expecting to see? And how do I assess the risks of someone trying to recruit another user for terrorism in my service, for example?'”

As scary as the Act can seem, small businesses shouldn’t worry that they’re suddenly going to be shut down by an unexpected fine. “Ultimately, Ofcom isn’t expecting everyone to have everything resolved immediately,” Davies says. “It’s certainly at the period now where it seems to be doing some enforcement against certain sectors, but equally, in games it’s currently here to engage and help businesses understand what they should be doing.”

Time to assess

If a company’s service presents a big risk, then it might be wise to pause it. But plenty of companies might have less to do than they think.

“If you’ve had a long history of your forum running into issues with illegal content, then maybe turn it off for now until you know what you need to do,” Davies says. “But if you’re running a small forum which is used by a relatively small number of people, and the conversations are mainly about your game or bug tickets or some fan art that people have drawn, you would hope it’s probably going to be relatively low risk in practice. Again – get your risk assessments done!”

“Thanks to the OSA, I’m being treated as some sort of pornographer”

John Szczepaniak

If a time is coming when game platforms will find a more harmonious balance with the OSA, for the benefit of both creators and fans, it can’t come soon enough. In our current moment, rushed and overbearing implementations of the law are leading to upset and disillusionment among the very creative minds our industry depends on.

“Itch is an escape from reality, and an escape from the corporate nature of triple-A gaming,” Szczepaniak says. “None of my individual games have had more than 200 downloads. But making them is fun for me. Yet thanks to the OSA, I’m being treated as some sort of pornographer? Some sort of pariah that needs to be kept away from society to keep it safe?

“I feel deeply saddened that I am banned in the UK.”



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UKIE on what the government's Creative Industries Sector Plan means for the UK games industry
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UKIE on what the government’s Creative Industries Sector Plan means for the UK games industry

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“We’re all pretty happy,” beams Logie MacDonald, communications manager at UKIE.

The trade association has welcomed with open arms the publication of the UK government’s Creative Industries Sector Plan this week – a plan that MacDonald says satisfies many of UKIE’s proposals. “We’ve never seen this level of support before,” he says. “It’s a really big moment.”

He thinks the plan indicates a change of tone from the UK government. “In the past, video games have never really been front and centre of these things,” he says. “But they’re slowly gaining respect, and I think now they’re put on an equal footing with the other creative industries.”

Indeed, the games sector is given due prominence in the report, placed as it is just behind the section on film and TV. MacDonald also notes that Lisa Nandy, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, has been mentioning games more often. “Keir Starmer, I think, mentioned games one or two times as well.”

It’s a welcome change of tack from typical government rhetoric, he thinks. “The fishing industry gets mentioned a lot on government election campaigns, and it’s actually things like games that are really driving growth,” he points out.

(As a whole, the UK fishing industry landed sea fish with a value of £1.1 billion in 2023. In the same year, the UK video game market was worth £7.82 billion.)

The header image for the video games section of the report

Behind the scenes, UKIE has been busy. “The process for the whole industrial strategy started mid-last year, and the creative industries were asked to contribute,” says MacDonald. “So we contributed to various different aspects of it.”

UKIE is also the secretariat for the Video Games and Esports APPG (All-Party Parliamentary Group), which is chaired by Charlotte Nichols MP. “I think there’s nearly 40 MPs that sit on that group,” says MacDonald. “So that’s kind of like our main channel into government.”

Funding boost

In terms of video games, the headline announcement of the Creative Industries Sector Plan is a £30 million ‘Games Growth Package’, with this government funding spread over three years between 2026 and 2029.

Part of that £30 million (it’s currently not clear exactly how much) will go to the UK Games Fund (UKGF), which was established in 2015 chiefly as a way to provide funding for prototypes. The total amount pumped into the fund up until now by the UK government has been around £16.2 million, so the new funding announcement potentially represents a hefty increase.

“This is fantastic news for any small company looking to scale up,” enthuses MacDonald, adding that it’s also good for “students who are looking to start their first games company.”

“It’s really positive that [UKGF funding has] been renewed for not just next year with more money, but over a three year period,” he adds, noting that a boost to the UKGF was part of UKIE’s manifesto. “We’re not quite on the same level as Germany and other places, but it’s a big step forward.”

The section on interventions in the video games sector from the report

Another, unspecified portion of that £30 million will go to Games London, which runs the London Games Festival.

“I think the idea is that they’re looking at what’s the best way to put UK games on the global map,” says MacDonald. “And I think Games London is a really good way of doing that. If you look at the equivalents in other countries, in [Japan], in the US, in China, those kinds of big game festivals are a fantastic way of attracting inward investment.”

Games London has said that the “investment and revenue generation” from the London Games Festival will double as a result of this additional funding, potentially up to £30 million per year.

Skills and training

The problem of a skills shortage in the UK games sector has been widely discussed, with TIGA reporting that half of games businesses in the UK found it difficult to fill vacancies in 2024 as a result of shortages in certain skills.

The Creative Industries Sector Plan goes some way towards addressing this by announcing the formation of a strategy developed by the “sector-convened UK Games Skills Network, which will build on findings from the upcoming Creative Industries Council Skills Audit”. An industry-led body focused on solving the skills crisis is something that Skillful’s Gina Jackson called for last year.

Logie MacDonald, UKIE

MacDonald says that part of the strategy will probably involve “looking at how we can change visa regimes to get the right skills from abroad”.

In addition, the Creative Industries plan highlights the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology’s TechFirst programme, which aims to help “7.5 million UK workers to gain essential AI skills by 2030”.

“The government’s quite keen to identify what’s the best place to spend money when it comes to skills,” says MacDonald. “So we’re doing a separate piece of work on skills. And UKIE’s put together a bit of a group with the leading figures in the industry who are interested in this area. We’re working with some companies who are doing really good stuff with apprenticeships and entry-level roles.”

UK Video Game Council

Another eye-catching announcement in the report is the formation of the UK Video Games Council, which will “work with the government and the Creative Industries Council to support growth of the video games sector”.

“It’s something that a lot of industries have and something that games doesn’t have,” says MacDonald, adding that the council will be made up of around 15 to 20 industry leaders.

He explains that the council will be the government’s first port of call when it comes to discussing issues like skills, AI, or funding. “The idea is that they are a representative group of people from publishing to development to service providers,” he says.

He adds that further details on the UK Video Games Council, and an announcement of who will make up its members, will be provided in the next couple of weeks.

Tax breaks

In terms of tax breaks for the UK games sector, the big news is that… nothing has changed.

The report states that the current Video Game Expenditure Credit (VGEC) will be maintained. Announced in the 2023 Spring Budget, VGEC is the replacement for the old Video Games Tax Relief (VGTR) scheme, which is slowly being phased out.

Tax relief claims in the UK leapt by 10% in 2022–23, reaching a total payout of £282 million.

MacDonald says that UKIE was campaigning for the VGEC rate to go up for both small and large studios. UKIE has proposed a 53% tax relief rate for projects with budgets of £10 million or lower, and a 39% rate for larger projects. “That hasn’t come through, and obviously that’s something we’re going to continue to push for,” he says.

“It wasn’t something we were expecting to see, to be honest,” he adds, noting that it’s hard to defend tax breaks when “money’s tight in government and they’re looking for areas to slash”.

“When games cost so much to make these days, you need every little bit of help you can find”

Logie MacDonald, UKIE

But he points to UKIE’s research indicating that this extra tax relief would more than pay for itself. In terms of return on investment, UKIE estimates that higher rate would generate an additional £1.87 for every £1 in VGEC disbursements.

“And if we’re looking forward to the next 10, 20 years, we want both big and small companies to start to create a game here rather than in France or North America,” adds MacDonald.

“When games cost so much to make these days, you need every little bit of help you can find. And we know that when publishers are deciding where to develop a game, [tax relief is] one of the main things they look at. If our rate is lower than somewhere else, then it’s an easy decision.”

So, even though UKIE broadly welcomes the changes in the Creative Industries Sector Plan, there’s clearly still room for improvement.

“There’s always more to be done,” MacDonald concludes.



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Dune: Awakening creative director stands firm on PvP direction, reveals planned frequency of major updates
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Dune: Awakening creative director stands firm on PvP direction, reveals planned frequency of major updates

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A Dune: Awakening Reddit AMA has provided insight into when the next major update may be coming, as well as a firm stance on the design direction of the PvP endgame.

The AMA was handled by Funcom developers including creative director Joel Bylos. It was Bylos who responded to questions regarding the endgame PvP, which has proven controversial among those torn on the orniphopter-laden meta that has formed in the game’s opening weeks.

When asked whether the team was considering removing missile launchers for scout orniphopters – the source of much ire – Bylos responded with considerations from the team.

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“Equipping a Scout Ornithopter with rocket Pods [could] reduce overall maneuverability and max speed. This will help solidify this module selection as a desire to engage in combat and balance it versus other combat-focused vehicles,” said Bylos. He also noted other ideas, like an increased impact on the scout orniphopters’ heat when shooting missiles, as well as a baseline speed increase to orniphopters with boosters equipped to make escaping easier.

As for the overall endgame experience, Bylos expanded his thoughts as to explain more macro goals the team desire.

“We want players to make meaningful decisions about what they bring with them and how they outfit their vehicles,” Bylos stated. “Once players have engaged in PvP, we want the experience to be reliable, responsive, and clearly understood. This determines how PvP as a whole feels and how players make their moment to moment decisions in a fight.”

Bylos would conclude by addressing concerns regarding connection-related troubles: “To ensure a more reliable experience in ground combat, we are continuing to address issues with movement desyncs and rubber banding, as well as ability activation reliability.”

When asked whether or not a Deep-Desert-style zone without vehicles was being considered, Bylos outright stated no, elaborating: “a lot of our adjustments and balancing are going to drive combat towards the core vision, which is people competing over points of interest in the Deep Desert”. Bylos continued: “The current balance between vehicles and on-foot is not tuned to our liking and there are multiple changes in the pipeline to address this (above and beyond bugs we will fix).”

So it’s certainly been made clear that quality of life changes are being worked on, like the removal of vehicle ramming damage in PvP, the team stood firm for their ideas on how the Deep Desert works. Which is good, in my opinion. Filing down this “vision”, as Bylos puts it, risks removing a substantial amount of character from the game.

The AMA wasn’t just focused on PvP! Other interesting tidbits were revealed by the team, such as a quality-of-life update coming in July, the fact that major Dune: Awakening updates are planned to release every three-four months with new PvE and story stuff to play through, as well as plans to add new contracts to the game.

In Eurogamer’s Dune: Awakening review, the endgame was described glowingly: “It feels less like structured group activities you’d see in a traditional MMORPG raid, and more like grouping up in Classic WoW for a world boss. Or joining a hunt train in Final Fantasy 14. It’s organic community play, something that forms bonds, strong friendships, and undoubtedly tense rivalries.”



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TIGA welcomes UK Spending Review's focus on creative industries, but emphasizes "importance" of UK Games Fund
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TIGA welcomes UK Spending Review’s focus on creative industries, but emphasizes “importance” of UK Games Fund

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Trade body TIGA has responded to the spending review outlined by the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, calling the government’s commitment to increasing funding for the creative industries as “encouraging.”

Reeves’ spending review was published on June 11. It included a “significant increase in funding to support regional growth and drive innovation, develop creative places, and ensure the UK’s creative industries remain world-leading,” designating the creative industries as one of the government’s eight growth driving sectors.

In a statement, the organization said: “The Government’s commitment to ‘a significant increase in funding for the creative industries as one of the government’s eight growth driving sectors’ is encouraging. We look forward to seeing the specific policies that will be set out in the Creative Industries Sector Plan and the forthcoming Industrial Strategy White Paper.

“Plans in the [spending review] for capital investment, investment in education and for the British Business Bank are also positive,” TIGA CEO, Dr Richard Wilson OBE, added. “The UK games industry will also be looking with interest to the Autumn Budget. The single most important measure that the Government can take to drive investment, employment and studio growth in the UK video games industry is to enhance the Video Games Expenditure Credit.

“In our submission to Government, as well as emphasising the importance of investing in the UK Games Fund, we suggested that it could consider raising the rate of VGEC from 34 per cent to 39 per cent; raising qualifying expenditure from 80 per cent to 100 per cent; and or introducing an Independent Games Tax Credit (IGTC) with a rate of 53 per cent on 80 per cent of qualifying costs, on budgets for games of up to £23.5 million, in line with the existing Independent Film Tax Credit. One or more of these reforms would help to keep the UK a leading location for game development globally, boost investment, create high skilled jobs, and encourage the growth of games clusters throughout the UK.”

Earlier this year, TIGA announced the appointment of four new board members from across the UK games industry.



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David Lynch auction offers a glimpse of his personal and creative life
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David Lynch auction offers a glimpse of his personal and creative life

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The innovative director David Lynch, who left indelible marks on film and television, passed away in January of this year. Now, Julien’s Auctions is hosting the sale of The David Lynch Collection. More than 450 of the late director’s possessions will be auctioned off online and at the company’s auction house in Gardena, CA. For devotees of Lynch’s work and worldview, just the experience of browsing the collection is pretty fascinating.

The auction showcases plenty of items closely related to his career in film, such as a personalized director’s chair, multiple cameras, lighting kits and memorabilia from his many iconic works. Other pieces more broadly reflect his passion for creativity, like audio equipment, musical instruments, painting supplies and a whole lot of literature and vinyl records. The collection also has furniture, like the couch from his 1997 classic Lost Highway, kitchen wares and many personal items from his life. You can even bid on his LaserDisc player and disc collection.



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Dune Awakening's creative director speaks on the end game, and how the Landsraad will give key roles to crafter and killer alike
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Dune Awakening’s creative director speaks on the end game, and how the Landsraad will give key roles to crafter and killer alike

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As of writing, Dune Awakening just got its final dev stream going over the mid and end game. These large chunks of the experience have been largely mysterious for the longest time, aside from brief mentions of the Deep Desert and the massive community effort required to interact with arguably the game’s most exciting feature: The Landsraad system.

The Landsraad system, a supercharged weekly selection of rotating tasks that’ll require a faction-wide push for certain objectives, aims to provide a set of goals for every kind of player that’ll be filling their face with Spice. But there’s so much more to dig into, which is why I sat down and talked to creative director Joel Bylos about what I feel may just be the best approach to community-focused gameplay in an MMO since Classic WoW’s Gates of Ahn’Qiraj.

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This interview kicks off with Joel discussing what PvP means in Dune Awakening, and how it covers far more than people stabbing each other on the sands.

Bylos: It’s not actually direct fighting, but it’s like the Atrades versus the Harkonnen […] Some of them are just PvE objectives, like craft this many ornithopters and deliver them to this place. Doing this while you as a guild are under the Atreides, let’s say. You complete several tasks and you see that there’s another Atreides guild higher than you, which also creates guild politics within just the Atreides faction, and you’re like, “we want to beat that other guild who keep coming first.” Right?

So, there’s also that as well as the conflict between the two factions, which is like, “The Harkonnen won the Landsraad this week. The traders need to get our s*** together and beat them for the next week.” Right? So, it’s both of those things in tandem.

VG247: When I was in Oslo, a comparison you made was to classic WoW in terms of your ideas in terms ofdesign. So, using that for my own comparison, it reminds me sort of like the Ahn’ Qiraj gate opening, where different guilds can either go and fight and kill bugs, or go and do PvP content, or they can make bandages and do herbalism and it all contributes to one big effort.

Bylos: Exactly. The Landsraad is an activity driver, right? It points people to activities at the end game. There’s something there for everyone. If you don’t like PvP, or rather when I say PvP I always think of PvP as any activity you do against another player even, if it If you don’t direct conflict as in shooting people in the face, that’s fine you can contribute by crafting things. There are some Landsraad tasks that are just to go run these PvE areas of the game and kill 30, 300 or 3,000 slavers this week in order for you to win our vote in the Landsraad.

PvE players can go do that. People who love running dungeons can go do that. It’s an activity driver that points to all of the activities at the end of the game, and that’s kind of the whole point of the Landsraad.

Biolabs in the Deep Desert are built with groups of four in mind! | Image credit: Funcom

VG247: Would you say it’s fair to say that in terms of what players will be doing on in the end game, once they’ve put in their 100 hours and they’ve got their big base, it’s the Landsraad system. I am a PVE lover. I love crafting stuff. Blah blah blah. It all plays into this one system.

Bylos: The Landsraad system, I’m dumbing it down a little bit with this example, but you have a daily quest system in a lot of MMO type games where they’re like “here’s some small activities for you.” This is us saying here are weekly activities that are meaningful and actually change the server right, and then it is like okay s let’s work together and compete against the other faction. Yeah.

VG247: That’s interesting because I looked at some of the Landsraad bonuses you get, and I saw one that was a ranged damage increase and that immediately set off red flags, like Jesus that sounds crazy. But I suppose if the Landsraad system is also pushing players to do crafting and PvE and gathering etc, that you can say okay s*** we lost last week. They’ve got a range damage PvP is a bad idea. let’s focus on gathering all this and try and circumvent it. So you got this sort of weekly dynamic shift, right?

Bylos: Exactly that. There are even there’s crafting bonuses and things like that, so winners can craft more. So combat is the preferred [alternative] there. The big one I think that sort of excites people and scares people is we have the full PvP loot in the Deep Desert. So you can turn on the salvage rights decree which means that anyone who dies in the deep desert can be full PvP looted…

That’s not the base level of the game, but that’s an example. In a way I kind of joke around because I think it’s funny on a very meta level that actually PvP players and PVE players are in conflict to try and get that decree pushed through. The Harkonnen players who want to PvP are like we really want to push to the ability to full loot, and all the PvE players who are also on the Harkonnen faction are like, hell no we don’t! So within that faction they’re even fighting over who gets the decree right and I think that’s kind of interesting right? That’s politics.

Just because you’re working for the same faction, doesn’t mean your goals are aligned. | Image credit: Funcom

VG247: It sounds like you have a deep love for community interaction. Not only in terms of the stereotypical sort of Alliance versus Horde dynamic, but in terms of how different players and the factions and subfactions interact with each other. Where does that love come from, and why is it so emphasized here?

Bylos: I’ve worked on MMOs most of my career, right? I started in 2008 or 2007 on Age of Conan,then Secret World. I worked on a Lego MMO for a bit. and then Conan Exiles, right? So, I’ve been doing these multiplayer games [for a while] and I think that the strength of these games is the multiplayer. You can just play a really well polished Ghost of Tsushima if you want a really good open world gaming experience. Why do people want to play these games with their friends? It’s because the social drama is what makes them interesting.

I just try to make mechanics that lean into it. Endgame I think is kind of the thing that I find nerve-wracking, it’s the part you don’t really know until everyone’s in there – how the endgame’s going to be. We’ve got guesses from how closed beta is going. We’ve seen how people are approaching it, but also there are different levels of how people approach things when a game launches versus how they are in a closed beta. And so it’s going to be really interesting.

We have all the microcosms. We have multiple worlds. And how are the Atreides and Harkonnen going to be on this server versus this server? I think that’s where I’m really interested in seeing how all this plays out.

How fights will play out around the Deep Desert, over spice and other resources, is something we’re keen to see. | Image credit: Funcom

VG247: In other games when super-dedicated players hit the end game they tend to hoard wealth, which I imagine could be a thorn to the Landsraad system. How will you combat that, so a leading faction or player guild don’t stay ahead?

Bylos:I mean people can hoard, so if you’re a smaller guild that can’t compete, we might save up for a time when we really need it. But there are 25 specific Landsraad tasks every week, and there’s a pool of 600 that can be drawn from. So you actually can’t really hoard with intent. If you say we’re going to hoard I don’t know silver las guns in case that delivery is required, it might not come up for eight months. So it’s not going to help your guild to hoard that much but you might hoard the precursor materials. You might hoard spice.

The other thing is the Landsraad is composed of 25 votes, and it gets revealed what each Landsraad envoy wants over time, but you can accelerate that process by sending in people to go find the envoys around the world and then bribe them with a chunk of spice. Once it’s revealed, it’s revealed for everybody in your faction. But if the Harkonnen reveal it, that doesn’t mean the Atreides get to see it. Eventually, we don’t have it in for launch, but eventually the plan is to have those envoys also give people quests that they can go do to reveal tasks.

Maybe you’re not a fighter, but a builder! There will be plenty for you to do. | Image credit: Funcom

VG247: I have one other major topic which is player expression. It seems like most of the progression is linear progression. As you get more gear, as you get better materials to build a better base etc… In terms of player expression, is that the extent of it? If I love PvP. I want to fly around my own and shoot down the Atreides players, is there any system that means another player can look at me in Harko village nad go “yeah, he’s a PVPer.”

Bylos: So the game has a huge customization system. A lot of the Landsraad rewards tie back to that customization system. So you can see the sort of a guy who has been doing tasks for house Dyvetz because he’s wearing the house Dyvetz colors right so that kind of stuff comes in. So you kind of can get access to different levels of social status by doing Landsraad tasks.

I think in terms of player expression, there are five kind of core archetypes that we chased in the game. We said, “Okay, how do these people have a role in our game?” And I think probably right now, yeah, I think three of them are very strong and two of them need a little more work to be stronger, that’s the stuff we’ll continue to work on in the post-launch.

Dune Awakening launches on June 10 for regular folks, but on June 5 for those who fancy spending a little bit more on the deluxe edition, on Steam!



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Anthropic Claude 4 Review: Creative Genius Trapped by Old Limitations
Crypto Trends

Anthropic Claude 4 Review: Creative Genius Trapped by Old Limitations

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San Francisco-based Anthropic just dropped the fourth generation of its Claude AI models, and the results are… complicated. While Google pushes context windows past a million tokens and OpenAI builds multimodal systems that see, hear, and speak, Anthropic stuck with the same 200,000-token limit and text-only approach. It’s now the odd one out among major AI companies.

The timing feels deliberate—Google announced Gemini this week too, and OpenAI unveiled a new coding agent based on its proprietary Codex model. Claude’s answer? Hybrid models that shift between reasoning and non-reasoning modes depending on what you throw at them—delivering what OpenAI expects to bring whenever they release GPT-5.

But here’s something for API users to seriously consider: Anthropic is charging premium prices for that upgrade.

Image: t3.gg

The chatbot app, however, remains the same at $20 with Claude Max priced at $200 a month, with 20x higher usage limits.

We put the new models through their paces across creative writing, coding, math, and reasoning tasks. The results tell an interesting story with marginal improvements in some areas, surprising improvement in others, and a clear shift in Anthropic’s priorities away from general use toward developer-focused features.

Here is how both Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4 performed in our different tests. (You can check them out, including our prompts and results, in our Github repository.)

Creative writing

Creative writing capabilities determine whether AI models can produce engaging narratives, maintain consistent tone, and integrate factual elements naturally. These skills matter for content creators, marketers, and anyone needing AI assistance with storytelling or persuasive writing.

As of now, there is no model that can beat Claude in this subjective test (not considering Longwriter, of course). So it makes no sense to compare Claude against third-party options. For this task we decided to put Sonnet and Opus face-to-face.

We asked the models to write a short story about a person who travels back in time to prevent a catastrophe but ends up realizing that their actions from the past actually were part of the events that made existence lean towards that specific future. The prompt added some details to consider and gave models enough liberty and creativity to set up a story as they see fit.

Claude Sonnet 4 produced vivid prose with the best atmospheric details and psychological nuance. The model crafted immersive descriptions and provided a compelling story, though the ending was not exactly as asked—but it fit the narrative and the expected result.

Overall, Sonnet’s narrative construction balanced action, introspection, and philosophical insights about historical inevitability.

Score: 9/10—definitely better than Claude 3.7 Sonnet

Claude Opus 4 grounded its speculative fiction in credible historical contexts, referencing indigenous worldviews and pre-colonial Tupi society with careful attention to cultural limitations. The model integrated source material naturally and provided a longer story than Sonnet, without being able to match its poetic flair, sadly.

It also showed an interesting thing: The narrative started a lot more vividly and was more immersive than what Sonnet provided, but somewhere around the middle, it shifted to rush the plot twist, making the whole result boring and predictable.

Score: 8/10

Sonnet 4 is the winner for creative writing, though the margin remained narrow. Writers, beware: Unlike with previous models, it appears that Anthropic hasn’t prioritized creative writing improvements, focusing development efforts elsewhere.

All the stories are available here.

Coding

Coding evaluation measures whether AI can generate functional, maintainable software that follows best practices. This capability affects developers using AI for code generation, debugging, and architectural decisions.

Gemini 2.5 Pro is considered the king of AI-powered coding, so we tested it against Claude Opus 4 with extended thinking.

We zero-shot our instructions for a game—a robot that must avoid journalists in its way to merge with a computer and achieve AGI—and used one additional iteration to fix bugs and clarify different aspects of the game.

Claude Opus created a top-down stealth game with sophisticated mechanics, including dynamic sound waves, investigative AI states, and vision cone occlusion. The implementation featured rich gameplay elements: journalists responded to sounds through heardSound flags, obstacles blocked line-of-sight calculations, and procedural generation created unique levels each playthrough.

Score: 8/10

Google’s Gemini produced a side-scrolling platformer with cleaner architecture using ES6 classes and named constants.

The game was not functional after two iterations, but the implementation separated concerns effectively: level.init() handled terrain generation, the Journalist class encapsulated patrol logic, and constants like PLAYER_JUMP_POWER enabled easy tuning. While gameplay remained simpler than Claude’s version, the maintainable structure and consistent coding standards earned particularly high marks for readability and maintainability.

Verdict: Claude won: It delivered superior gameplay functionality that users would prefer.

However, developers might prefer Gemini despite all this, as it created cleaner code that can be improved more easily.

Our prompt and codes are available here. And you can click here to play the game generated with Claude.

Mathematical reasoning

Mathematical problem-solving tests AI models’ ability to handle complex calculations, show reasoning steps, and arrive at correct answers. This matters for educational applications, scientific research, and any domain requiring precise computational thinking.

We compared Claude and OpenAI’s latest reasoning model, o3, asking the models to solve a problem that appeared on the FrontierMath benchmark—designed specifically to be hard for models to solve:

“Construct a degree 19 polynomial p(x) ∈ C[x] such that X := {p(x) = p(y)} ⊂ P1 × P1 has at least 3 (but not all linear) irreducible components over C. Choose p(x) to be odd, monic, have real coefficients and linear coefficient -19 and calculate p(19).”

Claude Opus 4 displayed its complete reasoning process when tackling difficult mathematical challenges. The transparency allowed evaluators to trace logic paths and identify where calculations went wrong. Despite showing all the work, the model failed to achieve perfect accuracy.

OpenAI’s o3 model achieved 100% accuracy on identical mathematical tasks, marking the first time any model solved the test problems completely. However, o3 truncated its reasoning display, showing only final answers without intermediate steps. This approach prevented error analysis and made it impossible for users to verify the logic or learn from the solution process.

Verdict: OpenAI o3 won the mathematical reasoning category through perfect accuracy, though Claude’s transparent approach offered educational advantages. For example, researchers can have an easier time catching failures while analyzing the full Chain of Thought, instead of having to either fully trust the model or solve the problem manually to corroborate results.

You can check Claude 4’s Chain of Thought here.

Non-mathematical reasoning and communication

For this evaluation, we wanted to test the models’ ability to understand complexities, craft nuanced messages, and balance interests. These skills prove essential for business strategy, public relations, and any scenario requiring sophisticated human communication.

We provided Claude, Grok, and ChatGPT instructions to craft a single communication strategy that simultaneously addresses five different stakeholder groups about a critical situation at a large medical center. Each group has vastly different perspectives, emotional states, information needs, and communication preferences.

Claude demonstrated exceptional strategic thinking through a three-pillar messaging framework for a hospital ransomware crisis: Patient Safety First, Active Response, and Stronger Future. The response included specific resource allocations of $2.3 million emergency funding, detailed timelines for each stakeholder group, and culturally sensitive adaptations for multilingual populations. Individual board member concerns received tailored attention while maintaining message consistency. The model provided a good set of opening statements to grab an idea of how to approach each audience.

ChatGPT was also good at the task, but not at the same level of detail and practicality. While providing solid frameworks with clear core principles, GPT4.1 relied more on tone variation than substantive content adaptation. The responses were extensive and detailed, anticipating questions and moods, and how our actions may impact those being addressed. However, it lacked specific resource allocations, detailed deliverables, and other details that Claude provided.

Verdict: Claude wins

You can check the results and Chain of Thought for each model, here.

Needle in the haystack

Context retrieval capabilities determine how effectively AI models can locate specific information within lengthy documents or conversations. This skill proves critical for legal research, document analysis, academic literature reviews, and any scenario requiring precise information extraction from large text volumes.

We tested Claude’s ability to identify specific information buried within progressively larger context windows using the standard “needle in a haystack” methodology. This evaluation involved placing a targeted piece of information at various positions within documents of different lengths and measuring retrieval accuracy.

Claude Sonnet 4 and Opus 4 successfully identified the needle when embedded within an 85,000 token haystack. The models demonstrated reliable retrieval capabilities across different placement positions within this context range, maintaining accuracy whether the target information appeared at the beginning, middle, or end of the document. Response quality remained consistent, with the model providing precise citations and relevant context around the retrieved information.

However, the models’ performance hit a hard limitation when attempting to process the 200,000 token haystack test. They could not complete this evaluation because the document size exceeded their maximum context window capacity of 200,000 tokens. This is a significant constraint compared to competitors like Google’s Gemini, which handles context windows exceeding one million tokens, and OpenAI’s models with substantially larger processing capabilities.

This limitation has practical implications for users working with extensive documentation. Legal professionals analyzing lengthy contracts, researchers processing comprehensive academic papers, or analysts reviewing detailed financial reports may find Claude’s context restrictions problematic. The inability to process the full 200,000 token test suggests that real-world documents approaching this size could trigger truncation or require manual segmentation.

Verdict: Gemini is the better model for long context tasks

You can check on both the need and the haystack, here.



Conclusion

Claude 4 is great, and better than ever—but it’s not for everyone.

Power users who need its creativity and coding capabilities will be very pleased. Its understanding of human dynamics also makes it ideal for business strategists, communications professionals, and anyone needing sophisticated analysis of multi-stakeholder scenarios. The model’s transparent reasoning process also benefits educators and researchers who need to understand AI decision-making paths.

However, novice users wanting the full AI experience may find the chatbot a little lackluster. It doesn’t generate video, you cannot talk to it, and the interface is less polished than what you can find in Gemini or ChatGPT.

The 200,000 token context window limitation affects Claude users processing lengthy documents or maintaining extended conversations, and it also implements a very strict quota that may affect users expecting long sessions.

In our opinion, it is a solid “yes” for creative writers and vibe coders. Other types of users may need some consideration, comparing pros and cons against alternatives.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

Generally Intelligent Newsletter

A weekly AI journey narrated by Gen, a generative AI model.



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Google Doubles Down on AI: Veo 3, Imagen 4 and Gemini Diffusion Push Creative Boundaries
Crypto Trends

Google Doubles Down on AI: Veo 3, Imagen 4 and Gemini Diffusion Push Creative Boundaries

by admin



Google I/O 2025 was never about subtlety. This year, the company abandoned incrementalism, delivering a cascade of generative AI upgrades that aim to redraw the map for search, video, and digital creativity.

The linchpin: Gemini, Google’s next-gen model family, is now powering everything from search results to video synthesis and high-resolution image creation—staking out new territory in a race increasingly defined by how fast, and how natively, AI can generate.

The showstopper is Veo 3, Google’s first AI video generator that creates not just visuals, but complete soundtracks—ambient noise, effects, even dialogue—synchronized directly with the footage. Text and image prompts go in, and fully-produced 4K video comes out.

This marks the first large-scale video model capable of generating audio and visuals simultaneously—a trend that began with Showrunner Alpha, an unreleased model, but Veo3 offers far more versatility, generating various styles beyond simple 2D cartoon animations.

“We’re entering a new era of creation with combined audio and video generation,” Google Labs VP Josh Woodward said during the launch. It’s a direct challenge to current video generation leaders—Kling, Hunyuan, Luma, Wan, and OpenAI’s Sora—positioning Veo as an all-in-one solution rather than requiring multiple tools.

Alongside Veo3, Imagen 4—Google’s latest iteration of its image generator model—arrives with enhanced photorealism, 2K resolution, and perhaps most importantly, text rendering that actually works for signage, products, and digital mockups.

For anyone who’s suffered through the gibberish text created by previous AI image models, Imagen 4 represents a significant improvement.

These tools don’t exist in isolation. Flow AI, a new subscription feature for professional users, combines Veo, Imagen, and Gemini’s language capabilities into a unified filmmaking and scene-editing environment. But this integration comes at a price—$125 per month to access the complete toolkit as part of a promotional period until the full $250 price starts to be charged.

Image: Google

Gemini: Powering search and “text diffusion”

Generative AI isn’t just for content creators. Gemini 2.5 now forms the backbone of the company’s redesigned search engine, which Google wants to evolve from a link aggregator into a dynamic, conversational interface that handles complex queries and delivers synthesized, multi-source answers.

AI overviews—where Google Gemini attempts to provide comprehensive answers to queries without requiring users to click through to other sites—now sit at the top of search pages, with Google reporting over 1.5 billion monthly users.

Image: Google via Youtube

Another interesting development is “Gemini Diffusion,” built with technology pioneered by Inception Labs months ago. Until recently, the AI community generally agreed that autoregressive technology worked best for text generation while diffusion technology excelled for images.

Autoregressive models generate each new token after reading all previous generations to determine the best next token—ideal for crafting coherent text responses by constantly reviewing the prompt and prior output.

Diffusion technology operates differently, starting with filling all the context with random information and refining (diffusing) the output each step to make the final product match the prompt—perfect for images with fixed canvases and aesthetics.

OpenAI first successfully applied autoregressive generation to image models, and now Google has become the first major company to apply diffusion generation to text. This means the model begins with nonsense and refines the entire output with each iteration, producing thousands of tokens per second while maintaining accuracy—for context, Groq (not xAI’s Grok), which is one of the fastest inference providers in the world, generates near 275 tokens per second, and traditional providers like OpenAI or Anthropic cannot come close to those speeds.

The model, however, isn’t publicly available yet—interested users must join a waiting list—but early adopters have shared impressive results showing the model’s speed and precision.

Hands-on with Google’s AI tools

We got our hands on several of Google’s new AI features, with mixed results depending on the tier.

Deep Research is particularly powerful—even beating ChatGPT’s alternative. This comprehensive research agent evaluates hundreds of sources and delivers reliable information with minimal errors.

What gives it an edge over OpenAI’s research agent is the ability to generate infographics. After producing a complete research text, it can condense that information into visually appealing slides. We fed the model everything about Google’s latest announcement, and it presented accurate information through charts, schemes, graphs, and mind maps.

Veo 3 remains exclusive to Gemini Ultra users, though some third-party providers like Freepik and Fal.ai already offer access via API. Flow isn’t available to try unless you spring for the Ultra plan.

Flow proves to be an intuitive video editor with Veo’s models at its core, allowing users to edit, cut, extend, and modify AI scenes using simple text prompts.



However, even Veo2 got a little love, which is making life easier for Pro users. Generations with the now-accessible Veo2 are significantly faster—we created 8 seconds of video in about 30 seconds. While Veo2 lacks sound and currently only supports text-to-video (with image-to-video coming soon), it understood our prompts and even generated coherent text.

Veo2 already performs comparably to Kling 2.0—widely considered the quality benchmark in the generative video industry. The new generations with Veo3 seem to be even more realistic, coherent, with good background sound and lifelike dialogue and voices.

For Imagen, it’s difficult to determine at first glance whether Google incorporates version 4 or still uses version 3 on its Gemini chatbot interface, though users can confirm this through Whisk. Our initial tests suggest Imagen 4 prioritizes realism unless specified otherwise, with better prompt adherence and visuals that surpass its predecessor.

We generated an image with different elements that don’t usually fit together in the same scene. Our prompt was “Photo of a woman with a skin made of glass, surrounded by thousands of glitter and ethereal pieces in a baroque room with the word ‘Decrypt’ written in neon, realistic.”

Even though both Imagen 3 and Imagen 4 understood the concept and the elements, Imagen 3 failed to capture the realistic style—which Imagen 4 easily did. Overall, Imagen 4 is comparable to the SOTA image generators, especially considering how easy it is to prompt.

Audio overviews have also improved, with models now easily providing over 20 minutes of full debates on Gemini instead of forcing users to switch to NotebookLM. This makes Gemini a more complete interface, reducing the fragmentation that previously required users to jump between different sites for various services.

The quality is comparable to that of NotebookLM, with slightly longer outputs on average. However, the key feature is not that the model is better, but that it is now embedded into Gemini’s chatbot UI.

Premium AI at a premium price

Google didn’t hide its monetization strategy. The company’s “Ultra” plan costs $250 monthly, bundling priority access to the most powerful models, Flow AI tools, and 30 terabytes of storage—clearly targeting filmmakers, serious creators, and businesses. The $20 “AI Pro” tier unlocks Google’s previous Veo2 model, along with image and productivity features for a broader user base. Basic generative tools—like simple Gemini Live and image creation—remain free, but with limitations like a token cap and only 10 researches per month.

This tiered approach mirrors the broader AI market trend: drive mass adoption with freebies, and then lock in the professionals with features too useful to pass up. Google’s bet is that the real action (and margin) is in high-end creative work and automated enterprise workflows—not just casual prompts and meme generation.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

Generally Intelligent Newsletter

A weekly AI journey narrated by Gen, a generative AI model.



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Steel City Interactive expands technical and creative departments
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Steel City Interactive expands technical and creative departments

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Steel City Interactive has announced a partnership with recruitment agency Amiqus as it looks to scale its technical and creative teams.

The Sheffield-based studio has begun a recruitment drive to support the future of its Undisputed franchise, which fully launched last October and has since surpassed one million copies.

It’s currently looking for experienced developers in engineering, art, and design.

“[Our] recruitment drive represents a studio with long-term ambitions not just for Undisputed as a game, but for Steel City Interactive itself as a leading creative force in gaming,” the developer’s recently appointed VP of studio Tim Coupe tells GamesIndustry.biz.

“Our direction points towards greater technical polish, deeper player engagement, and Undisputed as the flagship franchise in a revitalised category.”

Steel City Interactive was founded in 2020 by brothers Ash, Asif, and Asad Habib.

“Steel City Interactive is undoubtedly on an impressive growth trajectory under their new leadership,” Amiqus business manager Liz Prince added.

“And as the studio continues to expand, Amiqus is delighted to be working alongside the team as their recruitment partner of choice, as we deploy our new Amiqus Alliance service for them.

“It is an exciting time for the growth of the games development sector in the region, and we are looking forward to playing our part.”



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