New AI Tracks @ Gamescom Dev 2026 in Association with the AI and Games Conference | 19/06/26
Join us for two days of AI talks at Gamescom Dev this August!
Hello one and all and welcome to another edition of AI and Games. June is most certainly the month of big announcements. Having just announced the AI and Games Conference is returning to London this November, we also have another exciting update which is happening later this summer!
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New AI Tracks @ Gamescom Dev
Game AI Events CIC (our non-profit organisation that runs the AI and Games Conference) are partnering with the organisers of Gamescom Dev - the largest game developer conferences in Europe, and official developer conference of Gamescom - to deliver a great programme of talks, panels, and more on artificial intelligence for the video games industry.
With Gamescom Dev running from August 23rd-25th, our team will be there to help deliver a top-quality programme from developers across Europe and beyond as part of a newly announced set of co-curated AI tracks.
We’ll dig into what all this means, and why you will want to be a part of it in a moment, but first things first: here’s all the info you need.
When? / Where?
August 23rd-25th 2026 / Cologne, Germany
How many AI co-curated tracks are there?
We have helped curate two dedicated AI tracks - AI for Gameplay and AI for Production - both of which will be hosted on the day by the AI and Games Conference editorial team.
We have a cracking line-up including speakers from Electronic Arts, The Multiplayer Group, Tencent and Wargaming with more to be announced.
Where Can I Learn More About The Tracks?
You can see the line-up for both tracks on the Gamescom Dev site:
Are These The Only AI Talks at Gamescom Dev?
No, there are other AI-related talks throughout the event.
The full programme is still being put together, and we will have more announcements closer to the time.
Can We Partner with You on This?
There are sponsorship options for companies interested in being a part of the new co-curated AI tracks. Reach us via email using the button below.
Where do I get my tickets for Gamescom Dev (and Gamescom)?
The AI for Gameplay and AI for Production tracks are part of your regular Gamescom Dev ticket. No add-ons or additional purchases are required.
All in all, we’re very excited to be collaborating with Gamescom Dev to help deliver the best event for the European game development community. I’ll have more to say on that in a moment, but let’s run through some other announcements, including more AI and Games Conference 2025 talks!
Announcements
A couple quick announcements for you that are worth checking out!
‘Power Play’ is Available in Book Stores Now
I wanted to take a moment to give a big shout-out to Video Games Industry Memo author and AI and Games Conference co-conspirator George E. Osborn on the launch of his book "Power Play: Video Games, Politics, and the Battle for Global Influence".
The book is a deep dive into the exploitation of video games for political gain, and how modern policy is also influenced by the modern gaming landscape. George first told me he had successfully sold the pitch to publisher Hachette back in early 2024, and it felt like a perfect fit for his efforts in exploring the political landscape and its overlap with the video games industry. I know full well how much effort (and stress) this has required of him to get the book out the door.
I'm very proud of him for smashing it out, and hope it proves to be a huge success. It’s a fitting read for our current industry and political climate. Plus I have to say between this and Mike Cook’s recent release of Next Level, the itch for me to write a book on Game AI is continuing to increase… need to free up my schedule a bit first!
‘Power Play’ is out now and available at Amazon, Waterstones and many a big-chain and independent book store. You can find out more about the book here.
AI and Games Conference
Of course today is all about Gamescom Dev, but don’t forget our very own AI and Games Conference is back this November. With early bird tickets on sale now, and our call for speaker submissions is open until August 2nd. We’ve already had a whole bunch of tickets snatched up, and a good number of submissions. We’re very excited for the weeks ahead, and I suspect our talk selection process is going to be a tough one!
Plus we have two 2025 talks going live on the conference YouTube channel today:
Supporting Thousands of Simulated NPCs in The Open World of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
Petr Smrček / Warhorse Studios
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II delivered on a vast open world with thousands of NPCs wandering through it. But how do you maintain these simulations when and ensure the game continues to have stable performance? We welcome Petr Smrček from Warhorse to explain how they made it happen.
Let the NPCs Fight: Learning Attack Reach from Real Gameplay Data
Vincent Martineau / Ubisoft Montreal
One of the biggest games in 2025, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows has a wide variety of enemy archetypes and weapons at their disposal. As the game approached the end of production, this variety created a very real problem: of ensuring all characters are correctly balanced such that their attack reach is configured based on game state and weapon type. As Vincent describes, rather than simply go in and manually tune for the thousands of unique combinations, the team explored use of different AI approaches to help them reach the best possible outcome.
Collaborating with Gamescom Dev
So yes as announced at the top, we’re collaborating with the good folks behind Gamescom Dev. It’s a rather surreal but equally exciting opportunity to be working with one of the largest game developer events in the world. I figured I should dedicate the back half of this newsletter as to why we’re doing this, and how this aligns with our vision on supporting the game development community. The long story short, is that our responsibility and commitment to the games industry extends beyond our own efforts, and by working with Gamescom Dev it reinforces our values of providing education that will deliver a positive impact on the games industry.
Right now we are drowning in headlines about AI and its intersection with the creative industries. However, what many people often lack is the ability to distinguish the signal from the noise. Regular readers of this newsletter will know this all too well, as I editorialise around the big stories to try and give some context to what’s happening. It has also meant that our team that runs the AI and Games Conference has to work hard to ensure we retain the value of what we’ve built: a space that highlights the best work on artificial intelligence in the games industry. A space that ensures a platform is given both to new and experienced voices who share in our pursuit in highlighting AI at its best, but also addressing the risks and problems it creates in creative disciplines.
The real secret to the AI and Games Conferences’ success is that it was founded by Game AI developers, for Game AI developers, and it’s our collective experience in the sector that shapes our vision and values. We believe in providing a space where experience in applying AI to games and problems can be shared. All the while keeping one foot rooted in our past and established techniques, while the other is planted facing towards the future; with an emphasis on sensible and professional practice of emerging technologies. This is never easy - and frankly the industry that pushes Generative AI onto us all does not make it any easier - but we value one another’s expertise, and the community around us that gives us feedback and keeps us honest!
While the AI and Games Conference was founded because we wanted an event for Game AI practitioners in Europe, we are but one of many game developer events on the continent, and many are dealing with these exact same challenges. As AI becomes an increasingly pervasive issue in the creative industries - for both good and ill - event organisers need to wade through large numbers of pitches for talks and determining whether these are a good fit for their audience. It’s a tough balancing act, of ensuring presentations that show meaningful adoption of AI are showcased, while not dismissing traditional AI efforts in favour of the current hotness. All the while being mindful of the implications some of this work presents. This is what has led to me speaking regularly at game developer conferences in recent years across Europe and farther afield as people seek a grounded and level-headed perspective on where all of this is headed, and how studios should be preparing themselves for it.
This is compounded by the fact that AI from the outside-in is often a rather impenetrable subject matter, and it becomes difficult to differentiate between hype and substance. At this point to deliver a high-quality programme, you really need to have people involved in the curation that have a background in AI so as to understand what is being pitched to you.
To that end, this is why we’re collaborating with Gamescom Dev. In the past year or so we’ve got to know their organisational team well - in part thanks to me being invited to present in Cologne in 2025 and at the Gamescom Dev Leadership Summit in February. What was evident from the beginning was their commitment not just to deliver a great event for the European community, but cementing their status as one of the premium events in the game development calendar. Given it’s association with the Gamescom trade show - which is literally next door - it brings together a huge number of game devs from across Europe and even farther afield. As such we saw this as a great opportunity to ensure the AI programme on display at Gamescom Dev was top notch, and reinforce Europe’s position as a guiding force in responsible adoption of AI technologies in creative industries.
![Event news] gamescom dev announces opening keynote by Amir Satvat and first program highlights - MCV/DEVELOP](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!iqU4!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fad9f3be2-87b4-4eee-a145-70d1b08d1974_1500x1001.jpeg "Event news] gamescom dev announces opening keynote by Amir Satvat and first program highlights - MCV/DEVELOP")
We’ll have more to say in the coming weeks. But for now I want to give a thank you notably to Nico Balleta and Jay Zhao who are programme and content leads for Gamescom Dev, plus to business development lead Roufina Guenkova and managing director Frederik Hammes. This is uncharted territory for both organisations, and we’re determined to ensure that Gamescom Dev delivers another fantastic event for 2026, and that we can bring the AI and Games community together later this summer in Cologne.
Wrapping Up
Would you believe me if I told you the announcements aren’t over yet? Our conference is back, we’re collaborating with Gamescom Dev, but we still have one more secret up our sleeves that we’ve been cooking up just for you dearest reader!
We’ll be announcing our third and final new project later this month. But for now thank you once again for joining us here at AI and Games and I hope we’ll see some of you in person this August at Gamescom Dev! Go grab those tickets!