Post-Develop:Brighton Musings | 17/07/26
People are tired of waiting for the problems to be fixed, and taking the initiative
Hey everyone, welcome to AI and Games! At the time of writing I am on the train back from Brighton after spending the week at this year’s Develop conference. I am unsurprisingly rather tired, but I figured why not quickly report back on the themes and trends I observed throughout the week
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Announcements
But first things first, we’re going to highlight some of the speakers presenting at our new Gamescom Dev AI tracks, plus details on our upcoming mixer being hosted in Montreal next week!
AI and Games Meet-up in Montreal July 23rd
That’s right, not content with a week of conference meetings and late-night socials, I’m on the road next week in Montreal, Canada for a client project! To that end I wanted to host a gathering for our audience and likeminded developers while in town.
Where: Brasserie Artisanale L'Amère à Boire
We’ve reserved space on the upstairs terrace.
When: Thursday July 23rd 6-9pm
Join myself and some members of our team across both AI and Games and the AI and Games Conference for a fun evening of networking and a wee bit of banter!
AI Talks at Gamescom Dev
As we mentioned in recent weeks we’re collaborating with Gamescom Dev to run tracks on AI for gameplay and in production. With just over a month before things kick off we’re going to start giving you an insight as to what’s on the schedule!
Tickets are on sale now, and we look forward to seeing many of you in Cologne in August!
From Prototype to Playable: Bringing Scalable ML Into "World of Tanks: HEAT"
First up at have Andrii Alieksienko who will be presenting on the use of Machine Learning in World of Tanks: HEAT, the recently released spin-off of Wargaming’s popular franchise. This talk is aimed at giving developers an insight into how to start transitioning from thinking about using ML in your project, to executing on a large-scale live-service product.
How to Build an AI Agent with Autonomous Mentality and Collaborative Ability in FPS Battlefield
Next up we welcome Jing-Wen Yang from Tencent who will talking about work in building intelligent agents for first-person shooters. Including efforts to combine multiple AI systems together to create responsive and collaborative AI teammates. Sounds like we should expect some cool live demos in the process!
Beyond Unreal's Out-of-the-Box Combat AI
Last but most certainly not least we have some good ol’ fashioned Game AI thanks to Philip Dunstan from Katapult Ridge. Phil is a highly respected member of the Game AI community, having worked not just as AI lead on titles such as Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 and Star Wars Outlaws, but also as a co-organiser of events such as nucl.ai and Game AI North in the mid-2010s. Phil will be giving a breakdown on good practice of how to utilise Unreal Engine’s AI NPC tools particularly as you scale to larger and more complex tasks.
AI and Games Conference 2026 Deadlines Looming!
A quick reminder that two deadlines are coming up for this year’s AI and Games Conference running in November.
Early bird ticket sales close on July 31st.
Call for submissions closes on August 2nd.
Early bird tickets are running low on several tiers, and the number of submissions is stacking up! Make sure to get in there and make it happen!
Musings on Develop:Brighton 2026
So yes I’ve spent the week down in Brighton being slowly cooked alive by the unwavering sun. As always it’s a fun week, even if usually the big takeaways have little to do with Develop itself. It’s the value of being able to engage with much of the UK industry in the same space: reconnecting with old friends, and making some new ones. So why not quickly run through some musings I’ve had throughout the week.
Unity Focusses on AI People Want
After years of repeatedly tone-deaf marketing around Gen AI tools that really don’t vibe with much of their indie userbase, it was rather refreshing to hear Unity announce plans to ship AI tools that people actually want.
Two important updates in the proposed 2026 roadmap that caught my attention were:
Building better integration tools for AI upscaling tools such as Nvidia’s DLSS, AMD’s FSR, and PlayStation’s PSSR directly into the render pipeline.
A move to use Neural Rendering technologies that allow for AI-powered texture compression to be shipped in builds, with the Sentis inference engine handling execution.
As we know upscaling is a big talking point nowadays - when it’s done properly of course - that allows for cutting-edge fidelity in games on increasing strapped hardware, and that’s a reality that’s only going to continue in the coming years as component costs skyrocket and consumer budgets remain tight. So making this easier to achieve in Unity’s engine makes plenty of sense.
Meanwhile the neural rendering pipeline and allowing for texture compression was the announcement that had my developer friends intrigued, and asking me more questions! TLDR: neural texture compression replaces existing texture compression methodologies with trained neural networks that can run on dedicated NPUs (AI cores that exist on most GPUs nowadays). This helps reduce memory overhead of in-game textures as this compression tool is far more lightweight than existing techniques. Games have already been rolling this out to various degrees over the years such as God of War: Ragnarok and Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, to great success - by which I mean 99.9% of players didn’t notice!
All that said, I noted there was originally a segment of the Unity Developer Day planned for AI that got cut from the programme, and I wonder whether the bigger Gen AI stuff they’re cooking up - such as a briefly mentioned tool for better integration of LLMs and coding agents - simply reappears at Unite 2026 which runs in Seoul next week. With Generative AI offerings less controversial in Asian developer markets, and South Korea being a major mobile market - again an area where Gen AI is strong - was this a pivot to move these announcements to somewhere where the audience might be more receptive?
Plus, a quick shout-out to the team at Unity who were lovely to chat with afterwards, and I hope they had a great week at Develop.
AI Governance is the Big Talking Point
From games lawyers to trade bodies and co-dev studios, undoubtedly the big talking point I heard again and again was how studios approach AI governance as Generative AI tooling becomes commonplace.
This is a drum I have been banging since 2023: games companies need to get a grasp on the risks and broader implications of AI technologies and how they impact their workflows, processes, and product development. I was pleased to chat with devs who said they’ve attended talks I’ve given in the past year or two and have since built AI policies at their companies after I argued for their necessity - and called out the audience for failing to have even the basics in place. That said, there are still many that don’t have this in place, and falling afoul as bad practice, toxic behaviours, and legal loopholes emerge in their work. For some, it was negligence, but in many instance it stems from a continued lack of literacy in AI, and understanding why these processes need to put in place.
When you don’t know what you don’t know, it can lead to big problems when you’re suddenly faced with the questions of how you govern AI in your studios. A point I got into a little more detail earlier this year. A cheeky reminder that this is but some of the consultancy work we do at AI and Games, so if you want to talk about AI governance, get in touch!
The Collapse of Gaming Press is Being Felt
As we see more and more gaming publications and events being gutted and laid low, or in the worst case replaced by AI-generated garbage, the impact is becoming all the more clear as publishers find it a challenge to get their games to be seen by the players they know are out there looking for it.
It was interesting to hear this throwaway comment at George E. Osborn’s Video Games Industry Memo breakfast event - which you can read more about in this week’s edition of that publication - only to then chat about promoting indie games with the teams behind both Debug magazine and the Brilliant Indie Treasures showcase at dinner on Thursday. It’s clear that the number of reputable avenues for gaming coverage is shrinking - alongside legitimate and meaningful discourse and analysis of the industry itself - but there’s also an audience that continue to crave these outlets be they online, in print, or in person. Debug has quickly developed a reputation as a magazine that not just gamers, but industry peeps themselves love reading. Meanwhile BITs was a huge success for the third year in a row as they delivered on providing a cheap and accessible space for cash-strapped indie developers to showcase their games right as publishers and other relevant organisations are just up the road looking for the next breakout hit.
With a lot of online and influencer-driven marketing failing to deliver a lot of traction, it’s no surprise to hear both Debug and BITs are continuing to grow - despite the challenges they face in securing funding and rising costs. If anything they need more support to deliver for an audience that’s clearly out there.
We’re Tired of Waiting
Publishing. Discovery. Policy. Professional Development. Events. Job Security. Development Support. Tooling.
There was many an area where the conversations all began to converge: people are fucking tired of watching institutions fail to deliver. Be it through inaction, through shady business, or a desire to reinforce their leverage in ways that benefits the few over the many (Epic Games’ planned changes to UE6 came up more than once along these lines), it’s clear that the industry as it stands is not working.
But rather than sit there and feel glum about it, what I heard simmering under the surface was an indignation that was driving initiative. That as governments, trade bodies, publishers and developers failed to support the industry - or even to understand the problems it faced - smaller operators were keen to work together to start finding smarter ways to address our challenges.
I mean I’m all for this. AI and Games’ output be it this here newsletter, our consultancy, and our conference stems from a frustration of watching the AI industry wreak havoc on this one. We can’t trust them to think in our best interests, so let’s do it ourselves. That spirit was evoked in many a conversation I had over the week, and if anything it left me feeling good about where things are going.
This sentiment is even evidenced at Develop itself. The aforementioned Brilliant Indie Treasures showcase shows we can build avenues for developers to do business at Develop in a more cost-effective, and practical way if we approach it from a community-driven rather than profit-driven perspective. Nature abhors a vacuum, and BITs continued success and increasing attendance highlights Develop’s repeated failure to address this need in their own expo floor.
As an aside, It’s worth noting the ever-increasing number of satellite events happening around Develop in recent years. Be it BITs, the Unity Developer Day, or the business breakfasts with the likes of VGIM or Games Leadership. This is typically a symptom of an event that no longer caters to its audiences needs - one which GDC has been showing for a few years now before the ill-conceived ‘Festival of Gaming’ refresh.
Yeah it’s still rough out there, and yes in some respects it’s only going to get worse, but there’s enough good people working their asses off to try and fix it, and that gives me hope for the future.
Wrapping Up
I need to go lie down, and try and recover my energy levels before I fly out to Canada next week. But in the meantime a big thank you to everyone who stopped me at Develop to share their enthusiasm and support for our work here at AI and Games - be it the newsletter, YouTube, the conference, and even some comments on our new podcast launch! It’s always a nice wee boost to hear from devs given we do what we do for the industry, and it genuinely helps me maintain my motivation during the darker times.
In the meantime, I want to do my part in promoting indie games and give a plug to the upcoming launch of space combat shooter Rogue Eclipse by Huskrafts. I recall seeing clips of the game bouncing around on Twitter years ago and have since befriended lead developer Husbaan Siddiqi - including some fun conversations on the Game AI challenges faced in keeping the enemy opponents engaging. We had a nice chat on Thursday night, and he let me try out the near-launch build to see how it’s shaping up. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it at launch, and I’m thrilled the game is going to get out there for everyone to enjoy.
You can wishlist Rogue Eclipse on Steam now before it drops on August 7th.