Gamers see a role for AI in gaming, but not at the expense of humans

Since the rapid adoption of generative Artificial Intelligence, concerns over job security have plagued almost every industry and sector. Video gaming has been no exception, with voice actors and action scene performers particularly concerned about their future in the industry. In fact, SAG-AFTRA have been on a strike against major video game publishers since July 25, seeking, among other things, protections against the usage of their likeness and replication of their voice and performance through the use of generative AI without compensation or consent. They announced that they had made significant progress on September 5th.

But what do gamers make about the subject? In this piece we take a comprehensive overview of gamer opinions of the use of AI in game development.

Overall, gamers strongly disagree that game companies should be allowed to reproduce the human performers’ voices and physical action sequences without compensation. Over half of them strongly disagree with the notion (52%) in addition to 13% who somewhat disagree. Only a quarter of gamers overall say they agree with the idea (26%).

For game devs the appeal of AI lies not only in potential cost savings by having to pay fewer human performers, but also the possibility of rapid game development. This could, in theory, be a carrot for players as well. But majority of gamers say they would rather have humans retain their roles in game development even if it means having to wait longer for games. Only a quarter of gamers say they would support the use of AI to replace human roles if it meant faster game development and additional in-game content (23%), compared to 56% who indicated the other way.

Another concern with AI today is that it may not even be well-prepared to execute complex duties quite as well as humans, especially in terms of delivering acting scenes for video games. Gamers are twice as likely to believe that AI would deliver worse performances than their human counterparts than better (40% vs 18%). That said, about a fifth of gamers do feel that AI could do as good a job as humans (19%). About a quarter indicate they don’t have an opinion on the question.

In the AI vs human debate in game acting, gamers are quite clearly placed on the side of humans. They also remain sceptical about the quality of AI’s game development chops, but that is not to say they don’t see a role for AI in video games. As part of the same survey, we asked gamers about the roles they’d like to see AI take up in the complex process of video game development. We will publish those results in a separate piece.

YouGov Surveys: Serviced provide quick survey results from nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18+ years in the US with an overall gamers’ sample size of 397. All surveys were conducted online in August 2024. Data is nationally representative. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Serviced.

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