Game Developers Weigh In on Talent Shortages and Generative AI in Perforce Annual State of Game Development Report
MINNEAPOLIS, September 7, 2023 — Perforce Software, a leading provider of solutions across the DevOps lifecycle, announces the release of the 2023 State of Game Development & Design Report. The annual industry report, conducted together with Incredibuild, the leading software development acceleration platform, gathers insights across AAA and Indie game development professionals to provide perspective on the current state of the gaming industry, emerging tools and platforms, along with opportunities that lie ahead.
This year’s report collected responses across the globe to garner insights and evaluate trends from the past few years. The results illustrate some clear steps the industry has taken to adapt to the current economic climate, and pinpoints the challenges that still remain in the post-COVID era.
"With shifts in talent acquisition and the changing dynamics of remote work, we can't ignore the ripple effects in the industry," says Brad Hart, Vice President of Digital Creation at Perforce. “Newcomers are eager for more opportunities and structured ways to learn. For the gaming industry to grow, we need to lower barriers and broaden access to knowledge. At Perforce, we've always been committed to this mission by providing free educational licenses to students and universities, as well as offering free online courses through our Perforce U program. Looking forward, we're excited to unveil new initiatives from our training team and innovations on our product roadmap.”
The report finds that 32% of game development professionals now cite talent acquisition and retention as their most difficult development challenge (up from 22% last year). In line with that finding, 43% of survey respondents said that not having enough team members and/or lack of knowledge was their primary challenge to development velocity.
The open format of the survey also allowed respondents to share their hope for an industry that can take more calculated risks, while also seizing the potential of swiftly developing technologies like AI.
“Our mission at Incredibuild has always been to provide the best solutions that solve our customers’ most pressing problems,” says Tami Mazel Shachar, CEO of Incredibuild. “Through this collaboration with Perforce, we’ve been able to learn more about what issues game developers are facing and what will ultimately improve their experience – everything from new features to quality-of-life improvements that will help publishers big and small make better games faster.”
The 2023 State of Game Development & Design Report can be downloaded in its entirety here. Leaders from Perforce and Incredibuild invite all game development industry professionals and newcomers to join them for a live discussion of the report’s key findings on Wednesday, Sept. 20. Register here.
About Perforce
Perforce powers innovation at an unrivaled scale. Perforce solutions future-proof competitive advantage by driving quality, security, compliance, collaboration, and speed – across the technology lifecycle. We bring deep domain and vertical expertise to every customer, so nothing stands in the way of success. Our global footprint spans more than 80 countries and includes over 75% of the Fortune 100. Perforce is trusted by the world’s leading brands to deliver solutions to even the toughest challenges. Accelerate technology delivery, with no shortcuts. Get the Power of Perforce.
About Incredibuild
Incredibuild has created the industry’s leading hybrid acceleration platform for development processes – compilations, CI/CD builds, and more. Its Virtualized Distributed Processing™ technology recruits CPUs to turn every host into a supercomputer with hundreds of cores.
Incredibuild enjoys over a quarter of a million users from 2,500 global organizations, including many Fortune 100 companies. Incredibuild’s technology supports leading automotive dev tools and projects such as Yocto, AGL, AOSP, QNX, Linux Kernel, Visual studio, Unreal Engine, across operating systems and cloud platforms. Learn more at incredibuild.com.