I’ve been working in the video game industry for over 20 years, and today I want to make my prediction about which roles will survive and which ones will be more exposed in the future of game development. I’ll go from the safest roles to the most exposed ones. The safest one: QA Honestly, I think there may be even more opportunities to enter the industry through QA than before. Fast build generation will probably create a much larger amount of work for QA departments. Level Design I actually think this role will become more in demand, not less. Level design is something AI is still not good at, and I do not see that changing anytime soon. On top of that, if AI makes games easier and cheaper to produce, we will probably see more games being made, not fewer, so that implies more demand for Level designers. Product and Game Design This role is barely affected by AI. Humans will still be needed to maintain GDDs, define the ideas that make up the game, create coherent core loops, balance systems, and make sure the whole product makes sense. Animators Video AIs are good at generating some animations, but the main problem is that you still have very little control over the output. Animators can create animations using mannequin characters, and then AI can redraw or stylize the result. That gives you the best of both worlds while saving a lot of AI generation time. Also, forget about rigging or animating non-humanoid characters for real-time 3D with AI. That technology basically does not exist yet, and it does not look like something that will be solved very soon. Graphic Artists This is the first role that will be seriously affected. Right now, AI is not only faster, it is also better than a huge percentage of artists. But that does not mean companies will stop hiring artists. It means the role of artists will change drastically. Instead of creating images from scratch, their job will move more toward retouching, directing, correcting, and improving AI output. And that will still be necessary for serious productions. Companies are not going to fire their entire art teams just because AI exists. If every company uses AI, you will still need a strong art team to make sure your game does not look worse than the competition. But I’ll be honest: if you want to keep your job as an artist in the future, pretending AI does not exist and hating on it is not a winning strategy. Systems Programmers I think almost all of these programmers will be replaced by a new hybrid role: something between a designer and a programmer. AI is already extremely good at this kind of work, and it will only keep improving. But there are things you can do to protect yourself. Option A: start getting more involved in product and design, so you can become one of those designer/programmer hybrid profiles. Option B: specialize in a more niche programming area, such as shaders, engine optimization, low-level systems, networking, or other highly technical fields. Musicians In many game companies, one musician is hired and that person creates all the music for the product. I do not think that part will change too much. What I do think will change is having those people hired full-time. Most companies will probably move toward freelancers who know how to use AI tools like Suno, produce the music in a couple of months, and then move on. Honestly, I do not really know what advice to give musicians here. They are very, very exposed. Conclusion I think around 70% of current roles still have a path forward. The other 30% will probably be replaced or transformed into new roles built around people who know how to control AI properly. But this is the moment to start preparing for the future. If you are waiting for AI to magically disappear from the industry, that is not going to happen. The models are getting better and cheaper every month. You need to find a way to provide value that AI models cannot easily replace.