2025 was the year AI became the “core builder”, capable of generating complex assets, code, and entire systems almost instantly.
The barrier between imagination and creation effectively vanished, and this huge change fundamentally alters the competitive landscape for 2026. With everyone having access to powerful AI, competitive advantage now depends less on having advanced tech and more on strategic use.
For our yearly Christmas AI Newsletter, we asked five industry leaders to break down the AI developments of 2025 and predict the trends that will dominate the coming year:
- Tatu Petersen-Jessen, CEO & Co-Founder, Odd Latent (ex-Rovio)
- Dmitry Averkiev, Senior Marketing Producer, JustPlay
- Juli Lubarska Podorozhnia, AI Video Producer & Pipeline Consultant
- Joonas Paloheimo, Director of AI Research and Development, Nitro Games
- Brian Bowman, Advisor on Growth Marketing, GTM, and GenAI
Grab your hot cacao, and let’s dive into the strategic possibilities and critical challenges AI will bring in 2026!
2026 Trends: What They Mean For the Gaming Landscape
1. AI Agents: Your New Digital Coworkers
“The gap between imagining something and building it disappeared. That changes WHO gets to make things. That changes WHAT gets made… It’s huge and exciting.”
– Tatu Petersen-Jessen
The rise of the AI agent was the biggest moment of 2025. This is finally software that could literally think and act. Our experts consider coding-agent capabilities the most game-changing shift, opening up entirely new creative pathways.
According to Dmitry Averkiev, agents will scale to the operating-system level in 2026, where they can complete tasks across any program. The real frontier is full agent systems – hundreds of simple agents working together like an “ant colony” on super complex problems. This fundamentally changes the role of the developer. Development teams must now focus less on manual execution and more on directing complex AI workflows to tackle projects efficiently.
2. AI Video: Quality Tiers and the Rise of Motion Physics
“2026 will be the year AI video steps into the spotlight – not because of hype, but because of how AI learns.”
– Juli Lubarska
In 2025, AI video finally went from being “meme-material experiments” to a legitimate production-level tool. Models like Sora 2, Veo 3, and Kling now produce cinema-grade quality with consistent characters and believable physics. The industry splits video creation into two key levels: Tier 1 (Speed) for quick A/B testing, and Tier 2 (Quality) for producing high-end videos when you know a concept is a winner.
Looking ahead, Juli predicts that AI’s biggest strength in 2026 will be motion physics. AI can learn consistent, physical rules like gravity and light faster than human experts, meaning the coming year will get difficult for technical video roles.
For marketers, this means that rapid, high-volume testing is essential. Teams must use AI for the fast Tier 1 work, but save their human expertise for the high-end, strategic direction needed for the best video outputs.
3. Hyper-Saturation and the Crisis of Discovery
“Success in 2026 will depend less on knowing how to build, and more on knowing what to build – and, increasingly on knowing how to be discovered amid the flood that’s coming.”
– Tatu Petersen-Jessen
The ease of creation is leading to a massive market shock, especially in gaming. Tatu predicts we will see extreme saturation in casual and hybrid-casual games, as there will be more games than ever while user time and attention remain fixed. Small, AI-native teams can now produce and ship updates faster than traditional studios.
This creates a critical economic paradox: while the cost of production declines toward zero, the cost of acquisition (CPIs) will move in the opposite direction, likely rising sharply. The core challenge in 2026 will therefore be discovery. As the competition for attention tightens, existing marketing channels won’t be able to keep up with the volume. This will force new distribution channels to emerge – some powered by AI personalization, others formed simply to cope with the sheer volume produced by AI-enabled teams.
The implication is that we must know what to build before how to build it. Teams must prioritize marketability testing and unique distribution strategies before writing a line of code.
4. The Automated UA Stack and the Collapse of Old Agency Models
“AI-generated content outperforms human creatives, leading to an existential crisis for artists, writers, and other content producers.”
  – Brian Bowman (quote from our 2025 AI Newsletter)
In 2025, UA became radically simplified because AI algorithms took over the mechanical work.Meta’s Advantage+ and Google’s PMAX now handle all bidding, placement, and targeting automatically.
Because of this radical automation, the focus has shifted: creative is king. To succeed, you must feed the AI platform a large volume of dissimilar ad creatives. Your creative is now the main signal the AI uses to find and attract the right customers, essentially making your ad the new audience targeting.
This automation has killed the old compensation models. The % of spend fee model for media buying agencies is now obsolete. As AI is doing the job of managing the budget, agencies must switch to performance-based retainers. Likewise, because GenAI can now automate creative production, the cost-per-video pricing model will be replaced by a flexible credit-based system.
Therefore, UA teams must immediately shift their work from manual media buying to high-volume creative production and testing.
5. The Ultimate Weapon: Strategic Mindset
“AI made everyone equal – until storytelling begins.”
– Juli Lubarska
Despite the flood of generated content, the human factor is more important than ever. Juli emphasizes that while AI accelerates production, it does not accelerate thinking (“garbage in = garbage out”). The true winning formula is a strong strategic structure: insight → shot list → scene logic → narrative.
The market is now aware of this as well, as players became AI-literate in 2025, instantly spotting low-quality generation, plastic skin, and off-physics – they dislike being tricked by flimsy AI. Therefore, the real “rising star” of 2026 is a mindset.
The winners won’t be button-pushers but the directors, strategists, and creative leads who know how to ask the right questions, understand player psychology better than prompt syntax, and think faster than the model. This strategic mindset is the ultimate competitive advantage. We can also expect virtual influencers – game heroes and app mascots turned into full, expressive, and reactive living brands – to be the most underrated trend of 2026, acting like native, attention-grabbing UGC.
6. The Rise of the AI-Native Creative Entrepreneur
“2026 could be the year of individual creativity and entrepreneurism.”
– Joonas PaloheimoÂ
The dramatic automation of tools is giving rise to a new kind of builder. The low barrier of entry created by AI agents and assisted coding means the tools are becoming powerful enough for one person to work across multiple disciplines – coding, design, video, audio, and narrative- without needing deep expertise in each.
This shifts the focus completely: success no longer depends on the scale of your team, but on the quality of your ideas.
Final Word: The Road Ahead
As everyone has access to world-class tools, the competitive edge has migrated from the machine to the mind.
AI is accelerating fast, and the teams that use it intentionally will outrun everyone else – not by leaning on AI, but by designing pipelines where it amplifies their workflows.
Welcome to 2026, the year when a new mindset and meaningful AI strategy solidify their place as the ultimate drivers of growth.
