Shanghai Online Game Industry Association Technology Theme Salon: AI Implementation and Efficiency in Game Production

This article was republished with authorization from “Qingbao Ji”.

On September 11, 2026, the technology-themed salon of the Shanghai Online Game Industry Association, “AI in Game Production: Implementation and Efficiency Gains,” hosted by Yiwan (Shanghai) Network Technology Co., Ltd. (TapTap) and co-organized by Yystv, was successfully held in Shanghai.

Focused on two major directions — AI and game engines — the salon invited three industry experts: Chen Tuo, Software Engineer at Epic Games · Unreal Engine (Greater China); Zhao Tianyi, Product Lead of TapTap Zhizao; and Li Chao, Team Lead of Tencent Games' AI-native game engine team. They delivered themed talks on how AI can be integrated into game production workflows, drive development efficiency, and transform production paradigms, and a roundtable forum further explored the practice and future trends of AI in game R&D.

At the salon, the three guests delivered talks themed “From Text to World: Practical Integration of MCP with the Unreal Editor,” “TapTap Zhizao: Games in the AI Era,” and “AI-Native Engine: Reshaping the Game Production Paradigm and Opening an Era of Democratized Development,” respectively. Ranging from tool application and production workflows to engine capabilities, they shared practical experience and insights on how AI empowers game R&D, jointly exploring feasible paths for AI in game production to move from point-specific efficiency gains to full-process implementation, and providing game developers and industry practitioners with a platform for exchange, learning, and practical reference.

Chen Tuo, Software Engineer at Epic Games · Unreal Engine (Greater China), presented the integration practice of MCP (Model Context Protocol) with the Unreal Editor. Through MCP, large language models can directly understand and invoke the tools and capabilities of the Unreal Editor and, combined with PCG (Procedural Content Generation), participate in real production stages such as scene construction, asset retrieval, level layout, and code conversion — advancing AI from a “conversational assistant” toward an intelligent collaborator in game production.

Chen noted that the value of AI is not to simply replace developers, but to improve R&D efficiency and expand creative possibilities through deep integration with game engines, tools, and production workflows. In the future, as related tools and workflows continue to improve, AI is expected to become even more deeply integrated into the entire game R&D process.

Zhao Tianyi, Product Lead of TapTap Zhizao, shared how game development is changing in the AI era. He introduced that TapTap Zhizao seeks to weave natural language interaction throughout the game creation flow, allowing creators to start by describing an idea in one sentence, progressively generate gameplay, art, code, and audio/video content, and continually refine their work through real-time preview and local development. AI can also generate dedicated editing and debugging tools for specific games, further lowering the barrier from a creative idea to a playable version.

Zhao said that what TapTap Zhizao is exploring is not “generating a game in one go,” but rather kick-starting the “idea — playable version — player feedback — further iteration” loop as early as possible. Backed by the TapTap ecosystem, works can directly reach real players and keep iterating based on community and game data. The cases shown on site, such as “Dang Wo Lao Le,” “Bu Jingdian Lixue,” and “Guqin Dashi,” also demonstrated how AI helps creators turn different themes — social issues, scientific knowledge, ecological protection, and traditional culture — into concrete gameplay and interactive experiences more quickly.

Li Chao, Team Lead of Tencent Games' AI-native game engine team, shared the further changes AI is bringing to game production paradigms, focusing on the AI-native game engine MagicLomix. He argued that an AI-native game engine is not simply connecting large models to traditional development tools; rather, it enables humans and AI to collaborate continuously around the same editable project, allowing AI to understand code, scenes, and assets, invoke professional engine capabilities, and continuously verify and adjust based on actual runtime results — moving AI from content and code generation into real game engineering production workflows.

Building on this, Li Chao introduced MagicLomix's explorations in engine capability enhancement, the Agent Harness, and the developer ecosystem. By incorporating professional capabilities such as rendering, 3D content generation, asset processing, and performance diagnostics into a unified workflow, AI-generated content can undergo standardized processing, quality inspection, and engine validation, truly becoming assets usable for game development. Its core goal is to consolidate professional game development capabilities into capabilities that both developers and AI can invoke and reuse, so that creative ideas can be “made” while games truly “run.”

In the roundtable discussion and interactive Q&A in the second half of the salon, moderated by Chu Yunfan, founder of Yystv, the three guests answered questions collected in advance at registration. Drawing on their respective technical practices and industry observations, they exchanged views on how AI can be further integrated into existing game production pipelines, the core value of developers in the AI era, and the changes to team collaboration and job roles that AI-native engines may bring.

The discussion then extended to the future direction of AI and the game industry, including how far the industry still is from true “AI-native games,” what new game experiences AI may enable that were previously difficult to achieve, and whether aesthetics, expression, and creative choice will become scarcer as content production costs continue to fall. The session also explored whether AI can further narrow the R&D gap between independent teams and large companies, and questions were opened to the audience for exchange with the game developers and practitioners present.

Lin Zhimin, Deputy Secretary-General of the association, said in his address that this salon was the association's second practical salon following the intellectual property themed salon on August 25, focused on member companies' needs for technological upgrading. In the future, the association will continue to make sustained efforts in technical topic research, routine consulting, training and empowerment, and ecosystem building, establishing more high-quality communication platforms to safeguard the high-quality development of Shanghai's online game industry.