One post tagged with "AI Film and Television"

This article is authorized for reprint from "Game Artist".

In mid-2026, "interactive film/game" remains a topic worth attention. But this time, the reasons for paying attention are very different from before.

In the past, the interactive film/game industry was mainly driven by hits, with buzz rising and falling with individual titles. But never before have so many players entered the arena simultaneously with different goals.

Structural pressures in the film & TV industry and a growing emphasis on diversified IP development are pushing more professional resources into the interactive film/game space. On June 1, Zhou Xingchi's (Stephen Chow's) Bingo Group announced a strategic investment in Interactive Star, with both sides planning deep cooperation around AI series, interactive film/game, live-action films/TV, and full-chain IP operations.

Game companies are also entering the fray. Tencent's TiMi Studios helped develop Shengshi Tianxia; ByteDance Games is incubating Bufan Chenfan; Tencent's Tanmeng DreamNow was recently unveiled, supporting interactive film/game creation and showcase.

An even bigger variable is undoubtedly AI. AI infrastructure's layout in interactive entertainment and its demand for computing power are rewriting the underlying cost structure and project logic of this industry.

Multiple players are entering, but the interactive film/game industry is far from settled, which is precisely what makes it a strategic zone worth watching.

In the AI era, for film & TV listed companies, it concerns efficient utilization of IP assets and better financial models; for game companies, it involves category boundaries and early positioning in the interactive platform ecosystem; for AI tech providers and investors, it is one of the few application-layer scenarios with clear computing power consumption logic and user willingness to pay; and for policy makers, it represents, to some extent, the possibility of content entertainment and digital culture formats moving toward sustainable industrialization.

Right now, beyond the hit narratives, deeper questions about interactive film/game are emerging.

Recently, Game Artist/East Entertainment, in partnership with Shanghai Lizhen Law Firm, held a seminar titled "How to Make Interactive Film/Game in the AI Era." The event brought together veteran interactive film/game creators, practitioners from micro-dramas, games, film/TV, IP, platforms, and AI technology, as well as investors and university scholars, forming a microcosm of the current interactive film/game industry.

Attendees focused on different aspects of the issue, but all reflected one thing—people from different industries need a hit interactive film/game to quickly build consensus.

From The Invisible Guardian to Love is All Around to Shengshi Tianxia, interactive film/game has produced a hit every so often. But the gaps between hits are long and irregular, and the industry has not experienced significant scaling growth driven by these hits.

In fact, growth driven solely by hits can attract many observers and even participants, but they may leave just as quickly.

The most typical phase was around 2024. Multiple interactive film/game industry insiders said that the success of Love is All Around on Steam first attracted micro-drama teams. Most of these teams thought interactive film/game was simply "a short drama with options," with similar shooting logic and controllable costs.

They often entered with a B2B mindset, accustomed to platform revenue-sharing models. But interactive film/game has long been a B2C business, especially for products released on Steam, where users pay directly for the experience and hold the power to refund, making word-of-mouth crucial for long-tail revenue.

Many entrants in this phase overlooked this hidden barrier and failed to truly understand who they were selling to. The result was a flood of homogeneous products, with returns far below expectations; some projects may have earned only a few hundred thousand yuan. Eventually, these teams from the micro-drama world came and went quickly.

Around 2025, marked by the launch of Shengshi Tianxia, interactive film/game entered the discussion framework of IP development, artist management, and film/TV project planning. Some veteran interactive film/game directors and producers have been receiving more frequent visits from film/TV companies since 2025, including top-tier companies, who come with major IPs and budgets significantly larger than those from the micro-drama circle.

"Some traditional film/TV companies are tightening budgets and can't shoot long-form dramas, so they're looking for new formats, and interactive film/game is a relatively accessible field," said one interactive film/game producer. These companies have IP, actors, and production capabilities, and interactive film/game offers them three outlets.

First, IP digestion—especially when some IP rights are about to expire and long-form dramas can't get greenlit due to budget cuts, but a budget of tens of millions is sufficient for interactive film/game. Second, actor output—the immersive experience of interactive film/game makes users' "empathy" for characters stronger than in traditional film/TV. Third, financial model—in film/TV revenue sharing, producers usually get only 20–30%, while interactive film/game can get 70%, with faster return cycles.

However, the entry of film/TV companies also has a double-edged effect. On one hand, they push the overall production capability, investment scale, and market attention of interactive film/game to a new level. On the other hand, the average project cost has been raised—from 2–3 million yuan in the early days to 4–6 million, and even spawning projects over 10 million. Without a simultaneous expansion in the market return ceiling, higher investment means greater pressure to recoup costs.

Game companies are also entering, but with a relatively low profile. Among current cases of game companies investing in interactive film/game products, the most high-profile is still Shengshi Tianxia, whose production team New One Studio is one of the studios supported by Tencent TiMi. TiMi also provided substantial promotional resources, including cross-promotion with its top games Honor of Kings and Delta Force. Additionally, ByteDance Games recently revealed that it is incubating an AI-driven cinematic performance and high-freedom interactive xianxia RPG Bufan Chenfan.

Game companies tend to approach interactive film/game projects as category validation, since they are used to scalable businesses. As one practitioner said, "While big companies are betting on interactive film/game, they are also betting on micro-dramas or AI comic dramas. A mature content company must develop multiple content formats simultaneously."

In general, while the hit effect has introduced more diverse players and resources, it has not automatically solved the conditions needed for an industry to truly scale—including a clear product definition, a replicable business model, sufficiently broad distribution channels and user base, an industrial foundation that can be accumulated, and consensus among practitioners.

Currently, the vague positioning of interactive film/game products and their target audiences is a seemingly basic but actually fundamental issue. Is interactive film/game a game or a drama? Such a simple question still leaves some people wavering and leads them down the wrong path.

Through our research, East Entertainment found that many teams entering the field in the past two years want to "kill two birds with one stone" at the project planning stage—wanting to make a game but unwilling to give up drama users, wanting to make a drama but unwilling to give up game pricing—ultimately pleasing neither. But for interactive film/game, once the project is planned, the product's content format is fixed. If the positioning is vague from the start, it cascades down to execution—channel selection, pricing strategy, user acquisition all waver—and problems inevitably follow.

This leads to the next issue—channel limitations have long confined interactive film/game's commercial model exploration to a few options.

Currently, Steam remains the core distribution channel for interactive film/game. This platform provides a stable foundation for the industry, including a buyout model, global distribution, and well-established user habits. Moreover, in early 2025, the number of Steam users setting Simplified Chinese as their primary language surpassed English users to become the largest user base, meaning China has become Steam's largest global user market. During the 2025 Spring Festival, driven by popular games, the share of Steam Simplified Chinese users briefly surged to 50.06%.

Steam's own growth spillover has also brought a round of incremental users to interactive film/game.

However, Steam's coverage has natural boundaries. As one interactive film/game producer noted: "Almost every hit product has been asked by users 'Where can I watch it?' When we say 'On Steam,' they reply 'What is Steam?'"

Domestic platforms have tried, but none have sustained continuous new content supply—some long-form and short-video platforms have introduced interactive drama features, but they haven't persisted. According to many frontline practitioners, the signal from platforms is that "they haven't really committed significant resources to this."

Channel divergence naturally leads to different business paths and corresponding product development focuses.

Steam uses a paid buyout model, where users pay directly for the experience. Steam's refund policy (refundable within two hours) creates a strong constraint: traffic can bring attention, but if users don't stay, there's no revenue. This forces practitioners to prioritize content experience—at least keeping users engaged for two hours.

Due to the immersive nature of interactive film/game, the decision cost for users to purchase and play is higher. Especially on Steam, most users are not as price-sensitive as they are time-sensitive. "They are willing to spend money, but not willing to waste time on a product that isn't worth it."

With diverse entrants in interactive film/game, their product strategies on Steam also differ.

Some teams focus on premium hits, going big. Almost all interactive film/game products that have gained significant attention have taken this path.

Other teams adopt a steady-output approach, producing one title after another, controlling costs and maintaining a stable foundation. Their project costs are usually kept around 2–3 million yuan, delivering products above the passing line, relying on continuous output to sustain the team and user awareness.

Compared to the hit effect, companies following this route form the stable backbone of interactive film/game development, ensuring that new works keep appearing in users' sight and maintaining the industrial supply chain. Through continuous creation, they iterate experience and capabilities for the industry and retain more room for trial and error.

Some teams also pursue low-cost volume production, quickly rolling profits. East Entertainment learned that some teams shoot at extremely low costs—a single project may cost only a few hundred thousand yuan or even less, completed in a few days to a week, priced as low as 29 yuan, relying on volume to break even. Last year, such products were not uncommon on Steam, often with borderline content and rough production, but they met the needs of a certain user segment. Now AI is making this path even more "efficient"—AI face swapping, AI-generated scenes, AI dubbing—further lowering production barriers.

Another path is free-to-play with ads. Platforms like Fanqie Novel's AI interactive micro-dramas and WeChat mini-game channels' IAA products are testing this route. The logic aligns with micro-drama business models—free viewing, ad monetization.

However, this path has yet to produce a benchmark case in commercialization. One practitioner admitted: "If the goal is to get 100,000 views, I'm confident using AI. But to actually make money, I'm not confident yet."

In addition, issues like the lack of sequels, talent gaps, and weak industry infrastructure are very real. For example, few people have a deep understanding of both entertainment, gaming, and tech. When teams from different backgrounds sit together, the gameplay ideas proposed by writers can't be understood by planners, and the camera language desired by directors can't be precisely controlled by AI tools. Discourse systems, workflows, and evaluation standards all need to be re-aligned in this cross-section.

Since the beginning of this year, AI has accelerated its penetration into content entertainment scenarios, and the interactive film/game industry has also been affected—partially solving some of the above structural problems while bringing new variables and raising new questions.

The most immediate change is in production. East Entertainment learned that a 10-million-yuan live-action project can have its cost reduced to 6–7 million or even lower with AI intervention. One team estimated that full-process AI assistance can compress the production cycle from 8 months to 4 months. The impact is particularly significant in post-production face touch-ups, special effects, and set dressing.

The first chain reaction from lower cost barriers is the release of genre constraints. In the past, live-action interactive film/game was heavily concentrated in modern urban and romance genres, mainly because period dramas cost tens of millions, and post-apocalyptic sci-fi, tomb-robbing adventure, and other genres had even higher costs for special effects and sets, making investment too risky given the limited market scale.

AI is now lifting this restriction. Some teams are already experimenting with all-AI interactive narrative products in American comic style, while others are launching sci-fi projects previously shelved due to cost constraints.

But as the cost line is lowered, the focus of competition shifts. When production barriers are no longer the main differentiator, the industry needs to rethink where competitive advantage comes from.

On the creative side, some interactive film/game producers report that while AI lowers production barriers, the script barrier hasn't dropped at all. In fact, interactive storytelling demands higher logic and branching, making it even more difficult. "Script writing for interactive film/game is the hardest—it requires both the aesthetic sense of a liberal arts student and the logic of a science student."

What deserves more attention is the impact of AI infrastructure development on the entire application layer.

In fact, part of the current heat around interactive film/game comes not from the content industry but from the upstream AI industry chain. Large model companies need application scenarios to validate technology, consume computing power, and complete the commercial loop. Interactive content—including interactive film/game, interactive micro-dramas, interactive narrative tools, etc.—is seen as an effective direction.

East Entertainment learned that some AI entrepreneurs "have signed guaranteed consumption agreements with multiple upstream AI giants and listed companies, and are consuming computing power by making interactive film/game." Many foundation model providers are looking for upper-layer application developers, and interactive film/game is one of the key directions.

A group of AI-native entrepreneurs are also starting from the tech side, hoping to lower the production barrier of interactive film/game to the ultimate vision of "one-click generation of interactive content." One practitioner commented: "In the past, CDN was the cost of traditional content distribution; now Token is the cost of real-time AI-generated content. When Token prices fall below CDN prices, AI interactive film/game will truly be viable—and that tipping point is approaching."

This means that interactive film/game is becoming a key direction for AI to find landing scenarios. This driving force from the infrastructure layer is something no previous wave of interactive film/game has seen.

Conclusion: From interactive film/game to AI interactive entertainment, bigger imagination

It can be seen that the content capabilities of film/TV companies, the channel and platform experience of game giants, and the efficiency tools of AI tech providers—multiple resources are converging on the interactive film/game category.

Despite many remaining issues, the interactive film/game track is more promising than ever, pointing to future opportunities.

The industry is waiting for a truly breakout commercial benchmark. From The Invisible Guardian to Love is All Around to Shengshi Tianxia, each has validated interactive film/game's crossover potential from a different dimension.

However, the industry still needs a work that can launch on a mass platform, attract users from different circles to pay, and validate a replicable business model.

Many practitioners believe such a work needs to meet three conditions: a universal story loved by people of all ages and genders, premiered on a mass platform, and the product itself must be excellent.

The mindset of practitioners is shifting. One interactive film/game creator observed: "Last year everyone was still talking about borderline content; this year more people are starting to talk about stories. When everyone insists on telling stories in an interactive way, sooner or later someone will tell a story well."

More importantly, the boundaries of imagination for interactive film/game are expanding. One entrepreneur building an interactive content platform said: "Interactive content should include interactive micro-dramas, interactive film/game, interactive short videos, etc. These are parallel categories, and interactive film/game is just one branch."

In this bigger picture, interactive film/game is currently the closest form to commercialization, but far from the whole picture. AI makes real-time generation, dynamic narrative, and personalized experiences exploreable directions. Many major companies are developing world models to generate scenes and dialogues in real time through computational simulation—this is the greater imagination of interactive film/game.

Offline cinemas are also paying attention to interactive content. Some teams are experimenting with bringing interactive film/game into movie theaters—one ticket per person, voting by the whole audience, affecting the story direction in real time. Practitioners have calculated: a standard 200-seat auditorium, 5 screenings a day, can generate daily revenue of 35,000 yuan. "No cinema can achieve that number right now."

Additionally, Tencent's Photon Studio Group launched an AI interactive game factory called "Zaohua Gongfang"; platforms like Tanmeng DreamNow and Shangtouwa are laying out AI interactive narrative modules. The deeper intent of game companies is still the UGC ecosystem for interactive narrative in the AI era—enabling users to create interactive content using AI video tools, forming a creator community. This is the long-term value that platform companies see.

These explorations are still far from landing and scaling. But it's worth imagining: interactive film/game is the starting point, and AI interactive entertainment has much larger room for imagination. The current accumulation of products, platforms, and talent is, to some extent, laying the groundwork for this bigger vision.