StarBerry Pushes AI Innovation in Gaming Production

StarBerry is embracing AI-powered processes that will speed up gaming and VFX to frame next-generation creative output.

Developer of Merge Mayor, StarBerry Games, is changing to an AI-first strategy to change the face of gaming and VFX production as development requirements are skyrocketing and expectations on players grow. The Berlin-based studio was founded in 2017 and has been doing well with Merge Mayor, which earned it about $20 million on the main application stores.

According to CEO Antti Hattara, the gaming industry is at an inflection point, and the usage of AI is no longer a gimmick and a source of multiplication among creative teams. StarBerry has gone to the core of its culture and reorganized its culture around AI, which includes specific Slack channels and weekly knowledge-sharing sessions as well as quarterly AI Jams, where the whole company creates prototypes within 24 hours.

In the next title, to be soft launched in early 2026, StarBerry is deploying AI to the production and development tools of art, as well as marketing creatives. VFP and the AS pipeline are vastly fastened, allowing quicker iteration time that would have taken large groups before. Hattara stressed that AI complements information and does not substitute artists, enabling the teams to invest in direction and AI to perform the tasks.

The studio is also toying with artificial intelligence-based games. Supercell has already achieved success with Datagotchi, which won its AI Hackathon, and King Maker, a prototype that demonstrates gameplay that cannot be solved using traditional design methods.

Although this may encounter some obstacles, like the creation of new workflows, skills demanded and unspecified genres, StarBerry sees AI-based gaming and VFX experiences as one of the most transformative opportunities in the industry.