The Next Era of Gaming

Hello there! Ready to dive into another upgrading, Mind-boggling, and Value-filled Shift?

Today we have:

🚀 Beyond Playtesting: AI Is Reshaping How Games Are Made

🎨 How to Use Nano Banana for Instant Visual Variants

📊 Excel’s New COPILOT Function: AI Inside Your Formulas

🚀 Beyond Playtesting: AI Is Reshaping How Games Are Made

A new Google Cloud study revealed that generative AI has become mainstream in game development, with 90% of developers already integrating it into workflows. Beyond cost savings, AI is transforming creativity, player experiences, and the economics of game production.

1. AI adoption is nearly universal: 90% of developers are already using AI, with 95% saying it reduces repetitive tasks like localization, scripting, and playtesting. This efficiency frees teams to focus on design and strategy while accelerating production cycles.
   

2. Creativity and gameplay innovation: AI is fueling new mechanics (93%), genres (92%), and narrative exploration, with 36% of developers using it directly for level design, dialogue, and animation. This opens space for experimental gameplay and flexible creative workflows.
   

3. Player expectations are shifting: 89% of developers report players want smarter NPCs and dynamic worlds that adapt in real time. AI agents are being deployed for balancing, procedural generation, and personalized experiences, reshaping how games feel alive.
   

4. Opportunities and risks for the industry: AI can democratize development by giving indie studios enterprise-level tools (29%), but developers flagged major concerns around IP ownership (63%) and data privacy (35%). Successful integration will require pilots, alignment with creative vision, and clear evaluation metrics.

Why it matters: The survey confirms AI is no longer hype, it’s the default in game development. With both AAA studios and indies leaning in, the next generation of games will be faster to build, more adaptive, and more immersive. The challenge now lies in balancing innovation with ownership, costs, and player trust.

🎨 How to Use Nano Banana for Instant Visual Variants

Need multiple ad creatives from one image? Nano Banana lets you do it in seconds, no reshoots, no design team.

🧩 Steps:

1. Go to lmarena.ai: Click “Launch Arena.”

2. Upload your image: Tap the “+” icon in the prompt box to add your product photo or UGC shot.

3. Choose ‘Battle’ mode: This activates image editing. It’s where the magic happens.

4. Type your visual request: Example: “Change outfit to winter wear” or “Show same person walking away.” Nano Banana generates variations instantly, while keeping the scene and character intact.

5. Download and deploy: Pick your favorite variant, upscale if needed, and plug into your ads.

You can test new visuals fast, outfits, emotions, and angles, without extra shoots. Perfect for A/B tests, regional variants, or extending a single shot into a full story.

📊 Excel’s New COPILOT Function: AI Inside Your Formulas

Microsoft just dropped the COPILOT function in Excel for Windows and Mac, and it changes how you work with data. Instead of manual wrangling or running add-ins, you can now write natural language prompts directly in cells. Better yet, results auto-update whenever your data changes.

1. Natural language inside formulas: With syntax like =COPILOT("your prompt", A1:A10), you can ask plain-English questions and instantly generate results using cell ranges as context. Because it’s built into Excel’s calculation engine, outputs refresh every time the underlying data changes.
   

2. Works with existing Excel functions: COPILOT isn’t separate; it blends directly into the formula system you already use. You can nest it within IF, SWITCH, LAMBDA, or WRAPROWS, or feed its outputs into other functions.
   

3. Real-world scenarios: You can summarize survey feedback, classify customer sentiment, generate SEO keyword lists, or rewrite text without leaving the grid. Analysts can also auto-build tables, highlight trends, or distill long passages into concise summaries for reporting.
   

4. Limitations & future upgrades: Right now, usage is capped at 100 calls every 10 minutes (300/hour), arrays sometimes omit rows, and dates return as text instead of serial values.

Why it matters: By embedding AI directly into Excel’s formula layer, Microsoft removes the friction of add-ins and external tools. For everyday users and analysts alike, this makes Excel far more powerful and far more fluid.

🔨AI Tools for the Shift

✍️ Logicballs – AI writer for high-quality content creation. Produces well-structured and engaging text instantly.

📇 iLib – AI-powered reputation curation hub. Manage your online presence in one place.

💰 Fefi – Your AI-powered financial dashboard. Gain actionable insights for smarter money management.

🔒 Privatemode AI – Use AI tools without security or privacy worries. Keeps your data protected.

🛡️ Polymer Runtime Data Security – Prevent AI data breaches with real-time risk management. Enterprise-ready protection for sensitive information.

🚀Quick Shifts

⚡ The biggest Amazon brands aren’t scaling on ads alone; they’re quietly leveraging affiliates to send external traffic Amazon rewards. This boost in organic ranking makes ad dollars work harder while stabilizing CAC. Levanta’s free Affiliate Shift Calculator shows you the exact upside hiding in your existing spend. Get your Affiliate forecast today!

🧠 The Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative has launched the $1M Alzheimer’s Insights AI Prize, with backing from Bill Gates, to accelerate breakthroughs in dementia research using agentic AI for diagnostics, biomarkers, and treatment discovery.

💬 ElevenLabs launches “Chat Mode,” enabling text-only conversational agents, ideal for users who prefer typing, need to input precise information like order IDs or emails, and can seamlessly escalate to voice for complex tasks.

🌍 Meta launches AI-powered reel translations on Facebook & Instagram, starting with English ↔ Spanish. Creators can keep their own voice tone, add lip-sync, and track views by language.

🛡️ Pangram detects AI text with 99.8% accuracy on ChatGPT and Claude, distinguishing it from human writing, starting at $12.50/month for creators, researchers, and enterprises.

That’s all for today’s edition see you tomorrow as we track down and get you all that matters in the daily AI Shift!

If you loved this edition let us know how much:

Forward it to your pal to give them a daily dose of the shift so they can 👇