Game Economist

Game economists design the money systems inside video games: virtual currencies, prices, rewards, and how fast players earn and spend. There is no government count of this job, and we found no study that measures what AI is doing to it. So this score leans on evidence about nearby work.

The analysis side of the job is the kind of work AI handles well. A 2025 Microsoft Research study, which looked at the work tasks people already bring to an AI chatbot, ranked economists 52nd and data scientists 19th of 785 occupations for how much of their work AI can help with. Both are in the top tenth. Microsoft sells AI tools, and the authors themselves warn that a high score does not mean a job will disappear. The human side of the job is harder to hand over: judging what players will feel is fair, and balancing spending against fun.

The bigger near-term risk is the game industry itself. In the GDC Festival of Gaming's 2026 survey of more than 2,300 game industry professionals, 28% had been laid off in the past two years (33% in the US), and half said their employer had made layoffs in the past 12 months. Three in four students worried about their job prospects, pointing to a lack of entry-level jobs, competition from laid-off veterans, and AI.

That adds up to a 3: AI can do a meaningful share of the number work, and a small field shedding jobs leaves few openings for beginners. What would change the score: studios using AI tools to run game economies with fewer economists would push it to 4. Studio hiring recovering while AI stays a helper would bring it to 2.