For more than a decade, Unity and Unreal have been the dominant forces shaping the video‑game development landscape, accounting for roughly seventy percent of all titles released on Steam in 2025. While Godot has made notable inroads and large publishers continue to rely on proprietary solutions such as Capcom’s RE Engine, the market for general‑purpose engines has remained largely entrenched in the hands of the two giants. Enter Immersive (stylised as Immens), a fresh effort spearheaded by three industry veterans—Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient.
Their résumés read like a who’s‑who of modern game‑making: experience at Epic Games, the creators of Unreal Engine, stints at Guerrilla Games, contributions to Boss Key, and even work at Apple. The trio believes that despite the apparent saturation, there is still space for a new engine that addresses the shortcomings of existing tools and leverages the rapid progress of artificial intelligence. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Brussee explained that the timing feels "right" because the technology that would enable a different kind of engine simply did not exist a few years ago. "With AI‑augmented programming, we can start building from a clean slate again," he said.
"With enough guidance and control, we can deliver a fully‑functional system much faster than traditional approaches." Valient, who serves as Immersive’s chief technology officer, clarified that the AI component is not about generating assets from a single prompt, a narrative that has become common in popular discourse. Instead, the AI is woven into the engine’s architecture to make it inherently extensible. "The AI can reason about massive codebases and data sets," he noted. "If we design the engine with that in mind, even a solo developer can plug in a custom particle system, a bespoke physics module, or any other feature without being confined to a limited scripting layer.
The AI simply accelerates that extension process." The motivation behind building an AI‑first engine stems from the increasingly grim economic climate for developers. Brussee described the current market as "rough" and warned that production budgets are spiralling upward, making it harder for studios to stay solvent.
"We need new workflows that cut costs, let smaller teams ship faster, and reduce the financial risk of creating a game," he asserted. De Jong, Immersive’s chief product officer, added that the engine market has entered a phase of "standardisation and consolidation" that, while providing a solid foundation, also stifles innovation. "The industry faces a suite of challenges, and simply iterating on the status quo won’t cut it," he said. "We need a different paradigm—flexibility, modularity, and the ability for the engine to adapt to the developer rather than the other way around." One of the pain points De Jong highlighted is the "monolithic" nature of existing engines.
They impose proprietary file formats and rigid pipelines, forcing developers to conform. With AI, Immersive aims to deliver an engine that can be reshaped on the fly. "You should be able to swap components, append new ones, or even rewrite core tools to suit your workflow," he explained.
"Imagine a designer who can craft a custom UI, assign shortcuts, and build exactly the interface they need for a specific project, all without waiting for an engine update." Valient also warned that AI, while powerful, can behave unpredictably if left unchecked. To mitigate this, Immersive is building transparency into the workflow: developers will always see what the AI is doing, retain a complete history of changes, and retain the ability to roll back or fine‑tune outcomes.
This level of control, he argues, transforms AI from a mysterious black box into a reliable assistant that can, for example, generate a set of five characters with distinct traits in minutes—a task that previously might have taken weeks. Flexibility is a core tenet of Immersive’s design philosophy.
The engine does not enforce a singular workflow; instead, it provides a framework that developers can mould. "You decide how much AI you want to involve and where it fits into your pipeline," De Jong said.
"The architecture is deliberately open so that you can integrate the amount of automation that feels comfortable for your team." Interoperability is another priority. By embracing open, text‑based standards, Immersive ensures that its engine can talk to the myriad tools that developers already use—Blender, Maya, generative‑AI suites, and more. "When files are plain text, any program can read them," Brussee noted.
"That opens the door for the AI to parse and manipulate assets directly, and for third‑party tools to plug in without fighting against a closed ecosystem. This openness is a major differentiator from the "walled‑garden" approach many commercial engines take." The broader conversation about AI in games is not without controversy. Some commentators on social media have sensationalised the idea that a single prompt could produce a Grand‑Theft‑Auto‑style experience, igniting fears of "click‑to‑game" solutions that could devalue craftsmanship. The Immersive team acknowledges the hype but frames AI as a collaborative tool rather than a replacement for skill.
"AI will make everyone better, not replace them," Valient asserted. "It currently has a negative reputation because it is disrupting at a scale no one has seen before, but that disruption is an opportunity for growth." Economic anxieties also linger, with critics labeling the AI boom a speculative bubble.
Valient draws a parallel to the dot‑com era, noting that while many startups vanished, the underlying technology— the internet—persisted and reshaped the world. "We’re focused on building a solid engine first. AI simply accelerates our development and expands what’s possible. Whether we’re in a bubble is unknown, but history shows that useful technology survives beyond the hype." Funding remains modest.
Immersive has secured "first commitments" but has not disclosed exact amounts, describing them as "reasonable". Brussee cautioned against excessive capital, noting that abundant cash can lead to complacency. The company deliberately remains lean: the three founders plus a handful of helpers.
This small, scrappy team is intentional, allowing rapid decision‑making and preventing the bureaucratic overhead that can accompany larger organisations. In terms of milestones, Immersive is working on a proof‑of‑concept demo that showcases a full editing workflow powered by generative AI, slated for release within the month.
The timeline has already outpaced their original schedule; what was projected to take until year‑end is now arriving roughly twice as fast. This accelerated progress underscores the very efficiency gains they promise to deliver to developers. The business model is still evolving. While Immersive admires Epic Games' revenue‑share approach—"we succeed when you succeed"—the founders admit it is too early to commit to a specific pricing structure.
Their overarching goal remains to empower creators, lower barriers, and ultimately foster a wave of innovative, risk‑taking games that push the medium forward. In summary, the Immersive engine seeks to blend AI’s reasoning capabilities with an open, modular architecture, giving developers the freedom to tailor tools, integrate existing pipelines, and iterate faster without sacrificing control. By confronting the economic pressures, technical rigidity, and cultural skepticism that pervade the current ecosystem, the veteran founders hope to chart a new path for smaller studios and perhaps even inspire the larger players to rethink how engines are built.
If successful, this could herald a more diverse, creative, and sustainable era for game development.