For years, Unity and Unreal have ruled the game‑development landscape, accounting for roughly 70% of Steam releases in 2025. While Godot has made notable strides and some studios cling to proprietary solutions—Capcom’s RE Engine being a prime example—the market has largely been a duopoly. Into this entrenched arena step three seasoned veterans: Arjan Brussee, Sjoerd De Jong, and Michal Valient, the founders of Immersive Technologies, or Immens for short. Their résumés read like a who’s‑who of the industry, featuring stints at Epic Games (the creators of Unreal), Guerrilla Games, Boss Key, and even Apple.
Together they believe there is still space for a fresh engine, one that addresses the shortcomings of existing tools and leverages modern AI capabilities. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Brussee argued that the timing is now ripe for a new platform that simply didn’t exist a few years ago.
“With AI‑assisted programming you can start building from scratch again,” he explained. “Guided by intelligent systems, you can assemble fully‑functional features far more quickly than before.” Valient, Immens’s chief technology officer, clarifies that the AI they employ is not the “prompt‑to‑art” gimmick that dominates headlines. Instead, the AI is woven into the engine’s architecture to make it highly extensible.
“The AI can reason about massive codebases and data sets,” he said. “If we design the engine with that in mind, even solo developers or tiny teams can plug in custom modules—say, a bespoke particle system—without wrestling with opaque scripting layers.” This approach aims to turn AI into a productivity multiplier, enabling rapid iteration while keeping the underlying system transparent and controllable. The motivation behind Immens’s AI‑centric engine stems from the current economic pressures on developers. Brussee paints a bleak picture: game production costs keep climbing, making it harder for small studios to survive.
“We need new ways of working that cut expenses, shrink team sizes, and accelerate timelines,” he asserted. “Otherwise you risk everything—your studio, your livelihood.” De Jong, the chief product officer, points out that the engine market has become overly standardized and consolidated.
While this has produced a solid foundation, it also stifles innovation. “The industry now faces a suite of challenges, and simply repeating old practices won’t solve them,” he said. “We need breakthrough ideas, not more of the same.” He criticizes the monolithic nature of current engines, which force developers to conform to proprietary file formats and rigid workflows. With AI, Immens envisions an engine that bends to the user’s needs, allowing interchangeable components, custom toolchains, and personalized interfaces tailored to each project’s unique demands.
Valient acknowledges AI’s power but warns of its volatility. “If you don’t keep a close eye on it, the system can veer off course quickly,” he noted. To mitigate this, Immens is built to keep developers in the driver’s seat. Every action taken by the AI is logged, repeatable, and auditable, ensuring that creators understand exactly how a tool arrived at a result.
This transparency is crucial for tasks that traditionally required weeks of manual labor—like generating a set of five characters with specific traits. With Immens, a developer could sketch the concept over coffee, let the AI produce the assets, and then reuse or discard the generated tools as needed, dramatically slashing costs.
Flexibility is baked into the engine’s core. De Jong emphasizes that Immens does not impose a single workflow; instead, it offers a framework that can be shaped by the user. “You decide how much AI to incorporate and where,” he said.
“Our architecture is open enough to let you pick and choose, but robust enough to keep everything coherent.” Interoperability is another pillar of Immens’s design philosophy. By embracing open standards and text‑based file formats, the engine can communicate seamlessly with popular tools such as Blender, Maya, or any generative‑AI pipeline. “When files are readable as plain text, any system can parse them,” Brussee explained.
“This opens the door to smarter interfaces across the entire development stack, something proprietary engines have historically resisted.” The broader AI debate in game development is polarized. Some pundits on LinkedIn hype the notion of “click‑to‑game” experiences, suggesting that a single prompt could spawn a Grand Theft Auto‑scale world. Immens’s team tempers such hype, positioning AI as a powerful assistant rather than a magical shortcut. “AI will make everyone better, not replace the creative process,” Valient remarked.
“It’s a tool, and like any tool, it can be misused, but it also has the potential to elevate the medium.” Economic concerns also loom large. Critics argue that AI‑focused startups may be inflating a bubble, reminiscent of the dot‑com era. Valient counters that while valuations may be speculative, the underlying technology is here to stay. “The internet didn’t disappear after the dot‑com crash; the weak companies did,” he said.
“Our goal is to build a genuinely good engine that leverages AI to accelerate development and inspire bigger dreams. Whether the market is a bubble is uncertain, but we’re focused on delivering value.” Funding remains modest. Immens has secured its “first commitments” but has not disclosed amounts, describing them as “reasonable.” Brussee cautions against over‑capitalization, noting that excess cash can breed complacency. “Startups need to stay scrappy,” he laughed.
“Too much money can make you lazy.” The company remains lean, consisting of the three founders and a handful of helpers, a deliberate choice to maintain agility while tackling the complex task of building a new engine. Immens is now racing toward a proof‑of‑concept demo that showcases a generative‑AI‑driven editing workflow, slated for release this month.
The timeline has already outpaced their original expectations—what they thought would take a year is now half that time. “It’s hard to predict exact milestones,” Brussee admitted, “but we’re moving faster than we anticipated.” Business‑model discussions are still in early stages.
While Immens admires Epic’s “we succeed when you succeed” licensing model, they have not committed to any particular revenue structure yet. Ultimately, the founders hope their engine will empower creators to push the boundaries of interactive art. “Games are our passion,” Brussee concluded.
“We want to see more risk‑taking, more creativity, more innovation built on technology like ours. If we can help make that happen, it would be amazing.”