Shams Jorjani, the chief executive of Arrowhead Game Studios – the team behind Helldivers 2 – told GamesIndustry.biz at Gamescom that the video‑game sector is undergoing a profound transition. He argued that the formulas and assumptions that guided developers and publishers throughout the 2010s have lost their relevance in today’s rapidly evolving market. "Sometimes there’s been doom and gloom, but overall the games industry is doing well," Jorjani said.
"It’s just that the things that we based our assumptions on have changed fundamentally. The playbooks used from 2010 to 2020 no longer work. The bottom has fallen out of every business case that you had. No one knew how well a game would sell, but they assumed it would sell at least this much.
Whatever that number was, take a zero away. And that’s the reality." He identified several forces driving this shift. One of the most visible is the continued rise of developers from the Asia‑Pacific region.
This year’s Gamescom Opening Night Live highlighted the capabilities of studios from China and South Korea, showcasing titles that could compete on a global stage. "There’s always been a general rise of Asian games and companies into the West," Jorjani explained. "That’s been ongoing for the last ten years, but now it’s reached a point where it’s game after game after game that’s really making it." China, in particular, appears to have hit a tipping point in terms of production quality.
While the Chinese market remains heavily mobile‑centric, that focus has cultivated a distinct design sensibility that is now spilling over into console and PC experiences. Jorjani noted that artificial intelligence is accelerating this trend, enabling developers to iterate faster and push out new titles at an unprecedented pace. "It is definitely picking up for sure," he said.
"I think that there’s still a way to go, but there are very different sensibilities to what makes the games tick as well. The Chinese audience is still primarily mobile‑driven. That flavours the sensibilities, but it’s going faster. I think AI is accelerating this because more and more games are coming out faster and faster everywhere." Artificial intelligence, according to Jorjani, is perhaps the single most disruptive technology the industry has seen in recent memory.
Unlike previous hype cycles—such as virtual reality—that fizzled out, AI is reshaping development pipelines, asset creation, and even player‑behavior analytics. However, its adoption is uneven across regions. In the West, developers grapple with ethical questions, data‑ownership concerns, and artistic integrity, whereas many Eastern studios appear to embrace the technology with fewer reservations. "In the West, we’re asking if it is ethical and whether these companies are allowed to train on this data, and whether we should oppose it on ideological or artistic grounds.
Whereas in the East, they absolutely do not care whatsoever," Jorjani observed. "When you introduce AI to it, I understand that Western game developers have an existential crisis. I am an artist, and I’m also connecting with people on an artistic level, but when you make it into software, it’s just functional.
There’s a different attitude there. The West will be slower on the uptake, but the uptake will still happen." Beyond technology, Jorjani highlighted the structural challenge of long development cycles for AAA titles. Projects that require five or six years of work, coordinated across multiple studios and time zones, carry enormous financial risk.
This reality has pushed many Western publishers to lean on established franchises rather than invest in new intellectual property. "Development cycles are still long.
If you know that and the market is changing, you need to be very certain that the bet you’re taking works," he said. "The only thing that really, really mitigates risk on that level is brand and recognisability. People know what they’re getting, so you can offset that risk." Jorjani pointed out that the sheer volume of new releases creates an "analysis paralysis" for consumers. While a brand like Worms offers instant familiarity, newer titles must work harder to capture attention.
Data from Steam Replay 2025 shows that nearly half of all playtime is spent on games older than eighteen months, underscoring players' preference for proven experiences over untested IPs. "People scream for new games and IPs, but they don’t actually buy them. We tend to buy remakes," he noted. "That’s where we were at least very fortunate with Helldivers, in the sense that we were one of the lucky few who were able to get a breakthrough and establish ourselves.
And that came through a certain bit of luck and the secret sauce that goes into making the game. It makes it recognisable, but also its own thing." Jorjani believes indie developers possess a strategic edge in this environment.
Smaller teams can iterate quickly, gather early feedback, and pivot without the inertia that burdens larger studios. He cited Riot Games and Supercell as examples of companies that run multiple projects simultaneously; when one title becomes a hit, the others can fade into the background. "The secret sauce to any successful game is early validation," Jorjani said.
"The sooner you can get something in front of a person and get positive feedback, you know you’re on track, onto something, and you can iterate. That’s the strength of software development. We see this in indie development because their cycles look very different and they share openly. They put up a GIF of their game, and if people respond to that, they know they’re on the right track." Arrowhead is applying this philosophy to its upcoming project.
Inspired by mobile‑game marketing tactics—where concepts are tested through ads before full production—the studio plans to place early builds directly into the hands of a curated group of players. By surveying these testers about their favorite genres and franchises, Arrowhead hopes to fine‑tune its design to a narrowly defined audience rather than casting a wide net.
"We’re going to be putting it in the hands of players right away as soon as possible," he explained. "Our philosophy has always been that we want to make games for a certain type of connoisseur. We don’t want just any action player fan.
We want a specific one. So we’ll probably put the game in the hands of 100 Helldivers players, and then we’ll ask them what their favourite IPs or games are. If they’re interested in aliens and they like Helldivers and they like the game they’re playing with us, then we know that they should score the game higher than the control group that all like Helldivers, but aliens isn’t their favourite. That will allow us to know that we’re able to hit that specific group, and we should do this now, early into development rather than waiting two years after getting broad user tests." In closing, Jorjani warned that clinging to outdated playbooks—keeping projects under wraps for years before a big reveal—will no longer suffice.
The industry demands transparency, rapid iteration, and a willingness to let data guide creative decisions. "But it requires you to let go of that old playbook of playing your cards close to the chest for years, and then dazzle and razzle," he concluded.