Shams Jorjani, the chief executive of Arrowhead Game Studios – the team behind the upcoming Helldivers 2 – recently told GamesIndustry.biz at Gamescom that the video‑game sector is undergoing a profound transition. He argues that the assumptions and playbooks that guided developers and publishers throughout the 2010s have largely lost their relevance, and that the industry now operates under a very different set of rules. "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 outlined three major forces driving this shift. The first is the continued rise of developers in the Asia‑Pacific region. This year's Gamescom Opening Night Live highlighted the output of studios from China and South Korea, underscoring how Asian companies are now delivering high‑quality, globally competitive titles on a regular basis. "There's always been a general rise of Asian games and companies into the West," Jorjani noted.
"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. While the Chinese market remains heavily mobile‑centric – a factor that shapes design sensibilities – the overall quality of PC and console games from Chinese studios is climbing rapidly.
Jorjani believes AI is accelerating this trend, allowing developers to iterate faster and bring more products to market. The second transformative element is artificial intelligence.
Jorjani cautioned that AI introduces a level of unpredictability that makes it difficult to forecast the industry's trajectory over the next five to ten years. He contrasted the cultural attitudes toward AI in the West and the East. In Western markets, developers grapple with ethical questions, data‑training rights, and artistic integrity.
In contrast, many Asian studios appear to adopt AI pragmatically, focusing on functional outcomes rather than philosophical debates. "When you introduce AI to it, I understand that Western game developers have an existential crisis," he said. "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." The third challenge is the sheer length of development cycles for AAA titles. Large‑scale projects often require five to six years of work across multiple studios and time zones.
This long‑term commitment forces publishers to lean on established IPs and recognizable brands to mitigate risk. Jorjani explained that brand recognition reduces uncertainty because players already know what to expect, even if the game itself may not be groundbreaking. He cited Steam data showing that a significant portion of playtime is spent on titles that are more than 18 months old, indicating that gamers often gravitate toward familiar franchises rather than untested new IPs.
This environment, however, creates a strategic opening for indie developers. Because indie teams typically work with shorter cycles and can release early prototypes or gameplay snippets, they can gather player feedback much sooner. Jorjani called this "early validation" the secret sauce of successful games. He recounted how a small indie title, Tiny Glade, gained momentum after the developers posted early GIFs that resonated with the community, leading to rapid word‑of‑mouth growth.
In contrast, a four‑year AAA development timeline forces studios to wait until the final product is polished before launching a major marketing push, which can be a costly gamble. Arrowhead itself is adapting to this new reality. For its next project, the studio plans to involve a select group of dedicated Helldivers fans early in the development process.
By giving 100 core players access to early builds and surveying their preferences – such as whether they favor alien‑themed games or specific gameplay mechanics – Arrowhead hopes to fine‑tune the experience for a narrowly defined audience. This approach mirrors tactics used by mobile developers, who routinely test concepts through ad variations and keep the most promising ones. Jorjani summed up the emerging mindset: "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, 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 his concluding remarks, Jorjani emphasized that the industry must abandon the old playbook of secrecy and long‑term speculation. Instead, developers should embrace rapid iteration, community feedback, and flexible business models that can adapt to the volatile landscape shaped by AI, shifting cultural attitudes, and the growing influence of Asian studios.
By doing so, both established companies and indie creators can navigate the uncertainty and find new pathways to success in a gaming world that is, as he put it, "in a transitional phase at the moment."