Shams Jorjani, the chief executive of Arrowhead Game Studios—the studio behind Helldivers 2—recently told GamesIndustry.biz at Gamescom that the video‑game sector is undergoing a profound transition. He argued that the formulas that guided developers and publishers throughout the 2010s have largely lost their relevance today.
"Sometimes there’s been doom and gloom, but overall the games industry is doing well," Jorjani observed. "It’s just that the things 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." Several forces are 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 impressive output of studios from China and South Korea, underscoring how Asian games are no longer niche imports but mainstream contenders.
"There’s always been a general rise of Asian games and companies into the West," Jorjani said. "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 arrived at a tipping point in terms of production quality.
Jorjani noted that while Chinese gamers are still predominantly mobile‑first, that focus is accelerating development cycles and influencing design sensibilities. "It is definitely picking up for sure," he said.
"I think 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 is perhaps the most disruptive technology currently reshaping the industry. Jorjani warned that AI introduces a level of market unpredictability that makes medium‑term forecasting—let alone a decade‑ahead view—extremely difficult. He contrasted the West’s cautious, ethically‑charged debate over AI training data with the East’s pragmatic, almost indifferent adoption.
"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," he explained. "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, the sheer length of AAA development cycles remains a structural challenge.
Large‑scale titles often require five to six years of coordinated effort across multiple studios and time zones. This reality pushes publishers toward established franchises and away from risky new intellectual property, especially in Western markets. Jorjani explained that long cycles force companies to lean heavily on brand recognition to mitigate financial risk.
"If you know that and the market is changing, you need to be very certain that the bet you’re taking works. 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," he said. He added that the flood of new releases creates analysis paralysis for consumers. When faced with dozens of fresh announcements, players gravitate toward familiar names.
"You might recognise Worms, for example; it’s been around forever. You know these ten other games announced two days ago are probably super cool; you might individually click through them to form an opinion. With Worms, you know what you’re getting," Jorjani noted. Data from Steam Replay 2025 supports this trend: roughly 44 % of user playtime was spent on titles between one and seven years old, indicating that half of gamers still favor older, established games over brand‑new experiences.
This environment, however, offers indie developers a strategic advantage. Jorjani pointed to companies like Riot Games and Supercell, which juggle multiple projects but rely on a single breakout hit to dominate attention. Indie studios, by contrast, can iterate quickly, validate concepts early, and adapt without the inertia of massive budgets. "The secret sauce to any successful game is early validation," he asserted.
"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." He illustrated this with the example of Tiny Glade, an indie title that gained momentum after the developers shared early GIFs that resonated with the community week after week. In contrast, a four‑year AAA cycle that waits until the final product to launch a massive marketing push lacks that nimble feedback loop. Arrowhead itself is adopting this indie‑style methodology for its next project.
The studio plans to involve a small, carefully selected group of Helldivers veterans early in development, using their preferences to shape the game’s direction. Jorjani described the process: "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, we know that segment should score the game higher than a control group that likes Helldivers but not aliens. 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." He concluded by emphasizing the need to abandon the old playbook of keeping projects under wraps for years before a grand reveal. "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," Jorjani said.
The message is clear: in a market where development timelines are long, AI is reshaping creation, and Asian studios are rapidly gaining ground, flexibility, early community engagement, and brand leverage are the new pillars of success.