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 transitional period. He argued that the assumptions and playbooks that guided developers and publishers throughout the 2010s have lost their relevance in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace. "Sometimes there’s been doom and gloom, but overall the games industry is doing well," Jorjani explained. "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." He identified several forces driving this shift.
First, the steady ascent of developers from the Asia‑Pacific region is reshaping the global landscape. This year’s Gamescom Opening Night Live, for instance, highlighted the capabilities of studios from China and South Korea, underscoring how Asian titles are now regularly competing on the world stage.
"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 hit a tipping point in terms of production quality. While the Chinese market remains heavily mobile‑centric – a factor that influences design sensibilities – the speed at which new titles emerge is accelerating, a trend Jorjani attributes in part to artificial intelligence.
"It is definitely picking up for sure," he noted. "I think there’s still a way to go, but there are very different sensibilities to what makes 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." AI, he argued, is a game‑changer unlike any previous technology hype cycle, such as virtual reality.
The unpredictability introduced by generative tools makes it difficult to forecast the industry’s trajectory over the next five to ten years. Moreover, Jorjani observed a stark cultural divide in how the West and the East approach AI.
In the West, developers grapple with ethical questions, data‑ownership concerns, and artistic integrity. In contrast, many Eastern studios appear less hesitant, adopting AI tools with minimal moral qualms, focusing primarily on functional outcomes rather than artistic nuance.
"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," Jorjani said. Beyond AI, another challenge is the length of development cycles for AAA titles.
Large‑scale projects often span five to six years and involve multiple teams spread across time zones. This prolonged timeline pushes publishers toward safer bets—sequels, remasters, or established IPs—rather than investing in brand‑new concepts, especially in Western markets. "There are multiple forces happening at the same time," he explained. "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. 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 "analysis paralysis" for consumers.
When faced with a flood of unfamiliar titles, players gravitate toward familiar franchises like Worms, which provide a known experience even if they lack groundbreaking innovation. Data from Steam Replay 2025 supports this, showing that 44 % of user playtime was spent on games aged between one and seven years, indicating a preference for established titles over fresh IPs. He highlighted that while the market loudly demands new experiences, purchasing behavior tells a different story: gamers often opt for remakes or sequels rather than taking a chance on untested concepts. Arrowhead’s own success with Helldivers was, in Jorjani’s view, a rare convergence of luck, a unique “secret sauce,” and timing that allowed the studio to break through.
Looking at other successful publishers, Jorjani cited Riot Games and Supercell as examples of companies that maintain multiple projects in parallel, knowing that a single breakout hit can sustain the entire portfolio while the other titles recede into the background. This dynamic, he argued, gives indie developers a strategic edge. "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." Indie studios, with their shorter cycles and openness to community feedback, often share early builds or even animated GIFs to gauge interest.
Jorjani recounted the rapid rise of Tiny Glade, an indie title that exploded in popularity after a series of early‑stage GIFs went viral week after week. In contrast, a four‑year AAA development pipeline that waits until the final product to launch a massive marketing push lacks that iterative feedback loop. Arrowhead intends to adopt this indie‑style validation for its next project. Inspired by mobile developers who test concepts through ad‑based experiments, the studio plans to place early prototypes directly into the hands of a select group of players.
Jorjani described a concrete plan: hand the game to 100 dedicated Helldivers fans, collect data on their favorite IPs and gameplay preferences, and compare responses between those who love alien‑themed shooters and those who don’t. This early, targeted testing will inform design decisions long before a full‑scale launch.
"We’re going to be putting it in the hands of players right away as soon as possible," he said. "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, 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 emphasized that embracing early validation requires abandoning the old playbook of keeping projects under wraps for years before a grand reveal. Instead, developers must adopt a more transparent, iterative approach that leverages community feedback, AI‑driven tools, and the growing influence of Asian studios to navigate an industry that is no longer predictable but brimming with opportunity for those willing to adapt.