Shams Jorjani, the chief executive of Arrowhead Game Studios—the studio 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 lost their relevance in today’s fast‑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 highlighted three inter‑related forces driving this shift. First, the steady rise of developers from the Asia‑Pacific region is reshaping the global landscape.
This year’s Gamescom Opening Night Live featured a string of high‑profile titles from China and South Korea, underscoring how Asian studios have moved from niche exporters to mainstream competitors. "There’s always been a general rise of Asian games and companies into the West," Jorjani observed. "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 be at a tipping point in terms of production quality.
Jorjani noted that Chinese developers are still largely mobile‑first, which influences design sensibilities, but the overall speed and polish of their releases are accelerating, especially as artificial intelligence tools streamline asset creation and testing. "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 second catalyst is the emergence of AI as a disruptive technology.
Unlike past hype cycles—such as virtual reality, which generated excitement but failed to become a mainstream revenue driver—AI is already altering development pipelines, content generation, and even marketing. Jorjani stressed that the impact is uneven across regions. In the West, developers grapple with ethical questions, data‑ownership concerns, and artistic integrity when training models on large datasets. In contrast, many Eastern studios appear less constrained by these debates and are adopting AI tools at a rapid pace to accelerate production.
"When you introduce AI to it, I understand that Western game developers have an existential crisis," Jorjani explained. "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 factor is the sheer length of AAA development cycles. Large‑scale projects often span five to six years, involve multiple studios across different time zones, and require massive financial commitments.
Because of this, publishers increasingly lean on established franchises and recognizable IP to mitigate risk. Jorjani described this as a “brand‑recognition hedge”: when a player sees a familiar name like Worms or Helldivers, they know what to expect, even if the title isn’t groundbreaking. Data from Steam Replay 2025 supports this trend, showing that 44 % of playtime was devoted to games released between one and seven years ago, while half of all Steam titles in use were older than 18 months. This risk‑averse environment creates a paradox.
Consumers loudly demand fresh experiences, yet purchasing behavior favors remakes, sequels, and proven brands. Arrowhead’s own success with Helldivers—an indie‑born title that broke through to mainstream attention—illustrates how a combination of luck, distinctive design, and strong brand identity can overcome the odds. Jorjani pointed to companies such as Riot Games and Supercell as exemplars of a diversified portfolio strategy: they develop several projects simultaneously, knowing that a single blockbuster will dominate attention while the others linger in the background. For smaller studios, however, this approach is less viable.
Instead, Jorjani believes indie developers possess a strategic edge because they can validate concepts early and iterate rapidly. "The secret sauce to any successful game is early validation," he 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." He cited the indie hit Tiny Glade as a case study: early promotional GIFs generated viral interest week after week, allowing the team to refine the experience based on community reaction rather than waiting for a polished, four‑year build before launching a massive marketing push.
Arrowhead intends to adopt a similar methodology for its next project, drawing inspiration from mobile‑game studios that routinely test concepts through ad‑based A/B experiments before committing to full production. "We’re going to be putting it in the hands of players right away as soon as possible," Jorjani affirmed.
"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." Jorjani concluded by emphasizing that the old playbook—keeping a project under wraps for years before a big reveal—must be abandoned in favor of continuous, transparent engagement with a target audience. He believes that this shift, combined with the rapid adoption of AI tools and the growing influence of Asian studios, will define the next five to ten years of the industry. For Arrowhead and other forward‑thinking developers, embracing early validation, leveraging brand equity, and staying agile in the face of technological change are the keys to thriving in an environment where the only constant is transformation.