This article was originally published on November 21, 2025 - read the full issue

By Marie Dealessandri

Our inaugural Knowledge Live event took place in London yesterday, hosted by our very own Patrick Garratt, with discussions ranging from financial pressures and sustainability to generative AI.

We'll dedicate an entire article to the latter topic in next week's issue, but Gareth Damian Martin (Citizen Sleeper 1 & 2), Hannah Flynn (Failbetter Games), Agostino Simonetta (GSC Game World) and Jörg Tittel (RapidEyeMovers) also shared their experiences from navigating the industry's recent challenges. Here are four key points from the session.

"The old days are not coming back": You need to adapt your cost structure

Our panellists discussed the changing industry landscape – the mutation has accelerated in recent years and those hoping for things to come back to what it was should instead figure out how to adapt to this new normal.

"The industry has been changing at a faster rate in the last five to seven years," Simonetta said. "A lot of companies didn't realise that the change was faster than ever before, because there had been a lot of inorganic money going into the business [with] new players coming to the west.

"Unfortunately, two and a half years ago, the music stopped. And then suddenly, we realised that the model that most of us were used to – very little competition and traditional publisher funding – was gone. The challenge we're facing today is a transformation from the old business model to a completely new business model, which is not just Game Pass, it's not just Roblox, it's not just free-to-play. It has changed so much that, a lot of the time, the struggle is simply that a lot of companies have not adapted their cost structure. Their strategy is no longer in line with the industry we have today. 'Surviving 2024', 'surviving 2025' is always closing your eyes to the reality that the old days are not coming back. Our industry has changed forever and we need to adapt to the new environment. The cost profile, the way you develop, the way you take risks, has changed."

"You don't delay a theatre show date": Build your project around the time scale

The industry's fast transformation started in 2020 when the pandemic hit, which is also when Martin started developing games. They have released three games since, including the hugely successful Citizen Sleeper series, coming from a diverse background – a degree in puppetry and theatre, design and journalism work, and a PhD in experimental literature. Their approach to making games adapted to what they were able to do rather than trying to do too much, too quickly.

"I saw the opportunity through Kickstarter, to jump into the industry with the skills that I had – I could use writing skills, graphic design skills, and I had an interest in programming although I programmed all my games with visual scripting," they said. "I knew I could make a game to fit [my skills]. So the starting point was: what can I actually get away with? What's the smallest thing?

"Coming out of a 'poor' artistic background, where you're used to working for no money and you still hit your show date, [it was interesting]... You don't miss the show date, you don't delay a theatre show. So I came from this cut-to-fit mentality, where you build a project around a time scale, and you design the project around the money, the skills, and the opportunities you have. And then you build up from there. For me, the aim is always to build towards: 'Can I get enough money so that I don't need anybody else's money?' That seemed like the most obvious way to protect myself."

"There isn't a value you can place on institutional memory": Take (better) care of your staff

Flynn also talked of the importance of employee sustainability and why it makes both business and human sense to take better care of your staff.

"There isn't really a value you can place on institutional memory," she noted. "It's extremely important – a big problem the industry has is a high turnover of staff, over-expansion, over-consumption of your resources, and not being commensurate between your ambition, skills and runway. Balancing that is so important.

"Failbetter is a small company. There are 17 of us. We've never been more than 18. I've been there 11 years, and the majority of us have been there more than five. So, we invest hugely in keeping people operating within a sustainable span. We don't crunch, we don't ask more from people routinely in any sense that they can't give us. I don't do overtime unless it's pre-arranged. That's what sustainability is. It's people's lives, basically. It's not a paper consideration – it's a life consideration."

She also noted how Failbetter saved £150,000 in rent when deciding to leave its London office and go fully remote. In exchange, the studio was able to raise employees' benefits, another good example of placing your staff's wellbeing first and foremost.

"We've all become addicted to this capitalist model of industry": Scale up intelligently

Since the old model has disappeared, building a sustainable studio in this new normal was a core part of the discussion. Scaling up intelligently and incrementally was the main takeaway from our panellists.

"You don't need to have 80 people to make a prototype," Tittel said. "We've all become so slavishly addicted to this capitalist model of industry. That is our first trap. I frankly don't give a crap about the 'industry' because I don't think we should be working in factories. We make art. When people ask me the question, 'Do you think VR will ever take off?', I go: 'Do you think theatre will ever take off?' I mean, some people make a lot of money with a really successful show here and there, but actually the ones that fail are still making plays and somehow subsisting on it.

"You're not entitled to make a lot of money doing this. It's scary out there but also it's not our job to keep PlayStation afloat. We're not here to lift the platforms up. Technically, we should be standing on top of them. So I'm hoping that we can sort of see this shift, where we actually don't just look at successes by someone like Gareth as this freak [example]."

He concluded: "There are opportunities out there to actually steer even those big-ass corporate ships into new directions and to bring new audiences in. Let's start getting at each other's throats a little bit less at the bottom, because we're being divided and conquered by big tech a lot right now. We can just start making and creating stuff, supporting each other, and I think that when you find those tribes around you, the money will come as well."

This article was originally published on November 21, 2025 - read the full issue