What We Really Saw at Gamescom 2025: Pressure, Patterns, and the Power of Staying Indie
At Gamescom 2025, we saw the future of gaming. Beyond the spectacle, key gaming trends emerged: the quiet rise of AI in games, the persistent push of VR gaming, and the new power of indie game development. Our reflections reveal that true creative innovation is now in the hands of the bold.
Gamescom 2025 – Reflections from the Floor
The biggest gaming event of the year, perhaps even of the era, Gamescom 2025, drew thousands of studios in pursuit of the same elusive goals: funding, visibility, and relevance. The halls of Gamescom buzzed with energy, but also with anxiety. A strange duality persists: everyone is chasing creative innovation, yet few are willing to take the real risks that true innovation demands.
What we saw was a pattern. Fear often wins. Studios play it safe. Art styles repeat. Advice is recycled. But amid all the noise, a few clear signals cut through. That’s where we choose to focus, identifying key gaming trends that will shape the future of gaming.
VR Gaming: Still Exciting, Still Fragile
Virtual reality is not dead, but it remains delicate. Growth is uneven. Expectations are misaligned. The audience is shifting; young gamers gravitate towards open, chaotic worlds, while more seasoned players look for depth and immersion. Both expectations are valid, but few are delivering meaningfully on either.
At Gamescom, one thing was clear. VR gaming remains open for bold thinkers. Indie game development is best positioned to lead. Their agility, freedom, and lack of legacy baggage enable genuine progress and creative innovation.
On the Floor: Observations and Conversations
Some of our biggest takeaways came not from booths but from candid conversations.
Speaking with AAA narrative leads reminded us that the hunger for disruptive storytelling is alive. What’s missing is not the technology but the bravery. The games that stood out were not the most funded. They were the ones that broke format, dared to be strange, or simply refused to conform to current gaming trends.
The AI in Games Shift Has Already Begun
AI was a quiet undercurrent across the entire convention, present in conversations, demos, and tools.
For some, it is viewed with suspicion. For us, it is already integrated. Virtual Dawn is building adaptive, emotionally responsive RPG Worlds through Taika. At Gamescom, we saw others doing the same, including studios prototyping dialogue engines, mental health support bots, and AI-infused modding tools.
We also formed a promising partnership with a company developing AI-powered therapeutic systems, which we’ll share more on soon.
The future of gaming is not waiting. It is already here.
Learn more about Virtual Dawn's Taika AI Chatbot
What This All Means for Virtual Dawn
We came to Gamescom to showcase our work. We left with renewed conviction.
We are not here to follow. We are here to create what others won’t. Our vision is to build tools, games, and experiences that challenge conventions and embrace experimentation. In Finland, gaming investment is consolidating, but we believe in an alternate path. One led by speed, creative risk, and community collaboration.
We are also now preparing for our subsequent major releases, including FISTAGON, a sequel to Evacuation Zone: Tampere, and a wild side-project drinking game, because we can, and we wanted to.
Interested?
Looking Ahead
We look to expand beyond gaming into training, education, and browser-based RPGs. Support from communities like Gamescom and partners like Dimecc through the ESCALTECH Program is helping make that happen.
To those in the industry who still feel like misfits, experimenters, and rule-breakers, let’s build the next wave together.
