DevGAMM speakers used Expedition 33 as an example of nerve

On 25 July 2026 at the DevGAMM Madeira Games Summit, studios, publishers and independent teams talked about one fear. New games look more and more alike because the risk is cleaned out at the pitch.

Rami Ismail, co-founder of Vlambeer, led the talk. Publishers and investors, he said, strip out anything contentious and ask for a product aimed at the widest audience. The counterexamples on the table were Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Balatro and Peak: attention and sales followed a strange idea.

He treats nerve as the main quality of projects that land, on the developer side and on the side that writes the cheques. The industry’s biggest risk now, he says, is fear of an experiment.

Former PlayStation chief Shawn Layden has put a similar point. Budgets keep rising, large companies stick to a proven formula, and the room that remains goes to games with a genuinely new idea.