"Can we meaningfully predict how things go?" How AI could shape how publishers invest

Analyst Joost van Dreunen, founder of SuperData Research and now Aldora, argues that small language models (SLMs) can transform business intelligence in the games industry. Unlike large language models, SLMs are cheaper, energy-efficient, run locally on edge devices, and can be combined with private company data securely. Van Dreunen explains how traditional market research is too slow for today's fast-moving games market, and how SLMs could give companies rapid, expert-level access to market insights. Aldora is building a product—expected Q2/Q3—that combines a decade of structured and unstructured games industry data into a localized SLM, allowing publishers and non-endemic brands to query market trends, forecast CEO decisions, and analyze their own projects without exposing proprietary data to external servers.