When Johnny Jan, founder and CEO of Winking Studios, reflects on the gaming industry, he puts it simply: “In good times or bad, people will always turn to games for entertainment, connection, and escape.” To Johnny, this belief isn’t just a romantic musing. It is a reality he is intimately familiar with, having run his studios since 1997, progressing to become a game art outsourcing and game development studio offering services to majority of the world’s biggest gaming companies. Its current client roster spans 22 of the top 25 global gaming firms, including Tencent, Sony, Microsoft, Nexon, and Square Enix. Unlike headline-grabbing game publishers with viral hits—think Game Science’s Blackmyth: Wukong or Epic Games’ Fortnite—Winking Studios operates behind the curtain. “We’re part of the value chain that brings gaming experiences to life behind the scenes,” Johnny explains. Currently, Winking Studios is embedded across four of the five stages of game…
