This is a conversation with Ricard Pillosu, an industry veteran with over 20 years in both AAA and indie teams, currently working as Co-Founder at Epictellers a 30+ head team working on the CRPG Starfinder: Afterlight.
Links to my Guests
➤ Starfinder: Afterlight on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/3245640/
➤ Epictellers Website: https://www.epictellers.com/
Listen to the podcast on the go (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc.):
➤ https://tyrollerjonas.podbean.com/
0:00 - Intro
1:21 - Why Big Success Can Be Dangerous
3:31 - Luck Is 70%
6:13 - The Hardest Part of Building a Studio: People
7:57 - Ric’s Journey so Far
9:45 - Becoming a Lead and Manager
12:30 - How Does AAA Build Games?
16:02 - Prototyping Rituals in AAA
18:29 - Pre-Production and Messy Realities
20:41 - Scrum Era, Sub-Teams, and the Human Factor
22:50 - Charisma, Toxic Positivity, and Milestone Negotiations
26:51 - Reputation Traps in Big Teams
29:19 - Is Experience Overrated?
30:56 - Culture Clashes and the Timeline Fallacy
32:49 - Wisdom Over Experience
39:12 - Choose Simple Solutions
41:55 - Enforcing Pipelines
42:26 - From Overengineering to Readability
46:24 - When Copying Is Okay
47:18 - Don’t Pre-Architect
49:18 - Pick Patterns Per Problem
54:16 - Be Nice to the CPU
55:45 - Why Godot?
58:40 - Signals, Call Stacks, and Deferring Work to the Frame
1:00:37 - Queues and Frame-Slicing
1:02:43 - Start From the Game: Feature Wishlists
1:04:24 - Why Decoupling Matters
1:05:46 - Turn Manager Example: Building Layer 0
1:12:06 - Layer 1 Orchestration: Game States and Combat Manager
1:14:18 - Syntactic Compression
1:17:47 - Micro-Managers: Mouse and Targeting Systems
1:20:48 - What Makes a Great Gameplay Programmer
1:22:56 - Anti-Patterns: Ego, Overcomplication, Blame
1:24:39 - Coding Into a Corner: It’s Part of the Journey
1:28:49 - Jonas’s Background and Goals
1:31:18 - Coding Mastery vs Commercial Success
1:34:02 - Path to Mastery: New Engines, Teams, and Contexts
1:35:22 - Reuse and Scalability Myths
1:36:10 - Why Build Multiple CRPGs: What Really Transfers
1:37:48 - Boredom and Scope Creep
1:41:42 - Why Second Games Take Longer
1:42:53 - Everyone Should Build an Engine
1:48:20 - Why Unity/Unreal Feel Bloated
1:50:49 - Godot’s Incentives: Smaller, Developer-First
1:52:11 - Will Godot Grow? “Fighting the Engine” Metric
1:56:41 - When to Pick Godot, Unity, or Unreal
1:57:05 - Closing Thoughts
My game "Thronefall":
➤ Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2239150/Thronefall/
➤ Discord: https://discord.gg/gVYctptyg8
➤ Nintendo Switch: https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Thronefall-2669627.html#Overview
My game "Will You Snail":
➤ Play Will You Snail on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1115050/Will_You_Snail/
➤ Join the Will You Snail Discord: https://discord.gg/G3mRDrK
For the game developers among you:
➤ Join our creative game dev community on Discord: https://discord.gg/Ye6zzfQ