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 - Intro1:21 - Why Big Success Can Be Dangerous3:31 - Luck Is 70%6:13 - The Hardest Part of Building a Studio: People7:57 - Ric’s Journey so Far9:45 - Becoming a Lead and Manager12:30 - How Does AAA Build Games?16:02 - Prototyping Rituals in AAA18:29 - Pre-Production and Messy Realities20:41 - Scrum Era, Sub-Teams, and the Human Factor22:50 - Charisma, Toxic Positivity, and Milestone Negotiations26:51 - Reputation Traps in Big Teams29:19 - Is Experience Overrated?30:56 - Culture Clashes and the Timeline Fallacy32:49 - Wisdom Over Experience39:12 - Choose Simple Solutions41:55 - Enforcing Pipelines42:26 - From Overengineering to Readability46:24 - When Copying Is Okay47:18 - Don’t Pre-Architect49:18 - Pick Patterns Per Problem54:16 - Be Nice to the CPU55:45 - Why Godot?58:40 - Signals, Call Stacks, and Deferring Work to the Frame1:00:37 - Queues and Frame-Slicing1:02:43 - Start From the Game: Feature Wishlists1:04:24 - Why Decoupling Matters1:05:46 - Turn Manager Example: Building Layer 01:12:06 - Layer 1 Orchestration: Game States and Combat Manager1:14:18 - Syntactic Compression1:17:47 - Micro-Managers: Mouse and Targeting Systems1:20:48 - What Makes a Great Gameplay Programmer1:22:56 - Anti-Patterns: Ego, Overcomplication, Blame1:24:39 - Coding Into a Corner: It’s Part of the Journey1:28:49 - Jonas’s Background and Goals1:31:18 - Coding Mastery vs Commercial Success1:34:02 - Path to Mastery: New Engines, Teams, and Contexts1:35:22 - Reuse and Scalability Myths1:36:10 - Why Build Multiple CRPGs: What Really Transfers1:37:48 - Boredom and Scope Creep1:41:42 - Why Second Games Take Longer1:42:53 - Everyone Should Build an Engine1:48:20 - Why Unity/Unreal Feel Bloated1:50:49 - Godot’s Incentives: Smaller, Developer-First1:52:11 - Will Godot Grow? “Fighting the Engine” Metric1:56:41 - When to Pick Godot, Unity, or Unreal1:57:05 - Closing ThoughtsMy 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#OverviewMy 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/G3mRDrKFor the game developers among you:➤ Join our creative game dev community on Discord: https://discord.gg/Ye6zzfQ