Game Studio Director, Paxton Galvanek - Telegrams for Guests

The mobile gaming market is highly competitive, how does a young dev company build a game to compete in such a saturated market or is it growing fast enough that competition is minimal?

Alex

Second question: I saw trend in worklife and blue collar work to remove all middlemanagement, ie in bus company only drivers and CEO/executive board basicly... in software development, I've seen stronger and stronger trend to introduce "back" these middlemanagerial roles (ie. Lead developer, lead artist...), so there must be clear advantage... A) Knowing how turbulent (people leave by 30) gaming industry is, how big problem this management experience leaving in form of more experienced employees, who could rise to that position? B) Big question: How different or similar game industry is in this management aspect (how crucial part it is) vs software engineering and other technical/marketing/administrative industries(that is, work happening in office with computer basicly) ? [Ken Levine basicly saved Bioshock Infinite, from development hell, by coming back to lead this AAA-project, that I know of, possibly more things like this happen all the time]

Timo H

Any whispers about Star Citizen given the recent opening of the public test universe? Have the project's concept of a literal sandbox universe, the game play and its overall goals been to ambitious for available support hardware and software programming? As we've all lost out on the hopes for a Star Citizen CP 2077 bundle, any chances for some GTA 6 / Star Citizen bundle adverts during the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan?

Sarcastro

Hello Tom and Paxton, Have you identified a common problem that needs a solution for game development? I imagine game developers have unique gripes per department, but does any issue stand out? Hope you have a great day!

Endless Logins

Hello Paxton and Tom, Regarding games for Dune; Frank Herbert provided a wealth of source material in 7 novels for the settings of these games, what sort of research and decision making occurs between executives and game developers to agree to accept such a project? What work goes into a pitch meeting for securing the rights? Paxton, are you prepared to drink the water of life and face the inevitable sub-Reddit combing through and debating the novels vs. games?

Sarcastro

Hi there Tom and distinguished guest! Few questions: How are game developers using reality capture to better design levels and landscapes of the game? Also what technology’s are making this easier to use? Do studios use third parties to help make the environments? What are the technologies you see making the biggest differences in game development? I.e. CPU’s like threadripper?

Brad Medlin

Hello there, as a computer science student I am curious on your opinion on what will be the next "sub-genre" of computer science (for example data sciences, cyber security) to really explode as a field. This could be things such as a re-emergence of an already existing field, or a new field popping up and taking the landscape by storm, in-lane with how crypto currency and block chain really exploded in the twenty-teens. As always hope you have a wonderful day.

Hi Tom and Paxton, What are your thoughts on the early access funding model? On one hand, I find it way better than pre-ordering to help out a developer and it provides a lot of play testing which seems hard to beat. On the other hand, I like being surprised by a game and its mechanics and early access can kind of takes the mystery of a game away. Early access seems like a safe bet financially and from the standpoint that the internet at large can be overly critical of EVERYTHING, this way they know exactly what they're getting because they helped build it. Thanks again for the great content! -Matt

shredbird

Hey Paxton and Tom. I was curious generally what percent of a games development budget go toward salaries? How does that compare to other costs like licensing, hardware, and utilities? Does the ratio of salaries to other costs differ in Indie studios and Triple-A studios?

Hello Tom and guest. I have a few questions. Firstly, how closely do you interact with the game developers? Do you interview them personally and talk to them daily or do you leave that to someone closer to the ground? Secondly, how do you know what direction to take with certain games? For example, what makes you decide to develop an MMO instead of a horror game? Do game devs get to make their own game pitches that could eventually be made real? Lastly, what's your opinion on certain work environments for game studios. What are some pros and cons to a flat corporate structure like valve compared to a more traditional structure at a company like Nintendo?

yoda king

Have you had any experience with Implementing either AMD's FSR, Nvidia's DLSS? If so what are your thoughts either or both? ....Also have you by chance had the option of trying out Intels upcoming solution XeSS? I remember reading somewhere that devs would have access to the SDK already.

otiv lcurtš

Hi guys, I feel like many games fall short of their goals and many series get derailed when they lose track of what makes them engaging and enjoyable to play, and often it seems neither the devs or the community can really pin down why… Do you think there is often a fundamental misunderstanding by both sides as to what systems or gameplay and plot elements actually make a game fun? Or is it that there are flaws in the planning or management of goals, ambitions, and how people want to go about achieving those?

qhfreddy

Hello Paxton! Can I ask, what are your thought on CDPR's Cyberpunk 2077 fiasco? In my eyes it is one off the worst cases of a disconnect between marketing people and actual developers. I also want to ask , whether in your opinion, the quality-checking of games has truly degraded over the past decade? In the last 3-4 years we've had multiple instances in which big AAA studios announced their next new big titles only for them to be incredibly unpolished at launched, such as: Cyberpunk, Fallout 76, EA's Anthem and mass effect: Andromeda, just to name a few.

otiv lcurtš

Thank you Paxton for coming on the podcast, and I don’t know a ton about game development, so forgive any ignorant questions. How much VRAM do you want for GPUs in the coming future, the lowest for any future card and ultra high end, the 80/800, 90/900 and Titan class cards? When do you see ray tracing becoming more wide spread over traditional rasterization?

Benjamin Cannon

Hello Tom and Paxton! As a Dune fan I really want to ask about the timeline in which this Dune game is set in. Is this game a Tie-in with the upcoming Villenuove movie? Will it be set before the first book (like Westwood Games's Dune was? Will the game be primarily based of off Frank Herberts work or off of Bryan Herberts expanded series? Thank you for your time. P.S.: Tom, my name is backwards

otiv lcurtš

Hey Tom and Paxton! Dune game ...is it going to be good? The David Lynch film was God-awful. In theory, I'm all in for a high-concept, sci-fi world with rich lore; sell it to me.

Go-Kart

Hi, generic question of management/leadership. How different middlemanagement of leading of department/company like that is truly industry to industry, considering same project like environments? It is pretty much different from low level employee tasks, and frankly CEO's look very same regardless of industry. Of course, to be good, knowledge, personal experience of those tasks team does, makes excellent leader, manager in long run, mere MBA cant (without extensive interest)... this is in sports very common, yet in business life not so much.

Timo H

Hey Tom and Paxton: Given how the latest consoles are targeting 4K screens, which tend to be on the larger side of TVs, do you think we'll **finally** start seeing things like independent text/UI scaling controls becoming a standard accessibility feature? I get why developers have a hard time prototyping these sorts of things, since the tools probably don't scale up to 40+ inch screens in any resolution, but it'd be nice to see things improve, especially when there's a bigger push for accessibility in user experiences.

Cleansweep

Hey Tom and Paxton, I am an aspiring game developer. Currently trying to get into the gaming industry andIam a recently finished my computer engineering degree and I have experience in Unity, Maya, CC3 (Character Creator 3), and IClone. I have taken multiple interviews but still can't get a job yet do you have any advice on which software I should focus on to make my resume more appealing to gaming companies?

Kinihun25