"CTO in Focus" Thomas Kolbabek, Golden Whale
- Kevin Jones
- Apr 7
- 5 min read
As part of our CTO in Focus series, Gaming Eminence spoke with Thomas Kolbabek, CTO of Golden Whale Productions, about building resilient systems, leading with curiosity, and embracing experimentation within regulatory constraints. Kolbabek shared why intellectual honesty and modular architecture have shaped his approach across industries, and how a “no-integration” data platform reflects his instinct to challenge norms. From enabling autonomy in fast-feedback environments to likening compliance to “flying a helicopter in a living room,” Kolbabek unpacks the evolving intersection of deep tech and behavioural insight—and why the future of gaming must be driven by data, not assumptions.
Gaming Eminence: You’ve moved across industries and roles, yet now, at Golden Whale, your leadership sits at the intersection of deep tech and behavioural insight. What personal principles have stayed constant through that evolution—and which have you had to unlearn or deliberately reshape as a CTO?
TK) "Curiosity and intellectual honesty have always been my anchors. I’ve experienced the most enduring progress when I changed my perspective in the face of new facts. Those moments have often been both painful and exhilarating to me at the same time.
A big driver for my motivation has always been finding structures with the potential to deeply change how an industry works and create a different, far higher level of efficiency. This has been the case with shifting our business into the connected world and what we’ve always set out to do through our work at Golden Whale.
What I’ve had to unlearn is the desire to build systems and products based on too many assumptions. Even if architected and executed perfectly from a technical perspective, only a portion of those assumptions ever truly materialise. As such, even after 25+ years in the industry I always try not assume that I know how players, games or operations behave, but instead rely on data and hard facts to change my perspective when needed."
Gaming Eminence: Every technical leader leaves a certain imprint—on architecture, cadence, culture. If we stripped away the company name and just studied the systems, what would quietly reveal: “this was built under Thomas Kolbabek”?
TK) “Resilience” summarises it best as I was fortunate to initiate architecture, systems and processes that have been being used and developed for decades, going through several orders of magnitude in terms of clients, users, data volume and concurrent players.
Architecturally, a bias for modularity at the right time, making it easy to experiment without risking stability and avoiding complexity early on. On cadence, I gravitate toward fast feedback loops and prefer a hundred small course corrections to a massive plan pivot. Culturally, I was told repeatedly that I provide a “sphere of calmness” that enables people to focus and share concerns freely within my organisations.
Operationally I found that having smaller self-sufficient teams with a clear separation of the planned and unplanned makes everyone more effective, providing longer stretches of much needed “focus time” with minimal dependencies and context-switches.
I hope that everything I do invites curiosity, not fear. If everyone can ask “Why?” comfortably, that’s a sign I’ve left my mark."
Gaming Eminence: Tell me about a moment—whether a technical fork in the road or a hiring decision—where you chose a path others wouldn’t have. What shaped that divergence in your thinking, and what did you learn in hindsight about your own instincts?
TK) "Technically I still find it difficult to build systems that are not clearly defined initially, which is ironic because when you work on frontier deep tech at the intersection of Machine Learning and real-time gaming environments like we do, there’s no blueprint to follow.
Early on at Golden Whale we debated methods of integration and APIs that have become omnipresent and tedious in our industry, so against convention, I chose a “no-integration” approach. This meant we built our platform foundation to accept any data source and I still smile when clients ask for our API documentation and I get to tell them there is none!
In hiring I prefer to discuss expectations early on and both ask for and provide feedback openly. My intention was and still is to minimise “time to clarity”, for the candidate and myself wherever possible. In hindsight, I initially missed a chance to prepare people before the first interview and providing better directions has made that process less alien."
Gaming Eminence: You operate in a space where experimentation is crucial, but the guardrails—regulatory, ethical, infrastructural—are real. How do you personally manage that tension without diluting either? Is there a principle, framework, or even a gut check you rely on when navigating those fault lines?
TK) "I like to view these guardrails as a defined multi-dimensional room. Each side is evolving with a different speed and has a different shape and material. Some are very clearly defined, while others require interpretation. To top it off, that room has a different shape for each region, product and delivery channel.
As a principle I learned to accept and at times even rely on these boundaries and their tensions when making decisions on both the product and the underlying technology.
The optimal operating point is found when the tension is strong, but you don’t hit the wall on either side. In our industry we make decisions on how to operate most effectively in such an environment, which I often compare to “flying a helicopter in a living room”.
From a technical perspective I strive to consider and embed these guardrails into systems and data, moving to automated decision-making and recommendations wherever possible. This supports me to keep the blades close to the wall, without actually hitting it."
Gaming Eminence: Looking ahead, what part of the technological horizon actually keeps you thinking at night—not in a stress-driven way, but from sheer intellectual intrigue? What are the questions you’re turning over in your head, even when they’re not yet roadmap-ready?
TK) "The long-term impact of technology on our industry is what makes my mind wander most. How will we build and operate day-to-day 10, 20 or 30 years from now? Will AI empower the many or the few and will entertainment become secondary to the rise of conflicts and tensions?
Looking back it feels like the start of the industrial revolution, which brought changes in pace and methodology worldwide when we were mostly analogue. Now we are digital.
On a more short-term horizon, I’m most intrigued by an increased willingness to experiment and learn, which enables us to explore the possibilities within the previously mentioned living room.
The continuously collected data from that exploration provides us with much-needed fuel to make the right decision at the right time. Supported by predictive systems, we’ll see an entirely new way to operate that’s less opinionated and more curious. We can finally let the helicopter fly successfully and safely, while using our creativity to explore further."