Tomorrow will see the debut of the fourth Galaxies Showcase, which has managed to carve out a space of its own in the increasingly crowded lineup of digital showcases that have blossomed since the pandemic. Its indie and double-A lineup occupies a careful middle ground between the purely-digital indie collaborations at the bottom of the market and Geoff Keighley’s top-dollar showcase at the top – with platform-led events like State of Play and Nintendo Direct occupying rarefied air alongside. Galaxies’ pitch is a high-end studio production, anchored by Outside Xbox’s Jane Douglas, delivering a tightly curated hour – and no more – of game trailers, mixing paid and free placements.
Galaxies founder Chris Thomas set out to “make the show that I would want to watch,” he says, “which is one that’s respectful of your time. I went to E3 for years and you’d go to the EA press conference – this is no slight on EA – and sit through 15 minutes of FIFA and NFL when I wanted to see, like, Mass Effect.” His dream showcase was a high-quality production with what he describes as “tapas-style” variety of games: no asides or developer interviews, “and if there’s a game on screen you don’t care about, you only have to wait no more than 59 seconds to be served something else.”
The approach has proved successful. The audience for the spring showcase – the event airs twice a year, in April and October, which Thomas says is the result of putting every other event in an Excel sheet and and seeing which gaps the show could “own” – more than doubled in its second year, not including social clips. GameDiscoverCo data says that it drove an average wishlist gain of +17,731.
This represents a gamble paying off for Thomas, who launched Galaxies as a bootstrapped project after a ten-year stint leading video game sales at Twitch’s UK office, and before that sales roles at Gamespot UK and Videogamer. The experience left him with an abundance of professional and personal connections, including former GameSpot colleagues Douglas and Seb Ford, who runs games-focused production house DoubleJump. He also knew the shortcomings of the other showcases, from the games marketeers he spoke to every day.
“I kept hearing the same things: first-party showcases are invite-only so you can’t plan around them. Other major showcases are too expensive. And I realized I’d been at Twitch for ten years, it’s a good innings, I should probably start to think about something else. And I realised I’m uniquely positioned to do this because I’ve got all these client contacts. My best friend Seb, who I’ve known since I was four, has a video production company. I know Jane from our GameSpot days together. I’ve got all the pieces to have a stab at this. And if I don’t do it, who’s going to have a go at it? That was it, really.”
“And then it was: how can we be as disruptive as possible and as loud about it as we can, which basically just was me posting on LinkedIn every damn day and being a real pain in the ass to everyone.” The enterprise was, and remains, a lean operation: Thomas led sales and his partner, Ari Raad, served as curator for the games in the show.
Even with such advantages, the first showcase was a dice roll. “It was a big gamble,” says Thomas. “I’d left Twitch, we’d just moved house, I had a little bit of money left over, and it was just enough to pay for the recording of the show,” which took place in a small studio in Croydon.
“They didn’t ask for any money, which was great, because we didn’t have any”
There was enough left in the kitty for a single paid co-stream, from CohhCarnage, but the pitch was strong enough to land a number of other streamers as well. “We worked with Streamers Connected who were brilliant, and they just wanted to be involved. They didn’t ask for any money, which was great, because we didn’t have any. I think they just thought it was a cool idea and they wanted to get behind it. They came on board and whipped up some co-streamers, and we put a signup form for other Twitch co-streamers on our website. By the end of the first show we had 120.”
Then it was just a case of signing up the games, which he describes as “basically just me pulling every favour I had accrued over the years.” Konami, Remedy, Krafton, Kepler, and Team17 signed up, and the lineup included new Expedition 33 gameplay and Twitch drops for Black Desert Online. They were won over by what Thomas describes as “take-a-punt-on-it-pricing”, and what may be described as transparent uncertainty. “People would ask how many views it was going to get, and I would say ‘I have no idea. Your guess is literally as good as mine.’ I would try and make it very clear that if this is a high risk for you, then don’t do it. But no one backed down.”
After months of work, the show finally debuted in March 2025, exclusively on Twitch. This decision was practical rather than strategic. “I knew Twitch inside out,” says Thomas, “and I didn’t have a relationship with YouTube.” The event was co-streamed by IGN (which is operated by IGN Entertainment, the parent company of GamesIndustry.biz).
It worked, in no small part because Asmongold noticed the show and co-streamed it, adding a seven-figure view count across Twitch and YouTube. “We hit 23,000 concurrents or something like that, my phone blew up with messages from old colleagues and I was just in a trance state. It was surreal, after six months of work and gambling everything.”
The reach delivered good results for all parties. “And then a lot of the people who took part were like, ‘when’s the next one?’,” says Thomas. “So I thought, I guess we better do another one.” The show had made enough of an impact to open doors; a YouTube representative contacted Thomas on LinkedIn about supporting future broadcasts, and developers and publishers made contact. This delivered headline-worthy exclusive content, the stock-in-trade for any commercial showcase seeking a returning audience, and something the debut had been very light on. “We got no headlines,” says Thomas. “[PR agency] Swipe Right did an amazing job getting us any coverage at all.” The second show opened with the world premiere of cyberpunk shooter Defect, who approached Thomas direct; the third carried seven world premieres from publishers including Bandai Namco, Astragon Entertainment, and PQube.
Commerce and curation
The show is a mix of paid and free slots, the latter curated by Raad and the balance driven largely by the demand for the former. An abundance of paying customers means less room for free inclusions, although “the main priority is there a nice mix,” says Thomas. “You don’t want to go too heavy into Soulslikes, or pixel art, or racing games or whatever.” He sees the investment of commercial partners as funding exposure for the indie developers who otherwise couldn’t afford to take part.
“We want the people who are succeeding and doing well to pay for the indies and the solo devs who are never going to afford to be in a show”
“We want the people who have budgets and money, the people who are succeeding and doing well, to pay for the indies and the solo devs who are never going to afford to be in a show,” says Thomas. He’s passionate about the show being part of indie studios’ success, and showcasing games in places that otherwise wouldn’t highlight them. “The ultimate goal is: the front page of Twitch is pretty much always League of Legends, Grand Theft Auto, Dota. And it’s very much: how can we oxygenate the ecosystem and give stuff that no one’s ever seen an opportunity?”
The show’s initial success has enabled the organization to scale in turn, bringing on firms like influencer agency The Path to expand its reach. Thomas has continued to spend more on physical production, too, “because I’m a terrible businessman,” he says cheerfully. “As long as it looks and feels premium, that’s all that matters to me. Having a bigger stage, and a video wall, that just lends a sense of ceremony to the proceedings”. This month’s broadcast includes a post-show produced by Kinda Funny; Thomas says that he’ll continue to experiment with the show as time goes on, although that 60-minute runtime for the main event will remain sacrosanct.
Staying focused
He is not compelled to chase scale and margin, though. “The thing about not being publicly traded is that growth is what you want it to be,” he says, “and it doesn’t have to be an ever-expanding bottom line It can just be growth in the quality of the games. It can be a growth in brand recognition.” His ultimate goal remains making a show that people want to watch, and captures the enthusiasm that carried him into the games industry.
“My dream for Galaxies is that it becomes known as the place where enthusiasts go. I used to stay up until two, three in the morning to watch E3. Even back when it was PlayStation showing sales charts, I was enraptured. I want the show to be for people like me who really – pardon my French – fucking care, and really love surprises.”
For the clients, meanwhile, the focus is on reaching that audience. “I think that people who take part in our show can tell that we really care that their games succeed. And it’s not just a box-ticking exercise or a revenue-generating exercise. It’s a fun thing we do because we like to do it. It’s awesome. I can never go back to a normal job.”
IGN Entertainment, the parent company of GamesIndustry.biz, is a broadcast partner of Galaxies Showcase.