WEBVTT

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We're in beautiful Tenerife with this beautiful sunset in background

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and it's really fitting when we're going to talk about, you know,

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arty and artful games with you, Yoan.

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Thank you so much for joining us.

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But before that, you guys have been talking about the European industry in this summit.

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Behind the scenes, what can you share about, you know, the challenges

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and how to boost and improve the industry from your friends' point of view?

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I think we are in a very, very good position, in fact, right now

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because of different factors that are sometimes external to video games.

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In fact, you know, Asia struggles with many, many things.

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And the fact also that there's the Ukrainian war, also that Eastern Europe

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is not a place where you can develop games anymore, of course.

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And the fact that America also is very protective and very expensive also to make things there.

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So that, in fact, put us in a very nice position in Europe.

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We are kind of in the center now of the creativity of video games.

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So, and it's good.

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I think we also deserve it because there's a lot of creativity coming from here.

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So the countries like France, Spain, Italy, England, Germany,

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they were quite strong, in fact, in making games,

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even though a lot of talents were moving to Canada or to Asia

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because it was, you know, there was better condition of living there.

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But now, with COVID, they came back mostly in Europe.

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And it changes a lot of things because the creativity is back to Europe.

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And you can feel it because you see all those studios acquired by a group.

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They are mostly in Europe because this is where our creativity happens, in fact.

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Let's talk a little bit about games.

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It's interesting that you mentioned America.

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And you know, Road 96 was one of the, in our opinion,

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one of the best games last year, if I'm correct.

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Thank you.

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We gave it a 10 out of 10.

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So it really touched us.

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It tells about a dystopian, not so distant future, perhaps.

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So what can you tell us about this message

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and what you guys tried to convey with the game?

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We tried to mix, in fact, in a dystopian world,

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different issues that a lot of countries are facing about politics,

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about evolution of democracy that is evolving not so much in a good way sometimes.

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So we didn't want to point out one country specifically.

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And we tried to mix all of them.

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We tried to mix all the USSR, you know, Russia before the communist countries together.

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And then we wanted to mix that with some weird stuff that happened in Argentina.

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And, you know, countries because of the oil price going really down

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because the US was not buying any more their oil.

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And also the US style of extreme capitalism and like money is more important than anything.

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And we mixed all of this together.

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And it's funny.

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I mean, it's not funny, but a lot of players from all over the world,

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they really identified it as their own country.

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And it was very interesting.

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Like Russian people saying, oh, is it a criticism of our own regime?

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And then Chinese people saying the same, American, French.

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I was like, OK, that's weird.

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If everybody identifies to this issue, that means we have a global issue.

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So how did you make the stories make sense?

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Because, of course, it's some sort of procedural narrative, which was crazy.

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But at the same time, you change order.

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You see the characters in different order.

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But the stories still make sense.

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So I can imagine this whiteboard of yours full of notes.

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And how did you make that work?

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That was very, very complex for sure.

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We had to be very methodological and make sure we know exactly what we say in which sequence

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and how it interacts with other sequences.

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So it's like a big, big matrix of things.

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And to know that, OK, if we tell this information in that sequence,

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because we don't know when you're going to have this sequence and where you're going to have it,

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then we have to make sure it makes sense for another sequence later.

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And also the pacing of it and the way the story unfolds, it does not depend on us.

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So it was a lot of tests, play tests and tweaking.

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Basically, if this happens, this happens, this happens,

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if all the big bits of the story happens at the beginning,

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then you have like five hours of nothing, of something more.

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So we had to tweak it to make sure by the value of the score, I would say, of each sequence,

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that we say, OK, you have this sequence that has a big score.

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Now you have another sequence.

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Maybe later you're going to have a big sequence again.

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And also there were some specific rules that we had for the prototype.

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If you met this character in your trip to the border, you're not going to get this character again.

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It's very simple, but we don't want character to remember you and say,

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Hey, I met you on the road again.

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I was like, no, no, we cannot remember.

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Yeah, there would be so many dialogues in this case.

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So it was not possible for sure.

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So this kind of thing.

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Also the fact that we don't focus on who you play, but on who you meet.

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And this was a big deal.

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Like making a narrative game, not about you, but about just the people you meet.

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And at the beginning, I was struggling with the story about that,

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because usually you put a lot of effort on making a good character.

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And now it's like, no, we don't care.

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It can be a girl or a man, we don't care.

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And so there was a lot of challenges.

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But I think it's really worth it, because at the end, because people say,

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Hey, if I play, I don't have the same beginning.

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Even the first sequence is different.

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So they say, maybe I'll give it a try.

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I just saw this streamer playing it, and I will do it my own way.

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This is the thing, do it your own way.

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You mentioned the way players in different parts of the world understood the message.

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And many of them thought in a very honest way, well, this looks like my country.

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But there were also some people who were offended,

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who didn't want the game to be advertised on their platform.

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How do you feel about that?

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Yeah, I understood.

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I was not surprised, in fact, by that.

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So I know we were going on the political side,

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and that would create some big reactions.

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And in fact, I loved it.

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I was like, OK, it's going to happen for sure.

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And like I said to the team, I prefer that we make a game that people react to it.

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Either they love it or they hate it.

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Instead of doing something in the middle that nobody cares about,

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and it's just like invisible.

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So it's all about like, yeah, if you have people who will really, really love it,

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and that's more important.

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And don't be affected too much by the people who hate it.

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But still, we have to listen to them,

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because there are some very important information to that.

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And so it's really a good adventure.

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And yeah, the funny thing is that like Facebook, you know,

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they banned our advertisement.

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They didn't mention any platform.

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Yeah, to be political.

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The funny thing is that it was even robots like AI, you know,

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they try to analyze your ads.

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I was like, whoa, I discovered that AI analyze things and remove it.

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I was like, whoa, this is quite weird, you know, in our world.

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But at the end, they allowed us, when we said,

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no, no, this is just a video game, please can you put this advertisement.

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They just did it.

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But it shows something about the society now.

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It's a lot of AI are doing a lot of things.

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We're getting there.

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It's a little bit creepy and disturbing.

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Another game that touched my heart personally was Valiant Hearts.

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It really does still today.

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So how do you feel looking back at that project,

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which I think you then did much bigger projects coming from that one.

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So how do you feel about that one,

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which scale was smaller to the beautiful graphics

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and the way you told the story from two sides?

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Yeah, but for me, it's really my heart project.

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It's a very specific project because of the family connection.

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I was very inspired by my great grandfather's story at war.

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And so this one was a very, very personal project.

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And it's still a bit emotional.

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And it's good to share that and to see that people really feel it.

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And they discovered that war is not what war is supposed to be sometimes.

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And now with the new war that you can see more on TV now,

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they realize also that, yeah, you still have trenches.

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It's the same.

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You know, you have this famous thing that war never changes.

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And it's still the same.

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Even though the weapons are more modern,

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it's still trenches and stuff and people dying for nothing.

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So I am really happy that this game could be there

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and that people could really discover other side of the war with that game.

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And I think it still remains the game that really changed the way I wanted to make games also.

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That's amazing.

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And I remember the dog, of course.

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Everyone remembers the dog.

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And you see, there's been this trend about petting the dogs and petting animals in video games.

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So you were one of the first.

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We had that before the trend.

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Of course, you were before.

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But there were other games, of course, perhaps not the very first one, but you were there.

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Fable was there also.

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So how do you guys think about the dog as a role and as a character

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and the sort of love both sides would show to the dog?

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For us, it was very important to have an animal

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because it's obvious that the animal has no political side, nation, whatever.

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It doesn't care.

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And so that's good to have this as a proof of this is silly.

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Like, look at this dog.

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It doesn't care if he's on this side, the German side, the French side.

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It really doesn't care.

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So this is good to...

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It's almost a kid way to show that this is...

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And that's why also in the 11-11, the other game I did, you know, about World War I,

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we even put...

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There was two animals, a cat on one side and a bird on the other side.

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And we wanted them to cross each other.

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Same to make the link between the two sides and say,

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come on, this is so silly.

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Look at those animals.

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They really don't care and everybody loves them.

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So...

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Yeah, that's great.

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Closing one.

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What can we expect from Digic's art next?

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Aha.

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I cannot tell too much.

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Some animals.

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Check.

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Some beautiful art.

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Crazy storytelling.

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The funny thing is that we had very good friends in Montpellier

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who did, you know, Stray, the game with the cats.

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I'm allergic to cats, but I know...

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So, yeah, it's funny that it's from the same city and it's our friend.

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So, yeah, no, maybe not animal.

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I don't know.

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You know, it's hard to animate animal.

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But, you know, it's...

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We're going to go in more narrative, in more complex,

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because like we did for RUN96,

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we wanted to have innovation, something really, really new.

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And right now we like challenges,

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so we're going to have more challenges with new mechanics,

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trying to see what we can do in new narrative space.

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But also not only narrative.

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I don't want to stick, like, you know, only on narrative.

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I'm afraid of the telltale experience.

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Like, you know, after a while,

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you just do the same type of game again and again,

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and obviously it's going to collapse.

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It requires more action and more...

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Yeah, so that's why we really want to put more gameplay for sure inside.

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And so now it's more finding a good balance of great and deep gameplay

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and still narration, because we like to tell stories.

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And art.

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Yeah, yeah.

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But not just narrative games, for sure.

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We really want to tackle both together.

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When, more or less, can we expect to learn more from you?

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Well, it takes time, you know, to make games.

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And more and more.

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And the more ambitious is the next game,

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the more it takes time to find.

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It's like research.

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So to find, to make a lot of prototypes, play tests,

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see what works, what doesn't work.

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And it's an iterative process, as you know, making games.

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So right now, today, we really don't know when it's going to come out.

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It could be two years, three years.

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All right.

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We'll see.

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Yeah.

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Looking forward to learning more about DigiXart.

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DigiXart.

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Thank you so much for your time.

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Thank you.

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Thank you very much.

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Thank you.