Well, here we are, Helene and I. Back in hang time.
“Hang time” refers to the moment, in many types of sports, when the athlete seems to be hanging in the air, in a perfect moment of weightlessness. The weightlessness is a lie, in a way: it’s not absence of weight, it’s merely the tipping point between kinetic energy propelling them upwards, and the pull of gravity about to reassert itself.
When Helene and I flew to Shanghai in 2003, it seemed a perfect metaphor to describe that moment of calm between the madness of leaving Montreal, and the dizzying experience awaiting us in Shanghai. And 4 years later, it strikes me: I’m back in hang time.
I’ve been gone from Ubisoft for 20 days now, basically doing nothing, and a whole lot of it. But as the days have been passing by, it slowly dawned on me that I was just about to move to Edmonton. It’s a striking reality now: in less than a week, Helene and I board a plane to Alberta. It’s real.
Tomorrow, movers come to pick up our stuff, and we will be left without a home, and without jobs, with only a few suitcases and our favorite travel companion, our cat Xishi. I’ll be spending a few days at my parents’ home with the cat, while Helene spends time with her best friend.
It will all feel so… weightless. But it’s a lie; gravity is just around the corner. And when we fall on our feet again, we’ll be standing in Edmonton.
Posted under Edmonton, Travel by Daniel on 30.01.2008
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As today is my last day at Ubisoft, here is my final reminiscing about the early years of my employment with the company…
In December 2005, Splinter Cell Double Agent X360 was in a dire situation. It was the first next-gen project undertaken by Ubisoft’s Shanghai studio, and as with all companies, the project ran into some really serious organizational problems. As a result, we didn’t have a game yet. We knew where we wanted to go, but we were stuck. And morale was at an all-time low.
Over the course of the previous year, I had become obsessed with management structures and quality. It felt to me that making a quality game was not the voodoo it usually seemed to be. I felt that quality games would happen if you focused the team on the right things, and showed them how to collaborate to succeed. I felt like I had a pretty good idea how to fix things, and that our current project structure, although successful on the last generation of consoles, was holding us back.
And so I took a deep breath, and I began reorganizing the team. It was a total blind dive for me; I had no experience to back up my claims, only a deep sense of rightness. I began reorganizing teams along features, instead of skill set, and I began laying out a roadmap to creating our game.
Beginning in February, I had a newly-formed crack team of 30 people. We had one single goal: to produce a playable demo for E3 this year. We had exactly two months to accomplish this. Two months.
Thus began the most satisfying part of my career thus far. It took a great lot of effort and coaching, but the team quickly found their way. They understood that the stakes were high, and that this was a fresh start. And gradually over the next two months, the guys turned into the most amazing team I’ve seen to this day.
I worked with some of the best guys in the industry over this short period of time. From Engine to AI to Sound; from Design to Animation; everyone, every single person brought their best to the table during that time. I’ve seen people display such fierce will to win and such determination that to this day, I am humbled by that memory.
We spent nearly 70 hours each week together; so we quickly became each other’s entire universe, moreso than, sadly to say, wives and family. We each apologized to our significant others during this time: we had to do this, we explained, and please don’t hold it against us. We’ll be back after E3. At work, we were becoming a family: we ate all of our meals together; we worked together; we fought one another constantly; but most importantly, we joked together and we became friends.
One example of this bond was Mario Kart DS. Initially, only two or three people on the team had a DS, and we never played together. I had picked up Mario Kart, and we started racing each other from time to time. This soon grew into a steady habit, which drew the attention of the others on the team. A few weeks later, the entire core team owned a DS and a copy of Mario Kart. And we raced and raced.
We raced during lunch, after dinner, and during breaks. We raced while we waited for versions to build. We raced when we felt stressed, and we raced when we wanted to celebrate. I would sometimes pull a guy aside, if I felt he was becoming too frustrated with the project and needed to clear his head, and offer him to race a few races. That usually did the trick of putting a smile back on his face.
By the end of April, we were working 7 days a week; our weekend was Sunday, where we usually “only” worked 8 hours: a positive vacation! I remember being amazed when I started pulling 70 hours weeks, then I lost count past that point. It all went by in a daze, with its share of ups and downs. Home was where we slept. Work was where we did everything else.
And one day… It was done. We had done it. For the first time in a month, the next day was not a workday. I was so exhausted that I fell sick for two days straight. But we had done it… We had turned a project in dire trouble into a huge success. We went on to E3 with a kick-ass demo, which even got us a few nominations for Best of Show.
Not surprisingly, many of the guys I worked with on the Double Agent E3 demo are still dear friends. Some of them I would give my left arm to work with again. As a matter of fact, Chris Smith, the Senior Game Designer for the E3 demo, is my Lead Game Designer on my upcoming BioWare project.
I foresee a few races of Mario Kart in our future. Just, you know, for old times’ sake.
Blog posts from that time
2006-04-08 The Road to E3
2006-04-16 I Thought I Knew Tired
2006-04-19 The Miracle Build
2006-04-26 The Last Stretch
2006-04-29 The Euphoria of Completion
2006-05-07 The Last Hours
2006-05-15 My Life as a Rock Star
(Post-scriptum: The E3 demo played a huge part in making Splinter Cell Double Agent X360 the success it eventually turned into. It had given the team an example of how they could win together. It gave us also two clear levels as benchmarks. The rest of production was not easy, but as a team, we had tasted success and knew how to reach it.)
Posted under Gaming by Daniel on 11.01.2008
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After I finished Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, I was eager to move on to a management position, given that that’s what I had been doing prior to joining Ubisoft. I felt fine doing level design, but I had no experience besides Pandora, and I felt this was not the best way for me to help the company. I wanted to organize things.
The assignment I picked up had been turned down by other people for it was considered career suicide: I joined the team doing the PS2 version of Ghost Recon 2, who had six months to create an original version of the Xbox game, complete with different storylines and settings. That’s six months from the top management’s “go”, to approval by Sony. Yeah, it was as insane as it sounds. Ghost Recon 2 PS2 was what’s known as a “business title”: it’s a strong licence, and the Xbox version was good, so the PS2 version’s goal was just there to ride the buzz and reap sales.
So the next six months went by in a blur of very, very long weeks. But whereas Pandora had a lot of expatriates helping out production, Ghost Recon 2 was almost entirely Chinese. On a team of 50, only 5 of us were laowai (foreigners). This thus marked the point in my stay in Shanghai where I was the most fully immersed in Chinese life. My Mandarin skills peaked at that time, and through my desire to allow my Chinese colleagues to feel like they, and not foreigners, “owned” the project, I ended up attending a few meetings where the guys only spoke in Mandarin. And yeah, I understood.
After we shipped this monster - surprising everybody, even ourselves - I was finally given a stab at being Producer, by being put in charge of a small followup project: Ghost Recon 2 GameCube, a straight port from the PS2 version. I was given a team of a dozen Chinese junior employees, and the mandate to wrap up the port in a mere two months.
And looking back on my time at Ubisoft, that small project was one of my favorites. I was free to organize the production in the manner I saw fit, which led, I’m proud to say, to a small, highly motivated team with absolutely no interpersonal drama. I think back on the team of programmers I had, under the leadership of the quiet and super-hard-working Li Yong Gang, and sometimes I find myself longing for these simple days. I worked with some of the guys on that team again after that, and I always felt we had a special connection from all having learned new roles together in that short amount of time.
Sure, we were not making a great game. But despite that, we understood the work we had to do, and we held together as a team to achieve it. It pains me to think back on how well the guys worked, and how dedicated they were, and that the game we produced was not to be recognized as an achievement outside the studio. Both Ghost Recon 2 PS2 and GameCube went on to make a decent profit… But by then, I couldn’t abide to lead teams to create bad games through acts of extraordinary dedication and courage.
Luckily for me, Splinter Cell Double Agent was waiting. And I had no idea how much dedication and courage that one would ask of us.
Blog posts from that time:
2005-01-31 32-Hour Man
2005-02-02 The Mysterious Case of the Japanese Screwdriver
2005-02-03 Go! Go! Screwdriver of Aweaome Mystery~!
(Post-Scriptum to the screwdriver story: I still own this screwdriver. I still think of it as the perfect example that no job is too crazy or too small when a Producer needs to help his team get things done.)
Posted under Gaming by Daniel on 10.01.2008
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As I said in an earlier post, this week is my last with Ubisoft. I’ve been with the company for four years and a half, but it feels like a lifetime. In many ways, it is.
When I joined Ubisoft’s Shanghai studio in 2003, I was starstruck about the videogame industry, and even when things got rough, I just couldn’t believe my luck that I was working in China, and in the videogame industry no less. I distinctly remember one day, after 3 months as a Level Designer on Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, suddenly realizing I was working in videogames, which had been a childhood dream of mine. It somehow hadn’t dawned on me so clearly before.
Corinne Le Roy, the General Manager of Ubisoft’s Shanghai studio, and the person to whom I owe my entry into videogames, had recognized that I had project management experience prior to applying at Ubisoft; however, she felt (rightly so) that I lacked experience inside a videogame project, and so my first job was to be Level Designer. It turned out to be a truly difficult, and humbling experience. Level Design is hard; so are the other jobs at the core of making a game, from AI programming to 3D art. If you just walk unto a production floor and see the guys do their job, it might look to you like it’s easy. It’s not; they’re just that damn good.
But respect for the people on the floor is not the only thing my first job told me. It also showed me, directly, how important are the people around you in a videogame production. You have to depend on so many people around you when you make a game, you’d better have a good time working with them. Friendships that are born of these harsh crunch periods, where you’re stressed out of your mind and you’re going on less than optimal sleeping hours, are deep and meaningful.
I made some very dear friends during that first year at Ubisoft, and because we have since then parted ways, I miss them immensely now. At the time, my closest friends were three other Level Designers on Pandora Tomorrow, all newcomers to Shanghai, and on their first Ubisoft project. We were the four musketeers: Chris K., the cranky tattooed LA guy; Sang, the Korean who had studied games in Florida; Jean-Félix, from France; and me, the Canadian guy. I used to joke that we sounded like the opening of a bad joke: “An American, a Korean, a French and a Canadian walk into a bar…”
Chris and Sang are the guys who made me fall in love with karaoke, for instance. From time to time, the three of us would go to a bar (there goes our bad joke) which Chris and I had dubbed the “shitty karaoke”. There, in a dingy bar filled with shady Chinese people staring at us, we’d belt out karaoke tunes from a particularly crappy karaoke machine (hence the name) and scare half the customers away with our drunken enthusiasm. Sang had a particularly good singing voice, so we’d force him to sing songs he’d never heard, of children’s songs in foreign languages, a task which he accomplished with great effort and with spectacular results. Chris and I would laugh so hard we’d end up with stomach cramps.
After a difficult and stressful project, that’s the only kind of memory that remains. Not the long hours, or the workplace confrontations: just the warm feeling of friendship earned by accomplishing something of value in difficult circumstances. This realization shaped the way I approached team building in my next projects as manager, and I’ll talk about some moments born of that tomorrow and Friday.
And Chris, Sang and JF, if you’re out there and reading this: I miss you guys!
Posted under Gaming by Daniel on 09.01.2008
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If you’re a fan of RPGs, here’s a game that you’ll find… interesting. It was brought to my attention by Laurent, the Creative Director of Splinter Cell: Conviction.
It’s called Progress Quest, and it dubs itself a “next generation computer role-playing game.” How next-gen is it? Well, how about the most accessible MMORPG ever?
Once you download Progress Quest and boot the game, you’re presented with a simple character generation screen. You get to choose your race, your class, and roll for your stats. And that’s it: you’re good to go. There’s one simple keyboard shortcut to remember: Alt-F4. As you may suspect, it quits the game.
Progress Quest is an RPG pushed to its absurdity. It basically plays in the background, and you can maximize it at any time to watch it play itself. You can see your quest log, your stats, as well as your equipment. When your inventory is full, you’ll see your character return to town, sell all his loot, and even negociate with vendors for equipment upgrades.
Progress Quest screenshot (non-3D version)
The amazing thing about Progress Quest is that despite its total non-interactivity, it’s still a game. I can’t quite explain it, but it has managed to distill the essence of an RPG - the grind, and the hopes for the next level, the next power - to its absolute essence. Typically, in an RPG or in an MMO, you set yourself a goal, then go and get it. This may take skill, or simply a dogged commitment to getting what you want. In Progress Quest, this barrier is reduced to time only - but time remains one of the barriers to overcome. And so you watch it go, watching your stats rise and your equipment get better.
Even better, Progress Quest is an MMORPG. You can create an online game, and play in an “online virtual world”. The Progress Quest website assures us that:
Online play requires internet connectivity, though sophisiticated algorithms keep the bandwidth usage to a minimum.
Sweet!
Progress Quest is interesting because it represents an absurd limit of RPGs. It questions the nature of the RPG player’s motivation, and it presents game designers with a fundamental question: is it still a game when you take all interactivity away?
Go ahead and try it; it’s free! And if you see an Enchanted Motorcycle Robot Monk called Triseult on the Pemptus realm, don’t hesitate to say hello. You know, so I know who to run over.
Posted under Gaming by Daniel on 04.01.2008
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A year ago, during the Christmas break, I got myself a trial account of World of Warcraft in the hopes of getting to know the biggest player in the MMO market. I always liked Blizzard products and their philosophy on making games, and knowing that WoW had taken its genre by storm, I wanted to know first-hand what it was all about.
And so began one year of obsession with the game. I wasn’t even sure I would last until the end of my trial subscription, and here I am, a year later, with my own epicced-out level 70 Blood Elf Warlock. What the hell happened?
What happened is a good game, plain and simple. There’s good reason why WoW overtook the MMO genre so dramatically: it’s simply that good. Sure, the license - the Warcraft universe - was a strong setting, but that doesn’t explain how WoW thrives when fan favorites Star Wars and Lord of the Rings fail to leave a dent. And with 9.5 million subscribers worldwide, a large portion of WoW’s fanbase had no idea who Illidan, Arthas and company were before they first logged onto the game.
But beyond the attention to details and the flavor of the setting, there’s one thing that made sure so many people got hooked to the world of Azeroth: accessibility.
Accessibility means making sure the player has a pleasant experience every step of the way when he plays a game, from the first moments until the end (or, more aptly in the case of WoW, until he’s hopelessly hooked.) The first 20 levels in WoW are a testament to that philosophy. When you start the game, you’re not overwhelmed with options and abilities. You’re simply asked to customize your avatar, then are trust in the game, where you’re handheld through the first levels of the game. As it stands, the first 20 levels are as pleasant, if not more, as many other games outside the MMO genre. And that is why Blizzard wins.
In a world where games are still thought of by some developers as difficult challenges and elitist playgrounds, it’s a good sign for gamers everywhere that Blizzard was able to overcome the most hardcore of market segments with accessibility. Be that a lesson to all game developers out there.
So there you have it. Add my name to the long list of WoW addicts, inside and outside the industry; and ask around, we are legion. It’s weird to play WoW, because you end up spending so much time in it that even hardcore videogame players look at you like you’re a a freak with no life. And amongst ourselves, we recognize one another with strange expressions and a tendency to argue which is between between Alliance and Horde (answer: Horde, of course.)
And if you see a Blood Elf Warlock called Ashmael on the Kul Tiras server, don’t hesitate to say hello. Or /wave if you’re Alliance.
You know, so I know who to kill.
Posted under Gaming by Daniel on 01.01.2008
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