Active in the games industry since 2000
Born in Hunedoara, Romania

Came to EIDOS-MONTREAL for "the team, the vibes". His insights about programmer-artist communication;  freedom, trust and creativity; and  Quebec, tolerance and creativity.

The team, the vibes

The main reason I came to EIDOS-MONTREAL was the team - I knew many of these people very well, and I enjoyed working with them. The vibes are really good and things run smoothly.

Programmer-artist communication 

I think there's a correlation between the quality of a game and the quality of the communication in the team that develops it. I find that artists and engineers in our industry often seem to live in two different worlds, which works against their common goal. Things shouldn't be like that: we need what I would call an overlap area, a neutral area where their knowledge can merge. Technology is the brush that artists use to express their vision, and it seems to me that things work more smoothly when the artists fully grasp the properties of the brush, and engineers see the art direction and understand how the artists use the brush. Strangely enough, this overlap area seems to be a side effect of human curiosity, communication and understanding.

Freedom, trust and creativity

Excessive control, micromanagement and a lack of trust cause more problems than they solve. Power can be a trap for both parties, especially if it's used for the wrong reasons. If you have to answer a number of micromanagement questions, you don't feel trusted and you may block your creativity to play it safe and avoid making mistakes. Fortunately, the team behind Deus Ex 3 has enough experience to see through this - I feel there's a lot more trust here. With freedom comes creativity. To develop a commercially viable product, you need to have a balance between being creative and playing it safe.

Quebec, tolerance and creativity

Quebec is the place to live if you are passionate about what you are doing. People are nice, understanding and they have a very constructive attitude. I see Quebec as a place where things happen as a side effect of doing what you love to do. It's a place where people like Domina Jalbert [who invented the Parafoil, an airfoil used in paragliders, kites and modern parachutes] and Jean St-Germain [who built the first recreational vertical wind tunnel in 1980] had the freedom to do what they loved to do, as crazy as it seemed to everyone else.

Top of page

Active in the games industry since 1997 
Born in Rochester, USA

Drawn by a story-centric start-up, which means, among other things, wearing many hats. Other themes include writers and sharing ideas on smaller teams, longer development times, the third Deus Ex and being in Montreal, a diverse and stimulating city.

Story-centric start-up

Of course, Eidos is a very well-known company in the world, and it works on great titles, many of which are very story-centric. Also important was the fact that a new studio was just starting in Montreal, which is a city I love. I've been in the game industry for over ten years and the most exciting companies I've worked with were the ones that were small and just starting to grow, because a lot of really cool challenges come with building a company. 

Many hats

Like the fact of working with limited resources on a big vision: limited resources usually mean you don't have enough people to work it. This allows many of the people to wear many hats and to have more to say on the product they're working on, and to bring more to it. When you have [very  large teams], people tend to get slotted in particular tasks, and even though that may be their forte, they have other, very important skills that may be overlooked. Here, they want to limit the size of the teams.

Of writers and sharing ideas on smaller teams

As a writer, I think I have one of the most misunderstood jobs in the industry, because people think of the writer as, "You just put the words down on the page". In a small team, however, the writer becomes very integral [to the process] and actually helps shape the ideas and directions of things. I think sharing ideas - being more collaborative - works better in small groups, where voices can be heard. [If people aren't open to ideas from other areas], it can definitely be a problem. I think it's always a difficult balance to maintain: you have to be willing to hear the ideas of others, and you also have to be willing to accept when your own ideas are not being heard.  You're more likely to realize that you can have a voice, but you are also able to keep the personal communication going, to understand why your ideas may not work. I think it's easier to understand that in a small group.

Top of page

Longer development times

The complexity of the story is based on the type of the game you're dealing with. Many games just need a very simple story line, and many need a very complex and deep one. When you have shorter periods of time, you have to scale down your story and your design ideas. It obviously takes much longer to develop a deep and complex story, and since the game we're working on is going to be a very deep story, having a longer development time ensures not only being able to do it but being able to get it right.

Third Deus Ex

When I played the first game, I realized that so much of it is centered on the story that it automatically calls for a deep and interesting story line, and that was a big reason for me to want to be here and to work on it. Another reason is the fact that [Eidos] games are very well recognized, and have built a loyal fan base. The development team saw opportunities to expand those games beyond their initial focus, and that's always a very interesting challenge: to create another version of something that is much loved, [a version] that will grow beyond it without upsetting the people who love it, and yet will be interesting to people who may not have liked it or may never have heard of it.

Being in Montreal

I grew up on the East Coast, in the U.S., so I enjoy the change of seasons. California is very nice; certain parts are much nicer than others - I worked in L.A. for a while, which I didn't like that much, and I worked in San Diego, which I think is one of the nicest places in California. But at heart I'm someone who grew up on the East Coast, and I prefer the lifestyle and the changes of scenery.

Diverse city

Montreal itself is a very diverse city. It has a lot of different cultures that blend within it and that's something I've always found very appealing. I'm learning French, I can speak "un peu" and I can understand a bit more.  It can be intimidating when you don't understand what people are saying, but at the same time it's really interesting to be immersed in another culture, in another way of seeing things. I really enjoy that aspect of it. Another reason I like being here is that I'm not too far from home. I have a big family and they're mostly centered in upper state New York and Vermont, so I get to see them a lot more.

Stimulating city

In Montreal, the game community is growing and getting bigger. My chosen profession is games, and I love working in games. Especially as a writer, it's a whole new challenge, because no one quite knows yet how to really tell a story in games, we still haven't invented the language yet. Since I'm working in games, I want to live in a city that appeals to me as well, and Montreal a very diverse city and it's drawing in a whole community of gamers and game developers. It's good because you start to learn from each other. You need the outside stimulus to keep everything fresh and new, and you also get stimulated by your colleagues because the sharing of ideas can create stronger, new, original ones. So, both of those forces coming together is really valuable.

Top of page

Active in the games industry since 2005
Born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Liked Eidos games, and enjoys the open door policy; as well as being a kid and being happy going to work.

The games

I liked some of their [Eidos] games already, that was one of my major reasons for coming here. Also, the company I worked for only did game testing, while here there are game designers, programmers and so on, and so I thought this would be a good way to gain experience. I studied in film and multimedia, and I love film and television, and media in general, and two games from this company were actually turned into movies. Given the status of the QA team here, I figured I would have more mobility. I can talk to some of the people and actually find out how I can become adept at creating games or selling games, marketing, etc. Who knows?  Maybe in a few years from now I'll be writing scripts!

Open door

So far, I see it's pretty much an open door policy everywhere. You can ask anyone almost anything and they will take the time to help you out as best as they can or direct you to the right area. I really like that: I don't have to be afraid, just because I'm in QA, that someone in Designing or Programming or Management won't answer me. It feels like a team, a family, which is really good. It's a really nice atmosphere.

"Being a kid" and being happy going to work

The best part is that for eight hours of the day I can be a kid!  I do my work at the same time, but it's so relaxing. I've worked at a lot of different places, in different types of jobs, but here I've never got up once in the morning saying to myself, "Oh my God, I have to go to work!". I don't have that feeling at all. It just feels really good, I feel relaxed, I'm not stressed about anything. It's not just about money sometimes, you know, you have to be happy in what you're doing and I'm very happy here.

Top of page

In the game industry since 2000
Born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Was drawn by the challenge of a start-up and the worker-friendly environment.

The challenge of a start-up

This is exactly what I expected in a startup company. The challenge of bringing together a team - that's the beautiful part of a start-up: you have an open tarp to paint on. I'm enjoying the fast pace, building the site. There's always little fires, little things that have to be tweaked and fixed, and it has to be done fast. I just hope it's not going to slow down at any time! My deadlines are production deadlines; my goal is to make sure [the production teams] get their game out on time. I can't be holding them back, so my main objective is to make sure they have what they need. They need support, they need excellent network conditions while maintaining a high level of security, they need proper services, state of the art servers - they need everything to function, all the time.

A worker-friendly environment

I like the smaller, more family-oriented environment. I missed it at my previous job. I enjoy the closeness of a smaller company. It's a friendlier work environment: everybody knows your name! You walk down the hall, people say good morning. It's more enjoyable, versus the "everyone's a number" type of thing!

Active in the game industry since 2000
Born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Selected EIDOS-MONTREAL for three reasons: the project, the team, and the culture (in that order). Also speaks of communication, deadlines and quality.

The project

Deus Ex is a game I played when it came out. As soon as I heard this was happening in Montreal, I had to be part of it! This is the type of game I like to play; it's a really good challenge. What's nice is that we're not starting from scratch. We have a foundation to build on. We already know what worked and what didn't, and that's worth gold. The design stage was really great. In the first months of the project, we decided what we wanted to do, and what direction we wanted to take. Things go really smoothly with Jean-François Dugas [the lead designer]. Often, in a video game, people get lost right from the start because they haven't clearly defined what they want to do, and that can drag on for years: you see projects where people still don't know where they're going after a year and half, two years.

The team

My second motivation to come here was that there were people I had worked with two, three, five years ago. I didn't have to get to know them or learn how to communicate with them: I could jump right in and start working. Right now, everyone on the team loves everyone, which makes a big difference. You can relax and focus on your work because you don't have all these questions going on in your mind. That can really undermine your concentration - even if you try to ignore it, it's always there in the background, keeping part of your brain busy. Here, I see none of these problems. I feel comfortable going up and talking to anyone on the team and saying what I think. I know they won't feel hurt, because it's not negative. I'm not trying to criticize them; it's completely about the project.

Top of page

Communication

I've seen teams with up to 150, 200 people. Here we want to keep it around 80, which means we have to be more versatile, even though some of us will probably specialize in one area or another. You can't build a video game alone. Communication is crucial, and if you have problems with another team member, it's likely to break down. If certain key people stop talking to one another, that's an enormous challenge - and it's been known to happen. Teams often take on the profile of their leader, so if the managers don't get along, their teams will also have trouble communicating. That's really not happening here.

A culture based on trust

A game company should trust its employees. If we're here, it's because we have certain skills. In other companies, I've seen leaders who didn't trust us, so they'd come over and tell us what to do, and what not to do. That kind of micromanaging undermines a team's motivation and causes conflicts. Communications go sour and it gets very hard to meet deadlines, because the design can change at any minute. Right now, I can tell that the studio really trusts us a lot, starting with David [Anfossi], the producer; same for Stephan [D'Astous] and the head office: we really feel supported. I'm not worried that in three months from now or towards the end of the project someone is going to say: "Actually, this isn't what we wanted, so you have to do this part over again". I feel that [EIDOS-MONTREAL managers] have closely reviewed and approved what we've done so far, so we're on solid ground and we can move on to the next step.

Longer development schedules

The more time you have, the more you can push the envelope and take risks; the less time you have, the more you have to play it safe. [More time] allows us to try a lot more things, and we can also learn a lot more. We often hear that we learn from our mistakes, but I believe that we actually learn when we succeed in doing something right. There are millions of errors to make, but far less ways of doing things right. Once you've found one of them, you learn a lot more.

Quality

At the moment, we're not too stressed about time. It's more about quality. We want to make sure we live up to everyone's expectations.

Top of page

Active in the game industry since 1998
Born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada

For Emmanuel-Yvan, working at EIDOS-MONTREAL is an opportunity, a chance to learn, to test games from everywhere in the world, to work with teams from abroad, and to have a privileged status in the industry.

An opportunity

I saw EIDOS-MONTREAL as an opportunity, a start-up I could contribute to and leverage my knowledge and experience to help the company develop. I left a slightly better job and risked taking a step back, so to say, to assess things better - and learn, too. In my previous job, we were pretty much self-taught. We had acquired our own techniques, our own view of things, our own ways of communicating…

A chance to keep on learning

Now, I'm in a place where the practices are different. That gives me an opportunity to learn, develop my skills, and share what I know. It means that in five years, instead of remaining in the same place I'll have acquired more expertise by acquiring a broader perspective and learning new techniques. When you work with people who work differently and have different standards, you expand your skills. It feels like being paid to go back to school! Of course, I have to change my ways of doing things, but my studio manager is highly qualified, which helps me a lot. Our goal is to attain a higher level of quality as a group, not as individuals. 

Top of page

Games from the world over

I like the fact that we're testing games from everywhere: Australia, Scandinavian countries, England, the US... The QA department is in direct contact with the UK [head office], which assigns us our projects, and that is a little different from what I've known before. [Production teams] have deadlines, and we're there to help. Our job is to find all the problems as quickly as possible, so they can make corrections as fast as possible, so we can come out with a game of the best possible quality.

Working with teams abroad

Through all of this, we strive to establish the best communications so that developers - who are often in studios abroad - can have a common understanding of the corrections to be made. We work the same way with off-site development teams as we do with in-house ones, but we communicate differently; we don't talk with everyone on the project, only to certain people like the producer or the project manager. When you work on in-house projects, you talk to the programmers, sound engineers, etc., and you get a lot of information. The challenges are not the same. I like what I do. I don't get tired of it at all! I like being able to bring this level of quality and communication, and help [production teams] maximize their chances of success.

A privileged status

I've worked on more than 50 games in my career and when you do that, you end up knowing pretty well what works and what doesn't. Therefore I can share my knowledge with production people. Some game companies have a rather poor opinion of the test department. They see it mostly as a way to get past the door, and its role seems quite secondary: it's a place you go to at the very end of the development process... Here, QA is an integral part of production. That's one reason I came to work here: production and QA form a whole, they are enshrined in the basic vision. In other words, there is a will, as the years go by, to constantly include the testing team and its expertise into the whole.

Top of page