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Arkane Studios - Raphael Colantonio Interview

We talk to Arkane's outgoing president Raphael Colantonio after he announced his decision to leave the Dishonored studio.

Audio transcription

"Arkane's Raphael Colantonio was here at Gamelab 2017 to talk about Prey, Dishonored and Arkane Games but of course, you made such an important announcement right before the event so first of all, thank you for joining us and second, is it a farewell, total farewell, or is it just you're taking a break?
Well, I need to get some time off to decide really what I want to do next and I've been doing these games for such a long time now and I just want to take a real long vacation which I never had a chance to have in 18 years So it's not just about the industry, but just about work, like taking it easier from now on?
Yeah, focus on my own projects, on my son, on playing music smaller things that are just going to make me happy Perfect. What are the implications for the company from now on?
So, we have two studios, we have one in France, one in America so the one in America is in Austin, it's led by Harry Smith and so he's working on whatever next game is happening there and in France I'm actually staying for a while until the transition permits to make new games as well we have plans for both sides, it's more of a matter of helping the transition to be smooth Ok, what do you think is the most difficult part of the industry to handle in such a stressful industry?
Well, I mean, making games, even when all the conditions are perfect, is hard it's just a hard, hard thing to do you have to gather technicians and artists and make them collaborate on something that is at the end of the day a product, it's not just a thing and a product that is fun and that everybody loves so in its own it's hard enough and then the challenges in general are also that you have to do that over and over and over with never really resting, that's another one which is hard because creativity is hard to just keep on all the time and also the industry changes all the time in 18 years we've seen so many changes new platforms every couple of years new ways to distribute the games new ways to play the games interesting formats such as the appearance of DLCs back in the days for the first time, what was it, 10 years ago or something?
before that people tried episodes and now we talk about game as a service, etc."

"so it's always changing, the taste of players change the way to communicate to the players change as well so it's an industry which is at the same time pretty heavy because you have a lot of people so you have those big machines that have a lot of momentum and at the same time you have to be agile and turn take the corner right there because now things have changed so it's a challenging industry but of course Arkane's story for the past years has been a success story both Dishonored and Prey have been really well received which do you think are the main achievements of those games in terms of game design which is your area of expertise?
I think both those games, Dishonored and Prey managed to capture the attention of the player and make them travel in a world that is uncommon so it has this familiar yet special worlds that people are going to explore and I think that's one of the things that is compelling to these games but also at the end of the day when they play those games they really play their own adventure, their own way they decide what they want to do and how to do it so they have a little more, not that you can do absolutely anything but they have a good amount of expression as a player and I think that's what we like we like our life to be special and to be different than the neighbour's life and so I think that somehow that's what those games allow us allow players to do, you're going to get some choices they're going to be those consequences then you can play them again and something a little different is going to happen based on what you've chosen this time and they're very crafted as well and I think again that goes back to the travelling to somewhere a place that feels real and I think that's something that people enjoy In terms of Prey specifically, that's a more recently launched game how was the feedback from the players, how was the reception how do you feel about the game's launch?
Very good feedback I mean there's always someone that, like for any game that doesn't understand the game exactly or that it doesn't resonate with him, let's say but we had also some players that were so extreme in how much they loved this game we've had people saying oh finally, I've been waiting for that game for 15 years some people have told me recently someone sent me a tweet telling me that we saved his life because he was going through a depression and our game came up and he played this game and he loved it so much that it helped him through depression so we've had some very..."

"and I was very touched by that comment of his that's a big statement so yeah, people really love our fans are very very dedicated to what we do and it's very touching Dishonored is one of my personal favourite last generation and Dishonored 2 is really great this generation as well one thing I love about it, about game design is the level design, the structure how you can approach differently how you can try to sneak around or how you can use your own abilities to perhaps change the way your character traverse the environment what do you think is the next step we're gonna see in this regard in perhaps Kane's games or perhaps elsewhere yeah, it's interesting that you notice level design because level design is one of those things that is amazingly important but it's not necessarily the thing that people express with words when they say, oh that game was great they don't really know what made it great but level design is probably one of the things that contributed at a big level and it's a complex interaction between the level architects, the artists and the level designers so that tension that exists between people who actually make those spaces and the people who actually think of the gameplay inside those spaces is in the case of Arkane what really makes that special too our lead level designer in France Christophe Carrier has been working with me since Arx Fatalis and that's been his art refining that art and together with Damien Laurent who's the lead architect there and together they make that sometimes conflictual because one wants to pull these things one way the other one the other way but at the end of the day where they meet is these great spaces that have meaning and at the same time are fun and allow the player to really apprehend the situation in a way that feels like he's there and the architectures are very multi-paths we care about verticality we care about landmarks and recognizing never get lost because that's another thing that is important so it's a lot of balancing act that people don't always realize how technical and complex it is to make those levels and of course it's also a matter of the player being aware that he or she can use these paths so in terms of what's next is there anything you wanted to try in this regard level layout or different paths that you couldn't pull off yet?
I think the industry is going a little bit in that direction too in general I think one of the tendencies is going to be more procedurally generated moments that hopefully are not just a pile of random stuff that is just procedurally meaning randomly pulled out because the difficulty is to creating content now costs a lot of money more and more and more every generation and this is where the value is it's the content and now creating this in a procedural way is of course very compelling but making those meaningful is something that has emotional impacts in a procedural way is still a little bit of the unicorn of the things that everybody is looking for but I think there are glimpses of that we've done some in our own games where the emergent gameplay actually creates those moments It's the sandstorms?
Yeah, sandstorms or even the chaos is a little bit of that but I think in our games it's more like around the game systems that some emergent situations happen and feel like a unique payoff this one moment that only you had not your friend and then you can talk about but I think you can do that at the level of the story as well and the levels of engaging emotions and I think a game like Shadow of Mordor actually showed that with the Nemesis system where suddenly your enemies are dynamically my enemies are not your enemies and the way they evolve is going to be based on what I've done to them or they've done to me and so now I personally hate that guy so bad and managing to capture that player's emotion just with code just with procedurally generated stuff based on what is done I think it's a very very powerful thing and I hope we're going to see more and more of those things in games I don't know if what you're saying is related to what you wanted to share originally with the Gamelab audience because you came here to talk about non-linear storytelling but of course the news broke and you kind of modified that to Arkane's history so I don't know if that was what you wanted to tell young game creators about game design and storytelling Yeah, as far as the storytelling I think a lot of people at Arkane and this is true for Harvey, for Riccardo Bear and myself I think we like to set up worlds and tell the story in a non-invasive way we don't like cinematics usually we prefer to tell you the story of this world through visual tricks and you go somewhere and you see there's a scene where this room is now abandoned and there's a shoe on the floor and open luggage somewhere and a rat and it's all real time we don't interrupt you but it tells you a story you know what happened here maybe a murder maybe something that is going to be engaging your curiosity basically so yeah, that's our approach to do things that are more in-game that are more induced and less enforced and that will encourage the player to go and dig things and maybe read notes or try to understand what happened here and also telling the story through the actions of the player so it's more about what you do triggering bits of stories rather than hey let me interrupt your gameplay let me show you a cinematic and now you can play again and shoot some people around so a lot of those things are for us more interesting and so yes I was going to brush over some of those things for us Alright Any final message you would like to send to Arkane fans?
Yeah, I mean Arkane has been around for 18 years we've had ups and downs and it's really part of the I wouldn't say even ups and downs I would say left and right it's part of the industry it's part of the process and 18 years after that it's time for me to leave it doesn't mean that things are not going to keep going with Arkane ZeniMax and Bethesda are very confident in the capacity of Arkane to make great games and the guys at Arkane are very capable I'll be around for a while and I wish everybody the best and I'm sure there's many more Arkane games to play and I'll be one of the first fans Thank you very much for your time we're going to miss you but I wish you the loveliest time from now on Thank you Thank you"

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