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Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
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Building a video game tech team from scratch as a producer (Gamescom 2024) - Interview with Lucie Prunier, Executive Technical Producer at Don't Nod
We chatted with the team leader at Don't Nod Studio about her role in game production, how to meet new challenges such as porting to new platforms, multiple active projects and what we can expect on a technical level in the future development catalogue.
Audio transcription
"Hi Gamereactor friends, this is our first day in Germany, this is DEFCON, this is the day before.
We are on the eve of Gamescom and our first interview is going to be with Lucy.
Thank you so much for joining us."
"Pleasure, thank you very much for interviewing me.
So, your panel was yesterday, if I'm correct. We couldn't attend, we weren't here at all.
But we are interested in knowing more about technical production. That's what you do.
Tell us about the role broadly."
"Yeah, no problem. So, I am a games producer and I'm specifically a producer for a technical team.
So that's why I have tech in the name, but essentially I'm a games producer.
So I do project management, people management, but I do that with a very technical team that does engine programming at Dontnod.
And you guys released three games recently."
"So, what can you say about the technical aspects and your specific role to make those games look and perform better?
Okay, so it was an amount of projects we never had at the same time.
So we scaled up the cross-project engine team quite a bit throughout my time as a technical producer.
I've been doing that for four years at Dontnod."
"My talk yesterday was essentially about how we built that technical team, technical department.
I would say we had new challenges because, for example, on Harmony, the first one we released, it was the first time we made a Switch game.
So we helped with the porting of that.
Then Juzon was this new way of making games at Dontnod, where we helped a lot with performance, for example."
"That's really the bulk of what we do with the engine department.
And on Banishers, we did also a lot of performance, but we also made a completely new pipeline for the facial animation.
For example, amongst many things, we also did a tool for the cinematics to be done essentially automatically.
A dialing sequence generator that helped us make cinematics faster and do a first draft for the animators and cinematics artists, for example."
"So Alex, behind the camera here, he played Banishers and he told me that it's more like an action-packed type of game.
It has to be more powerful, more ready for things to happen.
And you guys come from more narrative-driven games.
How do you balance that? How do you make tech work and scale up and down for that to work in different genres?
Actually, the tool I just talked about is a big element of that."
"Because there is a lot of action, but also a lot of narrative, there were loads of cinematics.
A lot of characters talking to each other with a cut to one character, a cut to another character.
So that would be done procedurally with the tool that we made, for example, to get a quick first pass that maybe artists would retouch after that.
So it's a lot of finding efficiencies throughout the game, essentially."
"So that's how you can get that done for such a big game.
And if I'm correct, you started with Don't Nod with Tell Me Why. Tell me why you joined Don't Nod.
I really like Don't Nod games. I was a big Life is Strange fan, so I wanted to work on games like that.
And I applied, I thought, oh, they say no. And they said yes."
"So I joined them as a senior associate producer. I worked with some of the teams on Tell Me Why.
And then at the end of the project, I was offered to join the cross-project, the new cross-project system that we have.
And I became the producer for the tech team, the engine team at the time.
And we noticed a leap with Tell Me Why already, coming from Life is Strange, and now another leap with the newer games."
"So what can we expect in terms of specifically narrative games and technically from Don't Nod going forward?
Pre-tier games, but as good stories as before.
And you came from a localization background, if I'm correct.
So how does somebody like, you know, I guess it has to do with management."
"You're used to managing like projects, and then you can manage games as well all of a sudden.
But for others, like, you know, like people that are applying to different roles and now that the industry is, you know, a bit shaking up.
So what can you share about your experience coming from different roles?
Yeah, so I started localization because I like languages, and I was in Japan."
"And so I was a Japanese and English translator to French.
And I started managing projects in localization, and I really like the industry.
I like the people that I met in the games industry.
And I knew people who had done actually that leap from localization to production."
"But I thought as a woman and as a foreigner, I should probably, it's going to be harder in Japan.
So I actually moved to London to do that.
And so I did that through networking and experience as a project manager, essentially in explaining that this could be transferable to games.
And eventually I managed to convince some people, and that was the foot in the door that essentially opened the door."
"So I would say it's, I really want more people from different areas to join the games industry.
Anyone who has project management experience could be relevant to a game studio.
And the fact that they have a different experience is actually really, really helpful in such a creative industry.
We're also into localization and translation, a game reactor."
"I don't know if you're still related to that field.
How do you feel about AI in that regard?
It's not about tech, perhaps more into art.
But what about AI and translation and localization?
How do you feel about that?
I don't think it can completely replace humans."
"I think it could speed up a little bit to have a first pass, essentially.
But I wouldn't trust it.
And I'm not even sure it's actually a gain of time that much.
As a translator and as a proofreader, I would often rewrite everything that I see because it's never good enough for me."
"I'm really hard on myself and others.
But yeah, I'm not related to localization anymore, except in my heart.
I still love it.
And I do give localization advice at DotNod as someone who was a translator."
"And I help some indie projects sometimes with it.
So yeah, that's how I would say it.
If you really want a good translation for your game, AI only is not going to be the solution.
One thing I forgot to ask."
"You mentioned CrossProject, Cross.
You guys use your own tech, your engine.
But what about the games DotNod publishes as a publisher?
Do you guys offer help or take assistance for those teams?
Or is, for now, something internal for you alone?
At this point in time, it's only internal."
"One of the reasons is that we only make Unreal Engine games at DotNod.
And a lot of the games that we publish are not on Unreal.
So we wouldn't actually have the knowledge anyway.
Also, the way that this tech department was thought of was really to avoid reinventing the wheel at each project internally."
"And to really have all of the code bases shared by all the projects at DotNod.
So that would be another conversation to have the published games on that.
I think that's enough.
How much do you love Navi from The Legend of Zelda?
I love Zelda."
"Navi, I don't mind because a lot of people hate her.
Yeah, she's annoying, but...
I don't know, she's cute. I like her.
As well, yeah."
"Thank you very much.
Play DotNod games! Thanks for your time."
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