Making a Dream a Reality - Beyond Good & Evil 2 Interview at Nordic Game 2025

Audio transcription

"Hi, and welcome back to Gamereactor's coverage of Nordic Game.
We're going right into it with another exciting interview, and I'm going to let you introduce yourself."

"Thank you. Hello, everybody. My name is Fawzi Mesmar.
I am a game designer and creative director.
I've been working in the games industry for around 22 years at this point.
I'm originally from Jordan."

"I started off there as an independent developer, and from there, my career has taken me a bit all over the world, actually, from the Middle East to New Zealand to Japan to Europe.
I've done a little bit of everything, from indie development to handheld to smartphones to AAA games."

"I am currently a creative director at Ubisoft, where I'm working on Beyond Good & Evil 2 with the guys in Montpellier.
In addition to my day job, I'm also very passionate and active in the academic part of video games, so I lecture and teach in conferences and universities around the world on game design."

"I've written two books, one of them called Al-Khallab in Art of Game Design, which is the first book to be written about the topic in Arabic, and my recent book, Demystifying Creativity and Originality in Game Development, was published last Christmas by CRC Presh, in which I talk about creativity and originality and where those ideas come from, and from which my talk here at Nordic was all about."

"Yeah, and I just finished talking with your friend Rami about a podcast together, The Habibis, where you talk about Arabic culture and games from the region, and we were talking about the first Assassin's Creed game, with its very accurate representation of the historical Middle East, and how it was kind of a groundbreaking game in terms of how Muslims and Arabs were portrayed in gaming."

"How do you view the influence of the first Assassin's Creed and how Arabs are portrayed in games since, like, from the early series, where they were often, you know, very negatively portrayed in shooter games and such?
Very cool, man. So, like, I'm happy that you spoke with Rami."

"Rami and I and our friend Osama Dorias, we started recording ourselves during the pandemic, you know, and releasing our musings to the public, and then a lot of people started listening to them.
We were mostly talking about game development, but, you know, inevitably, we talk about who we are as people, and mostly food, you know, and then a lot of people ended up listening, and, you know, and I think there's a big part of what we did and how that ended up resonating with a lot of people is that, like, we are game developers and we made our work all from Arab origin or ethnicity, and we made our work visible to people, and that, like, kind of helped them identify, like, hey, maybe, you know, if I'm from the Middle East, I can do stuff like these guys, you know?
So, there's a big part of representation is, like, for people seeing themselves in the work of fiction, regardless, or work of others, or the work of whatever creative product is out there, for you to feel inspired to go, like, well, yeah, if they can do it, I can, so I want to do it as well."

"And, you know, I've had a long inspiration history with Ubisoft, even before I worked with a company, because, like, the first Assassin's Creed came out a long time ago, when I was still living in the Middle East, and I remember, like, thinking to myself, like, this is a dude on a horse going to Damascus, you know?
I've never seen that in a large-scale video game before."

"That's really cool, you know?
It was really cool for me to see my culture represented in a massively popular work of fiction, you know?
And, yeah, like, and I remember, like, I had that experience again when we released Assassin's Creed Mirage a few years ago, and I played the entire game from start to finish in Arabic."

"I was like, I don't think I've ever had that experience before on a large-scale AAA project.
So, you should never underestimate how much something like this could inspire people, you know, generations."

"I still remember that moment, even though it happened now close to 20 years ago, you know?
So, yeah, it's a remarkable moment, and it resonates a lot, I'm sure, not just with me, but with a lot of people, too."

"Yeah, and working out of Jordan when you were starting out, what were some of the challenges of developing games in countries or regions that are not, that doesn't really have a strong video game scene?
Yeah, so, like, you know, I think there's, like, you know, logistical problems, and there's also, like, even psychological problems to some extent."

"Like, when I first started out, I've never really met another game developer before, you know?
I didn't know what, for me, like, they were wizards.
They were living somewhere elsewhere, and then, like, they create magic on discs and cartridges and send it our way."

"And I was like, I've never met these people.
I don't know what they're like.
So, whenever I was trying to do that, I was like, can I even do this, you know?
Is this something that is within my capabilities?
Because I was filled with self-doubt."

"And because I did not have access to be able to talk to some of these people or get access to their knowledge or experience, I had to learn the old-fashioned way, you know, by doing a lot of trial and error and mistakes and getting my, whatever I could get my hands on from resources and material and other languages so that I can, you know, try to at least soothe myself that maybe I don't suck that badly, you know?
Or maybe I'm on the right way and somehow."

"And logistically, like, even, like, back then, it's a lot better now, but back then, even getting a dev kit to the Middle East was a problem.
You know, like, you know, we'd call up people and they're like, what, you guys play games there, let alone make them?
Like, how are you gonna send you this dev kit, you know?
There wasn't that much support in terms of, like, understanding what is game development that can be actually a legitimate career or industry."

"And for companies from overseas to understand that, yeah, there are people in the Middle East that can make video games, you know?
So, it was coming from both ways, and it was a bit of a struggle."

"But, you know, like, as we end up making games, it's kind of like, yeah, but we're living the dream.
Like, these things are working, so we can figure it out.
So, inevitably, like, the market grew and now we're witnessing a lot of game developers in the Middle East doing some really cool stuff, and I think this is just the beginning."

"We're about to see so much more cool stuff to come out from these guys.
Yeah, and you mentioned, we talked about your starting career, you're working solo with your own skills and your own intuition, and now you have progressed."

"You are working on huge projects like Beyond Good and Evil.
You have a huge staff.
And I was wondering about the creativity part, which you also had a talk about."

"How does creativity work when you have such a huge team who each have their inputs and have to go through different layers of decisions and so on?
How does that affect creativity versus working by yourself?
So, it's one of the things I touched on, actually, in my talk just now, that creativity stands on two legs."

"There's the context of originality, which is creating unprecedented or statistically unlikely ideas, creating really fresh and innovative ideas, but there's also the leg of value."

"So, creativity comes from the creating ideas are both original and value, and value is determined from the context in which we create.
So, if I was to come up with an idea, for example, that is waterproof teabags, that might be original, but within the context of usefulness, it kind of has no value, right?
Whereas if I'm artistically challenging what the teabag even is, then that idea might have some value, right?
So, the context is essential for us to be able to determine the value of the idea and how we can be original within that context."

"That same applies to small-scale or large-scale projects.
Wherever you're creating as an individual, we need to be able, you need to be able to understand on which context you're creating, right?
So, even if you're an individual developer on your own, well, the creativity seems to be boundless, there's only eight hours a day, and there's only so much that one person can do, and there's only so much that the tech can allow you to do."

"So, there's all these constraints around you anyway that will limit your creative output, but what I'm actually advocating for, I would say, empower it."

"So, in our large-scale projects, there are the constraints in which, where you are in the team, your fields of expertise, and how your own contribution will impact the big picture."

"And within that context, you can be very creative, you know?
And the idea is that, for a large-scale project, it's for you when you're able to really define the constraints, in a way, and the big picture, in a way that the team can understand, then it becomes the sum of the creative output of every single person in the team."

"If you're doing a creative project, like working on your own video game, maybe writing a book or something, and you find you get stuck in the same path all the time, and you can't really seem to come up with any ideas that sticks, do you have any tips on that sort of situation?
100%."

"So, I'm a big fan of talking about my ideas.
So, when I'm thinking about something, the best way to validate or to get input is to get feedback."

"So, I'll give you the book as an example.
When I first thought of the idea of writing this book, I was like, maybe I should show it to a lot of these people that I trust, or people that I value their opinion."

"I showed it to fellow professors, other game design directors.
I'm thinking about writing this game design idea, or this book about creativity."

"Some people told me you should read these books.
Some people told me, ah, but I've seen it in this, and you should avoid doing it like this.
Some people were like, oh, that's great."

"I would love to hear your thoughts.
So, I got all kinds of input, and I was like, okay, that sounds good.
How can I pick the feedback that really addresses what I'm working on?
And then, before I started even writing, for like the past four years, I've been developing my ideas, and putting them into talks."

"So, I can present them to people, and then showing it to my peers in the industry, whether professionals or academics, and then garner their feedback."

"And then, I started to see that there were questions that I was getting almost every time.
I was like, okay, then I probably should add that to my book, and make sure that it's answered."

"And I told it enough to the point that now I know that whatever questions that come my way, I've, or most of them at least, I've had it part of my research, or I've had it part of the Q&A that I've discussed."

"So, generally, whenever like, the way I do it, whenever I'm in a creative block, let's say, it means that maybe I'm not looking at the entire problem, or maybe I'm not looking at the problem from the right angle."

"And I do one of two things.
I either talk to people I respect.
A friend of mine once says, critique is the highest form of flattery."

"And I love that saying.
So, I love to share my ideas with people so that they can critique it, and thus make it better.
And the other thing that I do is I move myself completely from the problem."

"I just leave it at the back of my head.
And then I just go and do something else.
You know, like take a walk, or pick up a hobby, or do graffiti, or, you know, whatever it is that I do something new."

"Because the way creativity works is that two things that seemingly are unconnected, they connect suddenly.
And it usually happens when the idea's on the back of your mind, and you're taking input from the world, and then something clicks, you know?
Archimedes, when he had this Eureka moment, he wasn't doing physics."

"You know, he was taking a bath.
And he observed the water, and he was like, I got it, you know?
He observed his surroundings."

"He did something that's completely out of what he's doing, and that's part of his creative output.
So, usually, that will come either from me not doing something, or by talking about it with someone else, my team, my peers, et cetera."

"How are we on time?
One question?
Yeah.
During your writing of your book, what are something about creativity, by looking at the scientific angle, talking with other people, case studies, academia, reading articles, what are something that surprised you in the way creativity works?
Ah, there's so much."

"Because it's, for a lot of people, it seems to be like a myth, to some extent.
A big thing that surprised me, that I can share, also shared a bit in my talk today, is that some people exhibit the ability to be more creative than others."

"By that means is that they're capable of generating more original ideas that are of value at a higher rate than other people.
And some of the research that I read around the topic seems to see that there is a connection between creative output and attention deficiency, which I found to be funny."

"But also resonates.
Seems like creative people tend to be the dreamy types or something like this.
And there's research that saw that there's a correlation between attention deficiency, so low-grade ADHD, low-grade autism, and creative output, up until a point in impairment in which it goes against you."

"So like patients with high schizophrenia, for example, showed no signs of creative output.
So that means that there are some people that intuitively, due to traits that they have, personality or even who they are as people, it aids them into being able to connect things that are completely unrelated at a very high pace."

"And I found that fascinating to dig deeper into and study.
Yeah, thanks for sharing your insights and enjoy the rest of the conference.
Thank you so much for having me."

"I appreciate that."