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Welcome to The Game Maker's Notebook, a podcast featuring a series of in-depth one-on-one conversations between game makers, providing a thoughtful, intimate perspective on the business and craft of interactive entertainment.
The Game Maker's Notebook is presented by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, a member-driven organization dedicated to the recognition and advancement of interactive entertainment.
Everyone welcome to the game makers notebook.
I'm adam orth, and today we're speaking to eve louis, chief content officer of focus entertainment.
Hello eve, hello adam.
How are you very good.
How are you?
I'm good, how are you enjoying?
We're recording this uh, at the dice conference, dice europe in edinburgh, scotland.
It's a wonderful city.
My first time here.
I'm enjoying it.
Is it your first time here?
Have you been here before?
Oh yes, several times.
I really love Scotland, so I'm coming to Scotland basically every year since close to 10 years now.
Oh wow, okay.
Yeah, it's been a really great experience for me too.
I've been here quite a few days already, and I'm excited to speak with you today.
So on the Game Maker's Notebook, at least on my episodes.
Learning a little bit about you early on and finding the kind of connective tissue that started you in games and where you've kind of gotten to today.
My research on you says you've been in games more than 20 years.
Yeah. myself included.
And you started pretty early with MUDs and MMOs and, most notably, spent a lot of time doing some incredibly cool things at Ubisoft and now at Focus Entertainment.
So where did games start for you?
What was your kind of?
What was the early spark for you?
That kind of oh that's uh, that's a long time ago?
I'm not so.
My family wasn't into tech or whatever.
My parents were both teachers.
We didn't have any computers.
We even had tv quite late, uh.
So i only saw tv and computers at friend's house quite late, and so i was kind of intrigued of what these were.
Uh and uh started.
So it was not a consideration for career, for work, for job for anything.
I started mainly in movies, like doing a First journalism critic on movies and music as well, and rock music.
But out of randomness hazard, with the first paycheck I had from journalism and movies I bought my first computer.
Do you remember what it was?
No.
Like five, six years ago, I tried to fight it back, but no.
No.
But I remember some of the very first games I played.
One was called Ishar.
There was three iterations of Ishar.
Ishar 1, Ishar 2, Ishar 3.
Very old school.
Well, old school, of course, at the time.
RPGs, which were really cool.
So the kind of building of like between worlds.
You could narrate and tell a story as in books, movies and Tash Rabbits.
I could make silly choices.
Even one of the very first computer game I played, which was stupid.
I was very, very young.
It was called SRAM.
I'm not even sure it existed out of France or maybe Europe.
And if you told like slang languages or bad words or whatever, the game stopped.
And there is a pig face coming out of the screen that you shouldn't say that.
And for me, it was stupid.
I was a kid.
And I was like, okay, this is fun.
This is different.
Can you explain to maybe some of our younger listeners what MUDs are?
Oh, MUDs, it's multi-user dungeons.
So it's kind of the ancestors of what would become MMORPG.
So at the very early age of online, internet, et cetera, we could create and play.
So multi-user, you had multi-users into very early dungeons, so it was.
There was no.
In the first one there were no 3D graphics, it was mainly lines and small pixel art characters that you that you made progress through arrows and with keyboards and stuff like that.
But what was interesting in that it were also the very first age of remote working?
Uh, because not so especially mud.
Muds weren't except very few, like Meridian or stuff like that.
Uh, it wasn't really an economy.
Uh, it was in between amateurish semi-amateurish, somewhere successfully professional like Meridian 59.
Uh, but a lot of people, including me, weren't paid at the time and you could work remotely from home with people working on the same game, with people in Australia, in Canada, in Germany, in France, et cetera.
And this kind of multicultural without ever meeting the persons was really like modern at the time.
That's really crazy, considering where we are today.
Yes.
So pretty early on, you've kind of jumped into working on games.
That was work, but that was unpaid work.
So up till basically started 94, 95, up till 2002, I didn't consider myself working in games.
It was more a time-consuming hobby, and work was the thing that got me paychecks.
Well, let's be honest.
They don't need to pay us for making games.
It's so fun.
We do it for free.
I'm at an age where...
I would require some pants.
Um, so that's really interesting.
Um, because in that era, um, of game making, there was no industry, right?
It was just purely people doing it for the love of kind of the kind of uh, the Genesis, of creating uh, computer games and and um, it's really fascinating to to see um, you know, people who have our amount of of years in the industry and who were around for that era how, how that is really like.
Imagine that and what we're doing now.
It's, it's very crazy, but there's still a lot of that DNA is still in the games that we make today.
Yeah, I still have the same, probably even more passion for games now than 25 years ago.
Well, no, it's close to 30 now.
Oh, shit.
It's close to 30.
But yeah, I still have the same passion.
Yeah, I mean, making games is an incredible, incredible pursuit.
So how did that kind of period of making games just purely for the love of it um like, did that start pulling ahead of your um, your filmmaking stuff and your music?
A lot of friends i was uh doing much with uh, some of which i never met, including 30 years after some i still well, i've never met.
Are you still in touch with them?
The one i never met no okay um, but due to life yeah uh, but some of them went into like um variants and and doing mmorpg, joining everquest one, etc.
Uh, but a lot of things then was done in the us, so you had to john to join and to live abroad in the us, etc.
Which is something i wasn't considering doing.
Uh, so i stayed working in a movie production.
I started my own movie production company in 99 and that was the work.
And in 2001 a french company started working on an mmorpg called nevrax, the.
The company was called nevrax and the mmorpg which is still live is called reason.
Uh, and they i was joining like a pre-alpha for vip people who already played a lot of mmo.
Um, and at some point i gave reviews and feedbacks and stuff and they told me yeah, i'm sorry, we cannot go on.
Oh, what did i do with it so bad?
No no, it's good, it's just, We cannot use you for free like that.
So either you stop working or I'm sorry, we have to pay you.
I'm sorry, we have to pay you.
Because it's illegal.
And I said, oh, okay, okay.
So I started to accept, but it was like 5 of my time, 10 of my time, etc.
And then the more and more, year by years, it grew to 20, 30 et cetera of my time, up till the turning point was probably 2006 or 2007, where it was kind of the opposite.
The movie production switched into being 10% or 20% of my time, and the rest was video games.
Wow.
So that kind of...
Did that kind of ignite your interest to keep going and pushing into doing more?
Yeah, because the way I So with the MUDs, which was very amateurish.
Everyone was doing a lot of different stuff.
Here it was like more professional.
And so the way I entered at NeverAxe and then at Codemasters Cryptic, etc.
Was Alchemic Dream was through community management and customer support, like entry job, like a lot of people, and it was really um, refreshing being in contact with the, with the players, but i still didn't really know how games were made behind the scene and so that's with the missing part.
They were okay.
I wanted to know is production, because i knew production from the movie industry uh, but actually like the jiras yeah everything, that's what.
No, actually i used it before uh, but a lot of the stuff like uh consoles uh submissions uh, all the things that i didn't knew.
So i wanted to push to know more and not just say what would appear to me to be on the surface, while Community management and customer support are part of the dev team, so it's not service.
It's just one different way.
But for me, it appeared as I was missing some parts of knowing.
Yeah, I mean, that's how I got into the industry, too.
I did it through QA, and it was pretty obvious to me.
As soon as I started doing that, I was like oh, I can learn about every discipline of game development through here.
And I have a direct access to engineering and design and art and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And it was really.
You know, I recommend anyone when they're starting out in the industry to try QA, even though it's easier to easier to make games now, more easy to make games now than ever before.
But um, going through that process of taking the lowest job and i don't mean that in a negative context, i just mean, like the entry level positions um, it's really important to see how a dev team and a studio and a game is made.
It was really invaluable to me, lessons I still call on today.
Okay, so you're doing community support.
You're kind of opening your eyes to the bigger picture.
How did you transition out of community?
One really cool thing, kind of an accident.
I was so...
For a lot of the ring online, the MMO, Codemasters was doing the publishing for Europe.
Turbine was doing US and like North and South America and Codemasters was doing Europe.
So I went into living into UK for some time at Leamington Spa at South, close to Southam actually, where the big red farm for Codemasters was or still is.
And We didn't have a lot of a roadmap or what to do in terms of community engagement, community animations, et cetera.
And it was still the time where in MMORPG, you had to do animations, but kind of by hand.
Knowing a bit the Tolkien world and writing and stuff like that, I started to write a roadmap.
But then at the time, a lot of things needed to be validated by the owners of the Tolkien estate.
And sometimes it took a very long time to get approval for stuff.
As long as it touched the lore.
But we had leeway and more uh openness to do stuff that didn't tackle, that didn't handle the the big names from the token, like argon or etc.
And so we worked on a framework to have customers in-game customer support and in-game game masters, uh acting in character.
So if you played an elf character, if you played a hobbit characters, you had to play your customer support role agent, As a hobbit.
Wait, wait, wait, hold on a second.
Hold on a second.
You're saying that in your not your, but the role of customer support, the role that you played, the person, the employee played, if they were an elf, they had to be an elf in customer support.
That's incredible.
And that's something.
So we were a team of three, five leads at the time at Codemasters working on that framework.
Uh, i was, i was very much into hobby i'm french, so you know food, stuff like that.
Hobbits were, yeah uh, close to me, yeah uh.
So i started to create a hobbit character and when entering in game to fix technical issues etc.
We couldn't say We have a technical issue with your computer or whatever.
It was more like incapacity in role.
Oh, I have a marbled stuff that will heal you, whatever, et cetera.
So role playing, all the customer support thing.
And that was approved.
So we did that in game.
It was really fun.
Players loved it in Europe and there was okay.
Then it got closer to some form of narrative and world building and a bit of design as well, because we couldn't do whatever we wanted and so opening a lot of doors of wow, this is, this is so much more than customer support or community management.
And then it went into more Light live production because we had to anticipate, we had to plan both according to the law.
Aragorn's birthday was on that day, so we had to plan ahead the event.
We had to plan ahead to have it validated by Solzhenitsyn, Turbine, etc.
So it turned slightly into live production without us knowing it.
Wow.
But through role-playing, which was really fun.
It's incredible.
I mean, obviously...
We can never go back to that.
That can never happen again.
Just based on the amount of people who play games and that's not how people get help anymore.
But man, that's incredible.
I still have some, I captured some feedback from players from that time.
And I still have the screenshot and how much I loved it.
And I still have it at home.
I spent a lot of time in early VR, um, 2014, 15.
And there was a lot of um, a lot of at least talk, and about when we finally got multiplayer VR going, about having people kind of doing that same kind of support, um being being in the lobby, you know, having people always be there.
And um, It's really interesting because some games, especially some of the stuff that was done with early in Facebook and Oculus, they had kind of like live guides and stuff like that.
And it was really fun.
And I wish there was some way that that could happen.
I mean, I guess maybe it could happen today with AI, maybe.
Maybe.
But it still exists in EverQuest.
Oh, yeah.
Interesting.
EverQuest 1 and 2.
They still have community guides, so majority are players, but they have guidelines.
And there are one or two employees from formerly SOE, which is now I forgot the name of the new company, but there are still people doing that in EverQuest.
That makes me want to play EverQuest now.
Yeah, that's fascinating.
I wish we could still kind of have that kind of magic in games.
Yeah.
Definitely something we're missing.
So what was next for you after that?
Because you have quite a cool career arc.
Absolutely starting to learn the rope of production, and from the fun side initially, and then discovering the darker side of production.
But i wanted to go back in france and i applied to a role at ubisoft.
First to go back in france yeah, and ubisoft reached out to me for another role, which i did not apply to, which was basically a live game manager for an MMO that Ubisoft would launch.
So kind of the same stuff I was doing, with a bit more marketing, a bit more other stuff, other new stuff.
It was really interesting.
It was the opportunity to go back in France.
And what really interested me it was.
So I worked on Champions Online, on Lord of the Rings Online, Star Trek Online, hardcore games.
And the Ubisoft proposal was Imagine Town.
So twin brand for little girl between 8, 12, 14.
Extremely different from everything I've ever done.
And the challenge of totally new audience was really interesting.
Plus the fact that Ubisoft was only approaching and learning the ropes of life.
So for the first time, I felt I had something also to bring to the table.
And not just me learning.
Plus the fact of very different audience.
And that was one of my best work experience ever.
We were a small team.
It was in publishing.
So there was a studio external studio, working to make Imagine Town online MMO for 8 to 14, 15 girls mainly, even if there were not only girls playing lot of ugc ugc, so user generated contents where you could create, you could draw, you could create your patterns uh your, your dresses, your outfits, etc.
And you could be absolutely crazy.
For for players uh, you could design an entire uh choreography as.
So you had different except of being barred or wire or wizard, etc.
You could be dancer choreographer chef, tailor different creative roles as classes, but each had their own creative path.
So creating new dishes, creating new choreography with moves, creating outfits and that you could trade with other players, so very community oriented.
A lot of ugc uh and was really incredible and a lot of stuff were new to ubisoft at the time be anti-cheat, uh safety, especially given the, the audience uh networking uh hosting, a lot of stuff that ubisoft and that was part of the strategy.
Instead of trying to learn all that on assassin's creed or rainbow six siege or rainbow six sorry, uh big brands, it was more risky here.
It was more on a side brand where you could be crazy and learn stuff and if it felt that the audience was more forgiving than hardcore players on other brands and in the end we learned a lot of stuff.
We were a team of 15 to 20 plus the, the from the publishing side plus the external studio, and we learned so much for the group for ubisoft.
So part of the origin of the hosting strategy that's used now in Rainbow Six Siege is coming from Imagine Town MMO for little girls, which is always a great anecdote, but I still have the, the hosting and network et cetera that was planned for it.
And of course, it evolved.
But Martin Lavoie from Ubisoft.
At the time, still at Ubisoft, we worked together to grow that network.
And he grew the department afterwards.
That's used now in Rainbow Six Siege.
Wow.
So they kind of let you be experimental, um with the, with the hopes of kind of figuring out these problems for bigger games and bigger ip.
Yeah, it was a smart move.
Yeah, that's very smart.
That's very smart.
So so um, how long did did you work on that?
Did it turn into more games under the same kind of idea?
The one thing that initially it was really the mandate that was given was R&D.
R&D and everything in game design.
So it was really making live game design, creating quests on the flow, reacting to community a lot of live stuff to learn the ropes.
The one mistake we did was that it was R&D and the game started to make money.
So at some point it switched.
And it was, okay, it's not R&D anymore.
But we weren't set up for the long run to make it like a profitable 10 years project.
We were very much into R&D.
And so at some point it lasted two years and a half, three years.
At some point then we stopped because we weren't set up to do much more than R&D.
And then I switched to HQ, into the HQ production, where we followed up all the games from Ubisoft, but on the live specialty.
So Ghost Recon Online, Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, every more hardcore online games.
So that must have been a really interesting time, because I mean, if my timeline is correct, that's when we're kind of seeing the beginnings of the modern Ubisoft game.
And so you were kind of like on the tip of the spear for kind of some of those features and how they went forward.
Well, the I was in HQ, so I would say the one that were on the tip of the spear were the dev teams.
But I was kind of like the, sometimes the bad guy, sometimes the good guy from HQ perspective also to push forward or to defend the team against other team or HQ, etc.
When they were doing something that I felt was right, or to transition or to pass along the information from HQ etc.
So land producer is a role it exists in Ubisoft but it exists in other companies where you had to be fair and neutral between the, the power and the weight of hq and the dev teams.
So you have to be the, the balance and sometimes defend the teams against hq and sometimes passing the message from from hq, especially here it was on everything alive.
So i was given the, the experiences i had before, beat at ubisoft or codemasters cryptic, nevrax.
I had also some of the uh, an easier perspective than HQ.
But that was part of the role of helping driving along with the dev teams with HQ moving along the group.
So initially, it was very less risky games.
Imagine Town, MMO for Kids, etc.
Then Ghost Recon Online, Free to Play, Anno Online, Settlers Online.
So different layers of branch, of brands uh, but more mid-core to hardcore gamers.
And then we moved in 2015 15 each year uh, to rainbow six assassin's creed.
So tackling live on much more risky brands.
But before that there were years of rd or alchemy trying stuff on less risky thing that once we're ready on something anti-cheat, community handling, live roadmap and production then we can move on to more risky brands, etc.
Up till Rambo succeeds, For Honor, The Division, etc.
Can you give me an example of something in like Ghost Recon online that was kind of RD-ish, that ended up kind of escaping out into the wild and became, like you know, a feature the monetization how to handle monetization with the team.
So it was done with Singapore Studio at the time and it was very complicated because We wanted so we did what was called basket test.
So basically, before official launch, we gave some money, some currency in-game currency to players and checking where they would spend it.
And we did A-B testing on basket test.
So some players had certain amount, some players had less, much more or less currencies and checking where they would so that we could see what was relevant gameplay-wise, what was relevant customization or fluff item-wise, et cetera, and how to adjust that ahead of launch.
The one thing we didn't anticipate is that the more engaged players are the ones we were using baskets tests, et cetera.
Can you explain basket test to the users?
Basket test is basically you give currency to a money even if it's fake money to players and see where they will spend it.
So that you can validate your design, monetization and economy hypotheses.
Think of this item or this weapon or this map.
That's one of the things we learned.
Also, don't monetize maps, because then you will split the community and then you will basically annihilate your life plans.
Some community will have some players will have access to that map because they purchased it, some not.
Then you will split your community.
Then at some point, depending on the player population, some maps will be spent.
The community on monetizing maps because half your players might not like the map.
Exactly.
And since on live games, populations are not steady.
Well, everyone hopes for them to be steady, but we'll have influx of new players with different expectations, different maturity over your game.
They will discover your game.
They will be less good at it than your veteran players, but you need to...
Give means both through community design progression, so that the two communities can coexist together.
And so it's constant balance of not favorizing either your veterans, because your veterans players, they're going to shrink.
Yeah.
Anyhow, whatever you do.
If it's big veteran player base, then it's going to take time for it to shrink.
If it's a smaller, very engaged.
They spend a lot of money but they're going to shrink at some point because other game is going to come.
Life is going to come.
They're going to have baby.
They're going to change work.
They're going to whatever.
So you need to have this constant flux of new players and turn these new players into veterans.
Keep them engaged.
And so your community needs to be.
Your game needs to be welcoming enough for these new players, non-toxic enough for these new players to be able to merge and mingle with veterans players, et cetera.
Hence the creation of prestige mode in Call of Duty, right?
Kind of an easy grind.
And then in the beginning to get into the game and support your early players.
And then, you know, kind of a much longer road to prestige.
And then all the fun things that come with that for your veteran players.
And yeah, that whole thing that you're describing is very That's a whole.
That's a whole design in itself, right.
The kind of after release um you know what, before battle pass mentality.
Um it's, unless you're a very super crazy popular game, it's kind of like the line never drops.
Uh, but most games it's peaks and valleys based on updates and releases.
And that among all these RD, like group RD for Ubisoft to transition to live.
That's one of the core lesson that it start with design.
You cannot fix a car while driving it.
So you're designing your car, you have to anticipate all the potential roads, hills and valleys that your car and your engine is going to meet later on.
So that was the key thing.
It starts with the design.
And it's not only a business.
It's not only a meditation.
It's not only a community.
It starts first with the design.
The design needs to be anticipated, agile enough to be agile and reactive in life.
Yep. that's funny.
Use the car analogy.
I've always heard um the phrase um building the rocket while you're flying the rocket um and connected to game development, which is pretty funny and and mostly true.
Um cause, you know, like the game that you release is never the game that you start, you know that you dream up and start start working on.
Um, so, so getting, getting back to, to more, you know, Ubisoft, like how, so you're, you're kind of working on, you're describing a lot of, you're, you're talking about the player and keeping them engaged and, and, um, is there a particular game, um, that period of time for you where you felt like oh we're really kind of we're really kind of like hitting the formula here and it's it's it's working and this this is going really well the well rambo six hitch even it started there's always um it's always interconnections so before that i was working with the might uh mighty quest for epic loot team uh in montreal And they had a really great producer, Karine, at the time.
So one year, three years later, Rainbow Six Siege launched in December.
It's a rocky launch for a lot of reasons.
Hosting, networking, matchmaking, anti-cheat, a lot of stuff.
And it really surprising, hit also, not that it wasn't a good game, but it's very different from what traditional rainbow six is kind of viewed as.
And then true, so you're, you're introducing this new take on the ip with all these features.
I mean that was a really fertile time for for online games and monetization and all this stuff we're talking about.
The first month, december month of launch, was especially.
As you mentioned.
It was the first rainbow six siege without a single player campaign.
So it was a bet already.
Oh, I complained about that.
And in January, so mid to end January, we have the very first live gate.
So a gate is a formal meeting in basically all the publishing companies out there where you have top management, the team, the team presents how it goes.
You live and die by the gate.
Kind of.
Yeah.
And here the plan was uh, well it's.
It's obviously not working.
Remember six siege the launch was rocky, technically it's not ready for a lot of reasons, etc.
Uh, there isn't.
Players are complaining that there is no single-player campaign.
So kind of the plan that was in the works, not decided, but in the work was let's do, let's kill it and let's do a single player, a classical Rainbow Six Siege.
Wait, kill the game completely?
Yeah.
Wow.
It was among the options on the table.
And the team, the Montreal team on Rainbow Six Siege is fighting for.
Yeah, but what is not working is fixable.
If our design wasn't working, then of course yeah, you cannot fix the design again after launch, etc.
But here everything that's fixable can be fixed.
Yeah, fundamentally there's nothing broken with exactly right, and so among the gate a lot of people intervene to second and back up the team.
There is this data guy who would be retiring.
He would be the number two retirement of ubisoft.
After, if game was mother, he would be ubisoft retired number two in eight months.
So nothing to lose.
He doesn't care anymore because he's gonna retire.
We've all seen this movie and uh the, the guy is nothing to lose, data expert and a very quiet man smoking pipe, not in gates but in general, like you can picture, a very talking, kind of okay, very quiet and and this time he turns red like extremely angry and saying if you're not gonna kill this game no, like silence, no one is used as this guy raising a voice, turning red, etc.
You kind of okay if.
If he says that we shouldn't kill the, the way he says first, the way he says it the, the kind of won the point and turned the table and okay, and he was backing it with data because he was data expert and that's one of the gates And that's kind of how Rainbow Six Siege, Livegate was sold in the end, with this old guy really brilliant data jumping on a chair.
So not just at his desk, but jumping on a chair.
If you're not going to kill this game.
And afterwards we were looking for more live experience, people to handle, to fix which was not working in live.
And that's where, since I worked a lot in live games with notably, MightyQuest they were on the same building in Ubisoft Montreal that Karine and Amélie and all these wonderful producers have live, strong live experience.
But there is one guy in monetization plus et cetera.
And so the core team, the producer, the core team that made the game not the live part, but the game stayed there did an incredible job because their game design was ready to be live.
It was just live services that weren't.
And so we took the people from MightyQuest who had live experience in doing fermentization, handling the tech side of the hosting networking matchmaking everything, and teach it.
And in May, so it took a bit of months, of course, to solve a lot of stuff.
And in May, that was when Rainbow Six Siege blew up.
Wow.
That's incredible.
I've never heard anything about that before.
Yeah.
And actually part of the team is now doing a game for Amazon that's launching very soon for the core team from Rainbow Six Siege.
Wow, i'm a very um, hardcore old school rainbow six fan and um, it's fascinating to hear hear stories like that because sieges is a great game and, like i said, it was an unexpected take on rainbow six and it's wild to think that it was even thought about being cancelled.
But even crazier to think that you know there's so many often times where the team is not listened to.
I would say that's the good part of it, and that's probably why Ubisoft is still there as well is that in the end, Yves Guillemot and the top management listened to both the team.
Other people like this, Michel, so his name was Michel, Michel Pierrefitte, the data guy.
The live team, the people with live experience, both myself, but also the people from MightyQuest.
And so again.
So there was this core team from Rainbow Six Siege, this data guy Michel, people going against what was probably going to be the decision.
And the top management of Ubisoft listened.
And they were right, too.
But this kind of openness is probably why Ubisoft is still there.
Wow.
You heard it here, folks.
It's an incredible story about an incredible game.
So it becomes a hit.
What's next for you at Ubi?
So I was part of a task force called Game as a Service.
At the time there was probably a few articles about the Game as a Service task force in Ubisoft to help and support.
So the very first game was The Crew, then Rainbow Six Siege, then For Honor, The Division, etc.
And at some point to be honest, up till this day i still don't know, and we as the entire team, we still don't know why at some points it was considered okay we'll, we don't need you anymore, because now everyone is live ready, right on ubisoft, right?
Uh, i anticipated that a bit because i wanted to go back to publishing what we did.
We saw party with uh uh, imagine town mmo at the time, with heroes of mighty magic at the time, etc.
And so why did you want to go back to publishing?
Um, the.
It's kind of similar to life.
Uh, there's always something new in a live game and in publishing there's always something new because you're making many different games.
You're not working on one similar, one single game two, three years, so the kind of constant challenge, constant annuity plus, even better, in publishing, you're ahead of the industry.
Meaning.
You're seeing what's going to be the trends, the new talents, the new cultural references, the new teams from all across the world, et cetera, in the next years.
So it's extremely refreshing.
I hope it prevents you from being outdated.
My last name, Le Yawank, in Britain, means the young.
Yawank would turn, it's old Celtic, it would turn into young in English.
So maybe it's tied to my DNA of my family name.
Always wanting to be young or at least not to be outdated.
So maybe it's tied to the way I approach work.
I don't know.
Well, it is fun to having.
I've also worked in the publishing aspect a few times and it does keep it fresh and interesting because there's just multiple projects going on at any given time and i do personally.
Um, you know, after a year or two of working on the same thing, it you, you know, you naturally get that, that tunnel vision.
I don't, I don't, I don't personally think I could work on a game for five or seven years.
Like it was kind of happening today.
At least one thing anyway.
So it's, it's very, it does keep you young and fresh and, and interesting or interested.
I hope so.
Yeah.
So you want to go back to publishing and, are you thinking about doing this at ubisoft are you thinking about the thing is so ubisoft had a third party publishing department which i left because i went to hq yep but the third party was stopped in 2012. uh so there was no third party publishing at ubisoft anymore and so while anticipating that at some point we would have done with the game as a servicing to good job so that everyone would be uh live ready and maybe our team then won't be needed anymore uh i started to pitch to eve and christine and the the management of ubisoft uh so a lot of people are so on you play the the the platform owned by ubisoft there's a lot of assassin's creed and rainbow six siege players the tetra but It's very engaged Ubisoft players.
We don't have access to other players who love Call of Duty but who love Hollow Knight, who love other stuff.
At the time, a lot of developers were complaining with the first changes in Steam visibility algorithm.
So there was maybe a card to play something uh, welcoming new games, uh on your play.
Uh, at first non-exclusive, because of course we couldn't compete with with uh steam yep, but it would open the our chakras, our player chakras, And then also could benefit from a better CRM, community PR cycle, et cetera.
Hey, you played Assassin's Creed or you played Hades.
Do you know about Heroes of Might and Magic, et cetera?
These kind of bridges.
And so I spent basically almost a year pitching that.
So benefiting for the platform, benefiting for the devs, for the indie devs.
And especially that also when we started seeing massive indie successes like Subnautica, Dead Cells games, like that which happened while I was pitching.
When I started to do the pitch, I was lacking a few examples to be convincing, but since it took basically one year of pitching and back and forth, et cetera, within this year there was a lot of games that filled up my list of convincing examples.
In the end it was validated as an ID, except the Upler part, but basically trying to do more open innovation aspects.
So less classic publishing but more open innovation kind of an exchange.
Ubisoft has know-how on a lot of stuff, but other indie studios have know-how that Ubisoft don't have uh.
So it was through this angle of open innovation let's do exchanges.
So we did that with many different teams, from uh curious expedition machine manage to uh in in germany to paradox and cruiser kings about imaginary major narration in cruiser kings and back and forth examples like that and to do a bit of publishing.
So rogue prince of persia by the dead sales team started like that.
I'm trying to see what has been announced and what I can speak because I've left Ubisoft since a while now.
But at least Rogue Prince of Persia is out so I can speak about it.
So initially it was less directly publishing but more how to grow together by exchanging learnings and know-hows.
So I started to do that up till early 21.
So that's right around the time when you moved over to Focus, which is a big change.
So how did that happen?
Initially.
The fun fact is that it was in October or November 2020 I was approached by two different companies.
With just one hour and 30 minutes, two headhunters from two very different publishing companies and each on the same day, and initially I was leaning more into the other company for different reasons.
So it's always a good sign when developers want to continue the relationship, because it means that somehow they're happy with the work the publisher did.
And so for me that was a green flag saying okay, if publishers are happy, they must be doing something good.
Yes.
So that's why that's plus for the people while meeting them during the process.
So that's why I choose focus in the end.
Plus the fact that focused DNA initially was a lot of started in, like Ubisoft in distribution, doing distribution and retail and physical distribution.
Then starting to evolve into having the publishing services, but it was kind of still a bit new after 2015, 2016.
So there was still a lot to build and to write.
So this kind of challenge of help bringing the company to new heights or to new directions is always more interesting.
Being part, again, maybe the hobbits in me, being part of an adventure is more exciting.
So...
A lot of times in our industry when people have job titles they mean different things.
You know company to company, which is extremely funny about the video game industry.
I think that's hilarious.
I had some really crazy titles over my career.
But you have Chief Content Officer now as your title at Focus Entertainment.
Can you just briefly describe what that what that entails for you and what you're kind of overseeing it's um it's i'm pretty proud not of the title itself but of what it means especially for publishers especially during the age of retail publishing a large part of the publishing job was about volume storage stocks everything retails so it was like a large part of the business of the publishing decision were business driven due to the retail and the weight of the retail in the publishing right now that it's much more digital and we see a lot of other actors netflix amazon the Hollywood everything the books industry checking for content in games we're seeing the success of The Last of Us Fallout etc and so tackling the publishing angle through the content first and less doesn't mean that it's not business driven but it means that the first thing we want to see a game and in a studio's vision is about the content of course it needs to be profitable to be a business case to be whatever but first we need to be excited by the gameplay by the design by the creative vision and i think that's a sign of the times are changing in publishing because it's not only focus it's other companies as well where well we're looking for content first and that content of course needs to be profitable etc but especially right now we're kind of in the same situation of developers where you need to fight for visibility and as publishers we need to fight for visibility against other publishers as well and for that we need to pick the best unique games and teams for the future as well because that's something which is keen to to focus dna like wanting to work several years with publishers uh with us as publisher so we need to find team that are doing crazy stuff and i think it's core to what a publisher should be taking risk it you you Balancing risks, meaning, of course, we won't be signing only very small R&D experimental games because it won't be sustainable enough.
There's risk and there's risk.
Exactly.
But not taking any creative risk at all.
It's how you die and wither.
I went and looked up what the most successful focus entertainment games were.
Leg tail read fall, snow runner a surge world war Z.
There's a few more, but like all those games are very interesting creatively.
They're not just like games.
Obviously the, there's an IP, um, uh, element to the story.
Warhammer aliens.
Um, I uh.
I interviewed Tim Willits earlier this year about about that game and actually um the two Alien games that you guys have made.
I'm a massive Alien fan.
I've been lucky enough in my career to work on one Alien game.
Maybe two.
And I actually tried really hard to get people behind either of those Alien games to come on the podcast, but it didn't work out.
And I find that those two Alien games in specific kind of match exactly what you're saying in terms of creative risk, because it'd be pretty.
I mean, Alien as a franchise is traditionally been challenging to make games with for a variety of reasons.
And both of those games were interesting, takes on on on the franchise, not not like out of left field, because you can see the obvious um, how the ip fits, the genres of those games and the same with.
You know, like we said, a plague tale read fall, world war z.
Those are all interesting games mechanically creatively, they're really interesting and unique, unique designs and um it's, it's a very.
It seems like you guys really care about that.
I wasn't there for the majority of the game but i mean it's a company, but yeah, it's a company.
Philosophy and dna uh, that started with with black talent, world war z, and and, and I'm sure Tim mentioned because we started well, Focus.
I wasn't there but Focus started working with Sabre, World War Z and their engine, swarm engine that allowed that kind of crowd and physics and a lot of well, swarms actually gave the idea to someone at Focus at the time to oh, we are used to working with Games Workshop.
There hasn't been a Space Marine since a long time with Relic.
Why shouldn't we use the swarm engine from Saber to make a Space Marine 2?
And then the people at the time went to see Games Workshop and then, with Games Workshop, went to see Saber and said would you be interested?
And that's how... So especially with Space Marine 2, the fact that these kind of creative connections based on the technology developed by Saber the knowledge of Games Workshop and Warhammer 40k developed by Games Workshop and the use of habits with a focus on that.
That's being creative and building bridges between different stuff and taking risks.
Yeah, I love it when games find a technology and that becomes a solution to creative and design and mechanics.
Um, it's really fun.
I, I, I think, um, I think probably a lot less of that happens today than, than it used to.
Um, but Warhammer is a great example of that.
And, um, Tim and I talked pretty extensively about, about that.
Um so so you're at focus, you've got this, this great role, and in all my research about you, building bridges comes up a lot.
So so talk to me about you know how you're kind of focusing on building bridges now and and kind of whatever you can talk about, that's public.
Yeah.
One of the focus DNA.
So I don't build bridges first.
I'm not alone.
There's a team also I work with.
And it's not out of FocusDNA.
So it's building up based on FocusDNA that existed before I joined.
So if you take Plague Tale, for example the the, the technical, technological innovation with a swarm of of rats, plus the narrative aspect, plus the, the challenges of having two playable characters, a lot of stuff um, but with extremely high production value, so trying to keep that uh, and of course, when you join a company, They don't give you the keys and the entire budget and everything.
So I had to start small to prove stuff.
With Chant of Sennar, for example, which was one of the examples which was exactly so in terms of art direction, art intention.
Chant of Sennar was directly unique.
But also in terms of game design.
It's something that wasn't in before.
And the third criteria was also the quality of the relationship with the team.
Again, very core to Focus.
Focus kept working with Asobo, with a lot of others, with Sable.
So the quality of the relationship and how we can project ourselves together with the studio.
So that's what we're doing with RunDisc.
Also trying again, a bit like what happened at Ubisoft trying to do live games, but in a mastered capacity and starting more with a focus on the co-op, like betting that Coop would be a safer bet to start working online.
So with Void Crew, for example.
So trying new stuff, but in a mastered environment with focus capacities, and then growing together with the studio, with focus teams, et cetera.
So with the expertise of focus team, and one because I have the easy job when I go out for teams and games to sign.
I don't have to over-advertise the quality of production.
People just have to, whatever the game, beat Dordogne, beat Chant of Thunar, beat Void Crew, beat Space Marine, beat the quality in which the games are released. uh that's not the publishing team that's of course the studio but also focus production team and the quality in terms of qa release management line production etc and so it's the easy part for me that just see in which quality and capacity that the games are delivered uh that allows me to add the touch of craziness and innovation on certain game genre, and then budget as well.
So what games do you think best illustrate the focus identity um, and how?
How are you taking those and kind of taking that connective tissue into into what you're doing?
I i would say both space.
Space marine is is like, probably especially in two.
Yep is one of the core example of focus game in terms of quality delivery, mastering of budget.
It's not a AAA budget.
Have you guys talked publicly about what that budget is?
No, we haven't talked publicly, but we have said that it's not a AAA budget.
Got it.
So the quality of the game is...
First, the idea initiates from focus, with the use of working with Games Workshop, with the use of working with Sabre.
So again being installed in time, having this kind of relationship both with the licensor, with the studio, over time is keen and really focused DNA thing, quality of the visuals and at the same time having chant of sonar.
So focus is chant of sonar and space marine.
So what, what is the if you were, if you were um talking to, to people who are getting into industry or moving up um and are interested in working for a publisher, maybe the same types of roles or or at least working into that?
What?
What advice would you give people um, who want to work in, you know, a midsize publisher, in 2006 2026 sorry, that would be a weird year to say um 2026, like what?
Would your advice be based on what you've learned at Ubi, what you've kind of learned at Focus and what you're seeing for the future?
Play a lot of games.
And by a lot of games.
It's not about the quantity, but I would say the variety, the diversity of games.
Very often ideas, suggestions or curiosity trying to chat with one specific studio etc.
Was due to playing very different, very non-focused games as well, but that can feed ideas and and help unlocking situations when talking with developers and studios.
So having the the the mind's openness or the curiosity and being on the edge and the lookout for the future of where the game industry is going.
Because part of the game job is called scouts, and scouting is exploring new territories.
And so you don't discover new continents, new areas, if you're not scouting.
And by scouting, it also means meeting different generations.
So not only talking to AAA senior veterans, developers, being open to new talents.
And very often, especially right now, past COVID, we saw a lot of senior veterans from big AAA studio getting money to set up a new studio with big AA plus slash AAA talent.
And very often, unfortunately, it didn't succeed.
Or never even got off the ground.
Sorry?
Or never even got off the ground.
Oh, exactly.
But at the same time, you have very young people's team 18 20, 21 years old from Brazil, from South Africa, from Indonesia, that went through school together, that did game jams together, that have this kind of different culture, so bringing something new on the table different way to approach problems in different ways, different solutions.
But they have the team's dynamic.
They used to work together as a team.
Even if it's during university, college game jams, etc.
They're more tight, more dynamic, more agile, more.
More team.
Yeah, because those are your formative learning years where you you know those kind of successes and the excitement around those.
I'm not talking about like, you know, selling games.
I'm talking about, oh, we did this, right?
We figured this out.
Those kind of things are invaluable to a team DNA.
I'm curious, since we're talking about teams right now um, so the game industry as a whole is incredibly fractured right now.
It's basically caving in on itself, except for kind of the you know, the big games on top um, and because of this kind of dynamic shift where, you know, there's just what seems like an endless number of closures and layoffs, people losing their jobs.
There are unquestionably more game developers in the world right now looking to make new games than ever before.
And many of those game developers have no idea or experience pitching their game to a publisher.
So, you know, this is something that you're basically an expert in.
How would you um, what would you say to to teams just starting out, whether they're in university or they're literally triple a, veterans who have started a you know a studio in their garage together and they're, they're building a prototype?
They've got a game idea.
Like what is your advice to them?
Because it is a crazy time. to even be pitching games right now.
Right.
So there's, there's so much, um, there's so much talent out there.
I mean, as a publisher on one hand, it's incredible because you have all these other opportunities.
On the other hand, it's daunting because there's so much of it, you know?
So so what's, what's your approach for new teams, no matter at what stage in their career they are?
A few things.
First thing is start pitching early and to publishers that you see are attending smaller events local events meaning that have this kind of openness and that won't just shut the door forever if your first pitch is not 100 good, so don't send your pitch to everyone on earth, but just Check out the small local event.
Do your research.
Do your research.
Exactly.
The good thing about the publisher-developer relationship is that it's much more balanced now than it used to be 10 or 15 years ago, when it was much more RFP and publishers giving orders and the balance of power and revenue was very different.
Now it's much more balanced.
But like someone said, with more power comes more responsibilities as well.
Uh, I agree with you.
I just want to say, um, add something to what you're saying.
It's like when we say do your research um, maybe in other uh creative endeavors like making movies or music or comic books or whatever it's like you usually like, pick the label or the producer or the studio that makes the kind of movies that you like or that are like what you're making.
And that's by saying do your research.
You know, a game that might be great for focus is not going to be great for EA.
Right.
And and that's that's really like the key.
There is like understanding where you're going when you're pitching.
I think that's a very important.
So there's a lot of pitching resources available through conferences, pitch deck examples shared by including publishers like rofery wython, games etc.
Available online, or the the backbone team who said the pitch that got them a publishing deal is free online.
A lot of different examples checking what are each publishers doing.
Do your research again, because we're receiving a lot of mobile vr, nft not putting nft in the same bag of yarn mobile, but which we don't do.
So it means that i can understand people trying out their luck.
Maybe it's going to work, but not on the platform We're not doing.
Let's say, the majority of what we're doing is FPS, RPG or innovative like knowledge vanilla, new games or areas.
We haven't done platformers.
If you're doing platformers, I can totally understand you want to try your life.
Because maybe you're going to make a unique platformer and invent something there, but if you're making nft or vr, when we're not going to invent our expertise on doing that, we don't have the expertise to do vr publishing etc.
And nft we don't want to.
So you can turn around, you can turn the table by trying your luck with with the game genre, But not with platforms.
So if you're doing a mobile, send it to mobile publishers.
If you're doing VR, send it to VR publishers, et cetera.
Do a lot of network.
Because very often, it's not a race.
It's a marathon.
The first thing is, what is your plan?
What is your strategy?
Do you want to just make a game?
And basically, you don't care of the structure.
You don't care. just want to make this game, make it quick, whatever.
Or you want to build up a studio.
And these are two very different strategic avenue, funding avenue, et cetera.
If you want to make up a studio for long term, maybe make one game, two games, three games, et cetera, and build up a team.
It's really a marathon, so meaning The early you can talk.
Network start with a publisher.
Contrary to what a lot of people might be thinking publishers, we are officially competitors, but we talk to each other a lot.
Of course, yeah.
And when we I don't have bandwidth because the marketing team is fully booked for the next six months or one year or whatever.
I receive an incredible game or I see an incredible game at DICE or whatever.
I'm not going to keep the secrets.
I cannot sign it because we're fully booked.
But hey, RoFurry, hey, Annapurna, hey, etc.
Do we have the bandwidth?
This game is incredible.
I met the team several times.
It's not for us for whatever reason, but sometimes publishers can also do your biz dev for you.
Do you guys have a bunch of guidelines on your website for people who want to submit publishing?
These are the type of games we don't work on, etc.
No, except the obvious, like I said, mobile, VR, etc.
Because we don't want to... probably chance of scenario.
If they had read something on our website, they would never reached out.
Uh, or actually I reached out to them, but, uh, we want to keep the gate open to crazy stuff.
Yeah.
So streamlining, uh streamlining, or or closing the door by pure game genre definition um would make us risk losing crazy stuff.
Yeah.
I'm on the fence about publishers that do that because, on one hand, it's probably helpful in some ways, but the the opposite is true of what you're saying is you could miss out on a diamond um, you know, just by not not coming in.
And and more often than not, like again.
You talked earlier about taking creative risks, like you know, if something's right, on the edge of what you guys would do or wouldn't do, but it's too good to pass up, you might not ever see that game.
It's like job offers.
If you put in your job, you have to have 10 years of experience at whatever.
Years of experience or diploma.
Or whatever.
So yeah we don't want to have.
Very often people.
Underestimate themselves.
So if you put criteria.
Be it on job offers.
Or which kind of games we're doing.
People will self censor.
Oh I'm not as good as.
While in the end.
They might be even.
Exactly what we're looking for.
Or they might. overcome our expectations.
Yeah.
I mean, the artistic creative people, um, are always up against that.
And um, it's very easy to go Oh this, this big publisher isn't.
You know they would never want to talk to me about that, when in reality they do want to talk to you about it.
And it's, uh, you know, and that's part of the, that's part of the job, right?
It's like going and finding those special developers and those special games.
So, um, To wrap it up, this has been a really interesting conversation.
I think if you're a developer listening to this, I think you're probably getting a lot out of it in terms of what's happening today and how to kind of approach it.
So what do you think is like the biggest, your biggest professional achievement that you're most proud of?
That you can kind of link back to this um building bridges kind of concept that that's come up multiple times today.
Uh, that's a tough question.
Um, building up uh, building up a team the, the publishing and acquisition team we have at focus is uh incredible people.
So it's kind of like um yeah, before asking others to come to you as a publisher, with a sturdy dynamic incredible, creative team.
That was my first task to build up a team and i'm really extremely happy, proud of the team we have.
That's awesome.
Building, building the right team is is incredibly hard to do and when you get it right, it's it's incredible.
So any last uh pieces of advice for developers out there who are, who are um, you're thinking about going the publishing route and maybe are actually interested in focus entertainment.
So to meet people from focus uh, we try to to try not to go to um ggc games, command dice only, so we try also to to come.
We cannot come to every video game event in the world, but we also try to come to uh close by uh we.
We have people traveling in in Latin America to meet LALEM developers, to Canada, to Southeast Asia, to Africa Games Week to, et cetera.
So we try to give the opportunity to be present so that you don't have to ruin yourself and pay a lot of dollars to meet us.
I have to agree with that.
As a developer, you could go to five smaller events than one GDC and um.
GDC is not only incredibly expensive, but the um opportunity that you have shrinks there remarkably, because I don't know anyone who goes to GDC with open slots in their schedule.
It's just not like that's all worked out months in advance.
Yeah.
And, um, organic discovery at GDC is, And I'm not bagging on GDC.
It's just very big and it's the biggest one we have.
And, you know, organic discovery of a cool new game by a cool new team is, I mean, it's in the lowest percentage of things that can happen.
Um, and and going to these smaller shows uh, i think are probably, you know, a better bet.
Void crew, for example, that was going to just going to a danish event so, and the danish scene is quite small yeah uh, and at the time it was the first game, the probably wouldn't have gone to dgc or even gamescom.
So we're lucky enough to go to this danish event and see the void crew team.
But yeah, it's also a part of the responsibility for publishers to and a lot are doing that to go to smaller local events where you could see the gems that not everyone will see.
So you will have a head start as well as a publisher.
I know I said the last question was the last question, but this is the last question.
What are you looking for in games right now?
Something coherent.
Meaning we're seeing games where the art style is incredible, but gameplay-wise it's a bit weak.
Like trying to, not trying to be too brainy, but trying to reconcile ludology and oratology.
Because we have the technological means, we have the culture to do so.
And especially right now, it's less one big market dominated by US and Western Europe.
The video game market.
It's much more clustered, which is also why AAA or games that want to address anyone it's much more harder right now, because the anyone is much clusterized audience.
So now we can have new cultures, new teams, new talent, new expertise.
So we can have.
So I'm looking for Coherent expertise, coherent game offer proposal, world building art gameplay, et cetera.
They're not trying to please everyone.
You asked earlier what was one of my greatest achievements.
It's a bit egotistic, but I'm on the credit, as a thank you, of this coalition.
And that's probably one of my proudest credits.
I'm on the credit of a lot of other AAA, whatever, but I'm on the thank you list of Disco Elysium.
And that would be too long to explain why.
But this kind of unique well, the art, the narrative, the world, the tone, what the game says is really unique.
This kind of so not necessarily an RPG et cetera, but more this kind of unique full, coherent proposal.
And what is the basic kind of requirement for a game to be kind of submitted to you publisher-wise?
Like, you must have a prototype, you must have a playable, it needs a deck.
It really depends on what the game is.
So if you're making a Plague Tale, a game like a Plague Tale, or a game like The Last of Us or games where the The atmosphere, the art style, the narration so things that come generally pretty late in the production are keen to demonstrate, or what demonstrates your game.
Then, of course, it needs to be vertical slice and later on.
If you're making Cruiser of the Kings, if you're a systemic game and no one buys Cruiser of the Kings for art's reason, or if you're making RimWorld something ugly, just demonstrating the systems.
That's a very, very early prototype.
Or if you're the developer of, let's say, Battle Brothers and you're pitching your next game and your next game is close to Battle Brothers or whatever.
Or if you're Larian and you're pitching a CRPG I hope no one is going to ask Larian to show a prototype.
Probably not.
Probably not.
I think the.
I think the the cult of the vertical slice has really hurt game development, especially when you're pitching because, let's be honest, Nobody can make a vertical slice without funding.
Yes.
Right?
So you know, if you're listening to this and you're a small independent developer, you don't need a vertical slice.
You need a working prototype that demonstrates the interactivity, the storytelling and perhaps the art style, if the art style is so integral to what you're building.
And very often, which...
It seems to have proven to be economically more viable than a VS vertical slice.
It's having an ugly prototype and a beauty corner built on the side.
So nothing is functional.
You can just move the camera, et cetera, but at least you showcase art style intentions.
But it's way cheaper than trying to reach out to vertical slice where everything is working and functional with art.
Yeah, vertical slice, you're baking the game.
Yeah.
Yeah, the vertical slice is something that came out of AAA games to move the game to a point where you know alpha wasn't really doing it or isn't isn't getting there, and i, i think that um, you know, keeping it simple, showing your uniqueness and being able to convey the ideas in the game with simple prototype, beautiful corner.
That's enough um, awesome.
Well, the one last thing maybe, is that To make at least from what I'm looking for like very coherent experience.
Of course, you need to play other games within different genres.
So not only AAA, but also indie games, very experimental games or AA or whatever.
So different types.
But also...
Have a cultural background by reading books, watching TV series, movies, comic books.
A lot of cultural substract to open your ideas to other non-gaming stuff.
And that probably will feed you on how to be unique within video game.
If you're too nerdy and having only video game references, you will probably lack uniqueness into the video game world.
So using public libraries, because it's not only tied to money, you can have ways to cultivate and to open to other medias and entertainment.
Yeah, there's a reason why...
Disco Elysium is so great and it's not because of video games.
Yeah.
Right.
It's, it's about being culturally literate, culturally relevant and culturally curious.
Exactly.
And, um, yeah, if you're making games, don't just play games.
Perfect conclusion.
Alrighty.
This was a great conversation.
Uh, Really thanks so much for your time here at Dice.
And thanks for all of your insight and wisdom.
I think developers are going to get a lot out of this conversation.
Thank you, Adam, for great questions.
I hope it was interesting.
It was great.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you for joining us for the Game Maker's Notebook.
For more information on the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, our podcasts and our other initiatives, please visit wwwinteractiveorg.
