THREE GOOD NEWS AT ONCE!

  
A quick post here to share some cool things happening now or very soon.

► New game incoming! With a publisher!


After the closure of Arkedo, we (Dimitri and I) spent some time polishing a little game we made in the last months of the studio. Basically, it's a super hardcore version of the very old Mario Bros Arcade, of course with a twist. Now we're quite happy with it. We made some successful playtests, and we even now have a publisher for it!

I made this for the joy of actually seeing the game played (I won't get any money from it). It was quite sad to imagine this title forgotten forever in a secret box or something. I will ask to our publisher if I can share some screenshots, details and artworks here in the following days, so stay tuned! 


► A video challenge to bring people to game making

In the following weeks, I will try to publish a big video tutorial for beginners about making games on your own, from start to finish. The goal is to share some knowledge about various tools, and having fun explaining that to beginners.

Me and a friend (who don't know that much about game development) will try to make a small full game in 1 hour or so, from design to code and music. 

Honestly, I think we'll fail at the one hour only limit, but it will be fun and hopefully interesting anyway... It could be featured by a famous french magazine too, so everyone with good game ideas can learn how to make cool prototypes quickly. 

Note: It will of course be subbed in English! (< any advice on easy editing tools for that? The youtube autosub feature seems to be only available for spoken English)


► Want to meet? Join me at the next Game Apero (by Game In)

I've been invited by the Game In association to join the next Game Apero in Lille (France) on  June 26th. I will talk about some of my small experiences in the game industry. There will be many studios, publishers, and cool people having fun and discuss video game development topics. Let's have a beer together!

 

Some news about ARKEDO

(This post has entirely been translated in English by Olivier Penot. A thousand thanks to him, at least. You can read a french version here)
 

Hello everyone, here is Aurelien from Arkedo Studio speaking. I’m the creative director of the games we did since Arkedo started. Camille (the real big boss of the company) and I receive a lot of messages asking us about the actual situation of Arkedo, and what are our plans next.

Arkedo stops after 7 years of super great moments, but the situation is subtle, and generally few people take the time to understand. Before we get into quick news posts like “Bankrupt! Shutting down! Apocalypse!”, let’s take the time to explain things calmly.


► FACTS

Arkedo, the company, is still here. But no one’s employed anymore. No more games are produced either.
That’s the subtlety of the situation: Arkedo hasn’t closed down and is not bankrupt, going into administration or whatever big word, as it is managed properly. It is interesting for the structure to still be here as after HellYeah!, we’ve made two small games which are finished but you’re not aware of them yet. We hope to release them soon and it should be fine on this side.



► THE DETAILED WHY

There are three main reasons as why Arkedo stops. If this of any interest to you, please take the time to consider the three reasons as a whole and not separately.


♦  MONEY

First and most obvious one. Nowadays need a very careful financial management. As a consequence, one always has to jump from one project to another without a rest and with a very small team.

But our team has grown throughout the years and we didn’t have any secured project on sight after HY. We first produced two new little games, self funded, by splitting the team into two mini autonomous teams. But before running out of money, we had to do something.

Arkedo has been, and will always be, an honest company, managed with generous and human values. One may consider this either silly, or nice.

So, it has been decided to disband the team when there still was enough money to get good conditions for everyone, rather than replace permanent positions with interns and a bad atmosphere. As in any human matter, it is important to know when to stop, to get a clean situation. It is precisely because we did this at this time that everyone from Arkedo is still having a good time together, even after it's officially over.


♦ POST HELLYEAH ! ERA

If you had the courage to read my post mortem (LINK) on HY!, you won’t learn much by telling you that this project was a little too big for us.

Big picture is, the game has a lot of things we love, but also things we regret. Because we didn’t have enough time, or experience, and we reached our limits. It’s no big deal, but one needs to learn something out of it.

The studio wanted to make smaller games again, on a more manageable scale, without a huge publisher behind you (even though our relation with Sega is still excellent), or any management needs.

But this small games willing is not really compatible with a middle size company structure. Right now, it is better to be small in order to take risks, and we weren’t anymore as we used to be when we did Nervous Brickdown, which was 7 years ago already.


♦ WHAT ONE WANT

Adding to these: the two co-founders projects of Camille and I.

When we decided together to put everything on hold, Camille was fully involved on his publishing project, already looking ahead. That doesn’t mean he wanted to leave Arkedo on the side of the road.

On my side, I already told the team my willing to start my own mini-studio within the next few years. It wasn’t planned for a short term, but I had it in mind.

Knowing that our long-term objectives would both drive us away from Arkedo, it didn’t make sense to take financial risks again. Within a less hostile economical context, Arkedo would probably still be here, but this context just “speed-uped” the end of the studio by a couple of years.



► WHAT’S NEXT ?


- Camille will tell you better about his projects. There has been a serious, deadly problem to the publishing project in december and I will let him update you on this as I don’t want to write anything false. What is for sure is that we still see one each other and will often do in the future, all with great pleasure and for a long time.

- In order to end this far-too-long note, on my side, after a small period of time to get over the situation, I’m now fulfilling an old fantasy: to produce a game from scratch to the end: code, sounds and design. I don’t know yet if the result will deserve your attention, or if I could make a living out of it once done but it is looking good and it’s making me very happy.

If anyone read the whole thing, first, bravo. And mostly, guessing that you read this by curiosity for us, we hug/thank you very sincerely by finishing with this: Arkedo’s members are fine, most haven’t stopped the pixels and will show you new things with their own manners. In this kind of case, we say “See ya” rather than “Farewell”, right?



Aurelien, on behalf of Arkedo.


Sidenote: HY Pocket Inferno on mobile platforms should be out by now. I didn’t work on it, nor the rest of Arkedo excluding our producer. Reason is simple: the game has been entirely produced externally by another studio as, at the time, we were hardly finishing the PC/XBLA version of the game.

Le point sur ARKEDO

♦ (International readers: ENGLISH VERSION can be found here. )

Bonjour tout le monde, c'est Aurélien du studio Arkedo à l'appareil. Je m'occupe de la partie créative des jeux depuis la création de l'entreprise. Camille (le vrai chef du studio) et moi, on reçoit beaucoup de messages pour nous demander quelle est la situation d'Arkedo, et ce qui se passe pour la suite. 

Arkedo s'arrête après 7 ans d'excellents moments, mais la situation est subtile, et généralement peu de gens prennent le temps de comprendre. Avant de se retrouver dans des news un peu hâtives de type "Faillite! Liquidation! Apocalypse!", faisons le point tranquillement.

► LES FAITS

Arkedo, la structure juridique, est encore là. Mais le studio ne compte plus d'employés. Il n'y a plus de jeux produits actuellement.

Subtilité: Arkedo n'a pas pour autant complètement fermé, et n'est pas non plus en faillite, liquidation ou autre vilain mot, car géré proprement.

Il est intéressant que la structure reste vivante, car après HellYeah!, nous avons réalisés deux petits jeux qui sont terminés, mais que vous ne connaissez pas encore. On espère les voir sortir bientôt, et ça se profile pas mal.

► LE POURQUOI EN DETAIL

Il y a trois raisons à l'arrêt d'Arkedo. Si ce message vous intéresse, s'il vous plait prenez le temps de considérer les trois raisons à la fois et non une seule.

♦ LES SOUS

La première raison, c'est celle à laquelle tout le monde pense. Les temps actuels demandent une gestion financière économe. Ils demandent aussi de sauter de projet en projet sans temps mort, avec une équipe réduite au minimum.

Or notre équipe a grossi au fil des années, et nous n'avions pas de projets sûrs en vue après HY. Nous avons d’abord produit deux nouveaux petits jeux sur fonds propres en séparant l'équipe en deux mini teams autonomes. Mais avant de voir ensuite nos économies définitivement fondre, il a fallu réagir. 

Arkedo a toujours été, et ce jusqu'à la fin, une entreprise honnête, gérée de manière humaine et généreuse. Selon le point de vue, on peut trouver ça idiot ou formidable.

Quoiqu'il en soit, il a été décidé de dissoudre toute l'équipe dans de bonnes conditions, et surtout à temps, plutôt que de remplacer les CDI par des stagiaires et une sale ambiance.

Comme dans d'autres domaines, il est bon de savoir s'arrêter dans une situation propre. C'est ce timing précieux qui fait que tout le monde s'entend encore bien, même dans l'après Arkedo.

♦ L'APRES HELLYEAH!

Si vous vous êtes infligé mon post-mortem sur HY!, je ne vous apprends rien en vous disant que ce genre de projet s'est révélé un peu trop gros pour nous.

En résumé, le jeu comporte beaucoup de choses que l'on aime, mais aussi des éléments que l'on regrette. Par manque de temps, de recul, et surtout d'expérience, nous avons atteint nos limites. Ce n'est pas grave, mais il faut en apprendre quelque chose.

L'envie du studio a été de repasser à des jeux plus petits, plus maitrisables, sans gros éditeur derrière (même si nos relations avec Sega sont toujours très bonnes), ni management d'équipe. Juste faire de bons petits jeux entres potes.

Or, cette envie de petits jeux indés se révèlent assez peu compatible avec une structure de taille moyenne. En ce moment, il vaut mieux être léger pour pouvoir prendre des risques, et nous ne l'étions plus, contrairement à la période de production de Nervous Brickdown, il y a 7 ans déjà.

♦ LES ENVIES DE CHACUN

S'ajoutent à ça les projets des deux fondateurs du studio, Camille et moi.

Au moment de prendre la décision commune de tout mettre  en veille, Camille était à pleine vapeur sur son projet d'édition de jeux, et déjà tourné vers le futur. Ce qui ne veut pas dire qu'il voulait lâcher Arkedo en route.

De mon côté, j'avais annoncé à l'équipe mon souhait de monter mon propre mini-studio dans les prochaines années. Ce n'était pas non plus du tout prévu pour tout de suite, mais c'était dans un coin de ma tête.

Sachant que nos envies sur le long terme nous éloigneraient chacun d'Arkedo, il ne faisait pas sens de reprendre des risques financiers. Dans un contexte économique moins hostile que l'actuel, Arkedo serait surement toujours là, mais ce climat n'a fait que précipiter de deux ou trois ans la fin du studio.

► LA SUITE

  

- Camille vous parlera mieux que moi de ses projets. Il y a eu un contretemps sérieux au projet d'édition, et je le laisserai faire une update là-dessus de son coté, de peur d'écrire des bêtises. Ce qui est certain, c'est que nous nous voyons encore régulièrement avec plaisir, et que nos chemins se croiseront sûrement encore longtemps.

- Enfin pour terminer ce bien trop long billet, de mon côté, après une petite période pour digérer la situation, je réalise depuis quelques temps un vieux fantasme: faire un jeu tout seul de A à Z, code, musique, et design. Je ne sais pas encore si le résultat méritera votre attention, ni si je pourrai en vivre une fois terminé, mais ça avance bien, et ça me rend très heureux.

Si quelqu’un est arrivé jusqu'au bout de cette explication, d'abord, bravo. Et surtout, en partant du principe que vous avez lu ceci par curiosité pour nous, on vous embrasse bien sincèrement en terminant là-dessus: les membres d'Arkedo vont bien, beaucoup n'ont pas raccroché les pixels, et ils vous proposeront prochainement de nouvelles choses chacun à leur manière. Dans ce genre de cas, on dit "à bientôt" plutôt que "bye bye", non?

Aurélien pour Arkedo.

Note: Pour répondre aux questions, HY Pocket Inferno sur smartphones devrait être sorti au moment où vous lisez ces lignes. Je n'ai pas travaillé dessus, pas plus que le reste d'Arkedo à part notre producer. La raison est simple: le jeu a été entièrement réalisé en externe par un autre studio car à l'époque nous terminions de notre côté la version PC/Xbox en tirant la langue.

DANGER! CONFERENCE!

For the very first time, I'll handle a conference in English. It will be the 29th at the Game Connection, and of course I'm totally freaking out about it. That said, I wonder if there will be anyone to listen at it... So please tell your friends if you think they can be interested in a HellYeah! post mortem.
The full description of the 50min long conference can be found here, and I'll of course be happy to speak with everyone having questions, even silly ones.

I have absolutely nothing to sell at this event, the HellYeah! promo tour is over now, the goal is to really explain what was good and what was wrong during the production, so others studios or game developers can avoid some classic traps. Let's meet if you want to!

On a side note, this conference thing reminds me of this Tom Vu video, a spiritual guide for everyone of us.

ME and MAGICAL DROP V

Magical Drop V is out for a few days now, and some of my friends think I've been in charge of the design. Some of them tell me it's good, some of them want to punch me in the face.
So, I feel like I have to be clear about something. Yes, I worked on the game. No, I had absolutely no creative input on it.

The characters, the backgrounds, the game modes, the engine, even the font, were provided by our client. My work has been mostly on processing the huge characters animations in sprite sheets.
I love the Neogeo era, and I think the Magical Drop gameplay mechanic is a blast, but please don't e-mail me too much about this game. I've not played the final product yet(*), so I don't know if it's good or not, but in both cases I cannot take credit for it.

(*) For now I'm busy preparing my Game Connection conference, (I'm scared!), I will play the game for sure in a few days!