Not long ago, Valiant Hearts: The Great War director Yoan Fanise decided to part ways with Ubisoft to “go real indie” and open up his own studio, Digixart Entertainment. In an interview with Gamasutra in March, Fanise said that it was a hard decision but that AAA development lacked a “creative and human side.”
In a new interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Fanise has said that the “human aspect” is really important and that he make games in an “artisanal” way.
I think the human aspect is really important. I don’t see ourselves like an industry. We always talk about ‘industry’ because video games is an industry, but this word doesn’t sound like the way we make games. I don’t know how to make them in an industrial way. It’s more like an artisanal way, made with your hands.
He went on to say that all the layers of coordination in AAA development result in developers “losing their soul in a way” and that making smaller games is “very exciting.” Fanise also thinks that AAA developers should continue to make smaller games as well.
I really hope they continue to do small-scale games, and I think they will. They have to do that if they want to refresh people and keep creativity inside the teams. It’s very important. [AAA publishers] should all try to make more small-scale games like this because it’s so refreshing when you’re a developer and worked on large-scale AAA before.
In the same interview, Fanise said that he wants to make games with meaningful subjects that are important to humans in general like religion and death.
We want to talk about subjects that are meaningful for us, for humans in general. We can talk about religion, about pollution, about death. We can talk about serious subjects in our games in a subtle way, without any judgment but with some emotion inside.
In terms of funding for his new studio, Fanise said that he’s not too worried about it because if the developer does “great stuff,” the funding will be there.
Do our readers think Fanise made the right decision?
[Source: GamesIndustry.biz]
