Si les studios Montréalais d’Eidos, Ubisoft et Electronic Arts sont réputés en France, ils sont loin d’être les seuls à avoir participé à votre bonheur et à vous réserver des surprises de taille. Afin de nous présenter le studio  et de parler de son évolution et des projets en cours ou à venir, Yanick Roy, directeur de BioWare Montréal, nous a accordé une entrevue intimiste dans les locaux du studio, hébergé par Electronic Arts.

Qui est Yanick Roy ?
Après avoir occupé les postes de programmeur et chef d’équipes de développement pendant une douzaine d’années, Yanick Roy s’est joint au studio BioWare en Janvier 2006, lorsque le développement de Mass Effect n’en était qu’à ses débuts. Il y a dirigé l’équipe de production tout au long de ce projet et de sa suite, le très attendu sur Playstation 3, Mass Effect 2. Au début de l’année 2009, alors que le studio démarre sa collaboration avec Electronic Arts, il prit en charge la création d’un nouveau studio BioWare à Montréal. Ainsi devenu directeur de ce studio, il s’affaire maintenant à développer un studio digne du pédigrée de BioWare. […]

Lisez le reste de l’article sur Ultimate PS3…

…et un autre article sur CBC.

Edovia is a small iPhone app developer in Montreal. Luc Vandal, owner of the company, has been developing for the App Store since the very beginning in 2008.

Recently, one of his apps, the game Warships, hit 1,000,000 downloads. That’s a significant accomplishment. I don’t know of any other app developer in Montreal that can make that claim. Luc wrote a fantastic post about it here: 1,000,000 downloads for Warships! What’s interesting about it (beyond the cool accomplishment) is how Luc got there, playing with pricing (the app is free, but wasn’t always so) and how much he shares about the experience. […]

Read the full article on NextMontreal…

Entrevue avec Jonathan Simard (JVAU02), diplômé du programme en jeu vidéo, session automne 2002, Animateur senior chez Beenox.

1- Quel poste occupes-tu et au sein de quelle compagnie?  Je suis Animateur senior chez Beenox depuis 4 ans, une filiale d’Activision située dans la ville de Québec. Nous venons de terminer Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions et nous débutons à présent un projet d’une aussi grande envergure.

2- Pourquoi as-tu choisi de faire carrière en 3D? J’ai toujours eu peur d’avoir une job plate où je devrais rester assis à remplir des formulaires. En 2000, travailler en jeux vidéo ou en cinéma était impensable, j’ai donc fait mon DEC en informatique de gestion. J’ai eu mon diplôme mais je me suis tellement ennuyé durant ces années d’études que j’étais complètement découragé. […]

Lisez l’entrevue compète…

As the MMO genre matures, and as certain avenues of competition are closed off by saturation, developers naturally begin to turn their sights towards unexplored territory for the genre. One such is Funcom’s Ragnar Tornquist; perhaps best known for The Longest Journey, he’s more interested in exploring a supernaturally-tinged present-day world than another medieval fantasy empire.

Though the MMO he’s working on, The Secret World is being built on the technological underpinnings that drive the company’s game Age of Conan, it’s a very different title — one that blends horror, fantasy, and real-world urban settings with some traditional MMO gameplay. On the other hand, a character leveling system, the absolute backbone of the genre, is eschewed.

Here, Tornquist describes the creative tone he’s going for as director and producer of the game, alongside Martin Bruusgaard, the game’s lead designer.

The result sounds like an experience both like and unlike online and offline games of the past — and one that could be an important stepping stone in the genre’s evolution if it finds a receptive audience.

I first saw NDA’d material from this game way back in 2005, as I recall. How long have you actually been working on it?

Ragnar Tornquist: This game has been in development for a very long time. We’ve been working on it for a while. Officially, we’ve been working on the game since 2006. That’s when we had sort of the team we have now, but we did work on the game briefly before when it was called Cabal back in 2002.

[…]

Read the full interview on Gamasutra (or the printer-friendly version)…

[…] Well that’s all partly thanks to a great Level Designer who help map out environments and decide where and when enemies appear. Level designers, like Visceral’s Rom Rodriguez,  are essentially the ones who "help determine the experience the player [should have] in a rough form," leaving the artists and animators to make it come to life.

My interviewee Rom here also draws, so read on if you’d like to see a piece of art that helped influence the original Dead Space.

Can you tell me your name, job title, and job description?
Romulo Rodriguez, Associate Game Designer, and I set up game play in Dead Space 2.

I know there are many different types of "designers" and what each of them do is different depending on what company you’re at. What exactly does an Associate Designer do at Visceral?

I am a Level Designer but the Associate Designer determines my level. I’d say I am a low level designer at the moment. My duties involve blocking a level based on the story and desired combat for that point in the game. I then pitch the ideas to my managers, the Lead Level Designer, and the Creative Director and make changes if needed. I later block out combat with simple enemy set ups to help determine the experience we want the player to have in a rough form. […]

Read the whole interview on EA Underground…

From C.Dump Magazine:

Here at C Dump Magazine we have had the opportunity over the course of a few years to work with many people in QA. This includes people who were clients and co-workers at both 3rd party testing companies and development companies. For our first interview on C Dump we had a chat with former co-worker and close friend Paul Loynd who now works at Microsoft with the Xbox LIVE Arcade Group.

Jack Rage: Can you describe your role in QA at the Xbox LIVE Arcade Group?

Paul Loynd: My official title is SDET/Test Lead but I perform more Associate Producer type tasks. I am in charge of driving titles all the way from Alpha to Release which entails coordinating tests, triaging bugs, giving game design feedback, processing milestone submissions (in addition to making a pass or fail calls), sometimes demoing titles at public venues like PAX, E3, CES in addition to the basic QA lead duties. My team handles all first party titles for Xbox LIVE Arcade so anything not published by EA, Capcom, Eidos, etc comes through our group. Think like Halo, Gears, Forza, but for Arcade titles.

[…]

After spending time as a tester on that team I was eventually promoted to a lead position. Later I did a bit of work outside the Arcade team on other projects and I started working with a group up in Montreal while I was in Redmond. Because of my experience so far they Montreal office wanted to steal me away up to Montreal for a while to help build out a test team for G4WL PC testing. I was only supposed to be in Montreal for a couple weeks. But I immediately fell in love with Montreal when I got there, and the Montreal office was very pleased with the work I was doing in addition to the business I was giving them the opportunity to bring there because of my experience. So I got an apartment and stayed and you know the majority of the Montreal part of the story from there.

Read the complete interview at C.Dump Magazine…

From Joystiq:

"You may not even see the impact of a decision in Mass Effect 1 in Mass Effect 2, but in Mass Effect 3," BioWare’s Dr. Greg Zeschuk told us while elaborating about the whole Mass Effect franchise. The pedigreed co-founder of BioWare isn’t simply set on promoting the upcoming Mass Effect 2, but a vision for the entire trilogy. "In planning out the overall trilogy, we know what general story beats we want to hit along the entire thing. So we know the key events we want to have in 3, and right now the team is starting to flesh that out, fill in the spaces. And of course, we’re going to be waiting for the fan response to Mass Effect 2, to see what works and what didn’t work, what we can strengthen."

Video after the break:

Read the rest of the article on Joystiq…

The latter part of this decade has seen FMOD and Miles’ dominance of the audio middleware market seriously challenged by Montreal-based Audiokinetic’s Wwise. Ed Fear spoke to Simon Ashby, the firm’s VP of product strategy, to see how this year’s new products have gone down and what’s next for 2010…

Develop: How has the past year been for Audiokinetic?
Simon Ashby: It’s been a good year. We’re growing our market share and expect this to accelerate in the year to come. I think the fact that we are seeing more Wwise titles shipping is helping undecided customers to make the jump to Wwise.

You’ve recently signed a long-term deal to work together with High Voltage – how is that partnership going to work and shape the future of your products?
Long term agreements such as this one are a confirmation that what we offer today is in line with what developers expect. This kind of partnership is key and will allow us to work closely with our users to shape the future of interactive audio. […]

Read the rest of the interview on Develop Magazine…