Soul Bubbles at Milthon 2008
What a weekend!
Last Friday evening in Paris we had the ceremony of the Milthons – which is positioned as the equivalent of the Césars (the french Oscars) for video games. Mekensleep’s latest title, Soul Bubbles, was competing in the best portable console game category. Here’s a shaky cam taken by a friend:
Even if you can’t understand french, what happened is pretty clear: we won! :)
But to be perfectly honest we knew we had a fairly good chance of winning the portable console award and although we were extremely happy we were not exactly taken by surprise.
The *real* surprise came about an hour later when the grand prize was awarded… to us!
Now this was totally unexpected because some huge multi-million dollar games were competing for best game of the year and a couple of extremely good ones too. For the whole duration of the ceremony I was completely convinced that the grand prize would go to Trackmania United Forever and kept telling so to Florent (of Nadeo) who was sitting right in front of me. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that we were seriously eligible until the very last minute, when the president of the jury David Cage (of Quantic Dream) started explaining that they had wanted to reward originality and risk taking – and went on to proclaim Soul Bubbles the winner!
Unfortunately, I don’t have a video of that segment because my friend had run out of batteries by then. But believe me: it was one of those moments really worth living. After three years of efforts and so much unknowns, after all the doubts and the pains of production, one would need to be really jaded not to appreciate the recognition. Well, I am not jaded, I am really, really happy. I only wish the rest of the team could have been there with us:
Comments
Comment from Patrick Cowan
Time September 29, 2008 at 2:54 am
Congratulations Mekensleep! I’m totally delighted for you guys. Wish I could have been there!!!!
Comment from Florent
Time October 11, 2008 at 3:33 am
Congratulation for this extraordinary quality game.
This is a nice achievement.
I made all my possible efforts to avoid you to have it. But now, I am quite happy you did. I am even proud. I know you will not build upon it anyway, this is a total loss. I hate you.
your stupid friend,
Florent
Comment from ramda
Time October 23, 2008 at 12:08 pm
marvellous achievement of hard and passionated work !!
You deserve it.
Comment from Fiona Cassidy
Time November 26, 2008 at 8:44 am
Hey, I worked as one of the QA testers (Absolute Quality) on this game and I gotta say i’m totally stoaked that you guys won this. It was (and still is) the best game I have ever had the pleasure to do testing for, and crazy as it may sound I’m still playing it!
Huge congrats!
Fiona
p.s. will there ever be a soul bubbles 2?!
Comment from Olivier
Time November 28, 2008 at 3:47 am
Hey Fiona,
Thanks for stopping by!
If the game is good it’s also because you helped us on it, so this award is partly yours too.
As for a followup to Soul Bubbles, only the future will tell… ;)
Comment from Steve Morris
Time January 12, 2009 at 8:44 am
Congratulations Olivier and Omar,
Love the finished game, I think its the best DS game out there. What are you going to next?
Comment from Olivier
Time January 13, 2009 at 4:16 am
Hi Steve,
Thanks for the kind words.
With a little luck, we’re going to do more games! Omar is working at Q-games in Kyoto on one of the Pixel Junk and I’m trying to kick start something… weird. :)
How about you?
Comment from Musimon
Time January 14, 2009 at 1:30 am
Désolé pour le post en Français. Bravo et totalement mérité, ce jeu est mon “must have” 2008…..qui possède les 3 qualités d’un excellent vidéogame : plaisir, plaisir et plaisir.
Vivement une suite ou une nouvelle franchise.
Comment from julie france
Time November 26, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Congratulation guys, you deserve it.
Simone.
Comment from Richard_14
Time February 23, 2010 at 5:02 pm
@ Musimon : “Désolé pour le post en Français.”
Ouais, honteux ! :)
T’imagines si tout le monde faisait comme toi ?
On aurait des studios franglais, des conventions, des syndicats et autres associations affublés de noms en anglais ! On aurait des blogs de chef de petite société (localisées en France) écrits en anglais, et les sites Internet officiels de ces mêmes sociétés seraient uniquement rédigés en anglais.
Clair, trop la honte. C’est grave trop naze le français.
Et puis c’est sûr, Bulles d’Esprit ou Bulles Spirituelles ça fait pédé, de toute évidence. Pour le coup, ces nationalo-fascistes de Japonais (bouh les méchants) on leur excusera ce Awatamatchoum de circonstance. :D De toute façon kawai-otaku-sushi c’est trop bien. Vive Sakura.
Ace game by the way!
Comment from Olivier
Time February 27, 2010 at 9:43 am
Richard,
Ce n’est pas par snobisme ou par honte du français que ce blog est en majoritairement en anglais mais tout simplement parce que, qu’on le veuille ou non, l’anglais est la lingua franca de l’internet. C’est par respect et pour pouvoir communiquer avec tous ceux qui ne parlent pas notre langue que je m’efforce de tenir ce blog en anglais. J’aimerai avoir l’énergie de tout écrire dans les deux languages mais ce n’est malheureusement pas le cas. Maintenant si quelqu’un se propose pour tout traduire… :)
Comment from Harold
Time September 29, 2008 at 1:00 am
Congratulations guys, it’s gonna make my day!