“Créé en 2006, le Club Galilée est un « Think Tank » européen regroupant plus de 300 professionnels de toutes générations et de tous médias, publics et privés, ainsi que des télécoms, qui propose une nouvelle approche indépendante et ouverte des enjeux de ce secteur d’activités. Il est hébergé par le Centre d’Analyse Stratégique, ex Commissariat Général au Plan. La présentation que vous pourriez nous proposer devrait durer une dizaine de minutes, et vous permettre de nous donner votre point de vue sur les évolutions actuelles et futures des contenus spécifiques conçus au croisement de l’audiovisuel, du jeu vidéo et d’Internet. Elle sera l’occasion pour vous de nous présenter votre jeu Soul Bubbles.”

Voici donc mon intervention de lundi soir  (merci à Tatiana pour la vidéo !) :

J’étais accompagné de Nicolas Gaume et Eric Viennot qui ont enchaîné avec des démonstrations de leurs nouveaux (et très impressionnants) projets.

Awatama, of course!

Thanks to all the good people at Interchannel who truly did an amazing job publishing Soul Bubbles in Japan. The booklet is gorgeous and the box art is great (not just from comparing with the awful western version!). We changed the main character because the western one didn’t quite cut it for the locals (something I had personally observed many times). Apparently baldness is un-kawaii or something. (^-^)

Needless to say, after being raised on Japanese video games, I feel incredibly honored and proud to have our little bubbles floating around in Nintendo land.

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:

I was tempted to react immediately after reading his article but – since I had already given a hot headed interview on this very subject to Brandon Sheffield – I figured it would be smarter to cool down a bit and take enough time to reflect and think it through.

Obviously, everything is still very fresh and I am deeply affected by Soul Bubbles’ fate – especially after witnessing how retailers are treating it (hint: badly). But I believe the dust has now settled enough in my mind that I can draw a few conclusions.

First and foremost, I would like to thank everyone who enjoyed the game, everyone who wrote in to say so and all those who praised it, on and off the internet. This includes anonymous gamers but also reviewers and professionals. Each time we read lines that made us believe someone really grokked our game, we felt relieved and grateful: our efforts have not been in vain. Your support came to us when we needed it most and it helped. A lot.

Now, I recognize Soul Bubbles is not without flaws. In fact, I don’t think I can play the game without seeing hundreds of areas for improvement and it pains me every time I have to confront something I know we could have done better. If only we’d had a little more time or a little more energy…

I also understand that reviews are very much subjective and that everyone is entitled to his own opinion. But then I’ve also always thought reviews should not end with a score. I think it doesn’t make much sense to condense the richness and complexity of the subjective experience a game can elicit down to something as short, dry and definitive as a percentage. It’s also demeaning to the people who have sometimes labored for years on a given project: we are not handing in homework to be graded. If you agree games are a form of art, then you should not agree to their ranking. Who would grade a Picasso? You either like it or you don’t but everyone can see how nonsensical it would be to give 76% to Guernica.

Unfortunately, the games industry largely disagrees with me (with a few notable exceptions). Grades are everywhere and not only do they heavily skew the reader’s opinion, their aggregated form apparently seems to be having a real effect on the industry. And if that’s true, then Soul Bubbles was hurt by the few reviewers that brought its average score just below 80%.

Of course I am flattered when Danc calls our game an “instant classic” but I’m not convinced we deserve it and I honestly think I can deal with criticisms when they are fair and valid. But I still feel I have to respectfully disagree with the two main ones that were thrown at our game and sometimes got us to be heavily marked down:

1- Soul Bubbles is too easy.

The perception of difficulty is so subjective, it is often hard to grasp. Sure, a given individual can find a given game too easy for his own taste but as Danc explained, game reviewers and expert gamers in general are heavily biased in this respect. A game or a puzzle that seems easy to them, might be incredibly difficult for an average player. In Soul Bubble’s case, we took great care in keeping the game accessible to casual gamers. Not because it’s the new buzzword of the industry but because we wanted our girlfriends and our not-so-much-into-gaming-anymore friends to enjoy themselves with it. And from the data from our internal testing as well as the general public reception, I know we at least got that curve right.

However, we did not forget the expert gamers! Difficulty is very much present in Soul Bubbles but it’s hidden away at the edges of the levels – in the form of calabashes. You have to go look for it and, unfortunately, I suspect some reviewers just made a bee line for the exit to get to the end of the game as fast as possible.

But here’s my main argument: it’s a game about bubbles, about finding serenity. It’s a peaceful and gentle experience. It’s just not meant to be too frustrating. I sincerely believe we would have missed the essence of the game if we had gone down this road. We chose to keep the player’s interest alive by focusing more on diversity than on challenge. And I very much stand by that choice. In that light, Soul Bubbles is a very rich game – an amazing feat for a tiny team like ours and something I think we can rightly be proud of.

2- Soul Bubbles is too short.

It’s true that Soul Bubbles is a short game. If you rush through it, you can get it done in 6 hours. On average, it will be completed in 12 hours. But in my opinion, this completely misses the point. First of all, Soul Bubbles is meant to be savored slowly. It’s a game about exploration and discovery: all about the journey, not the destination.  If you visit a country in three days, you won’t get the same impression you’d get if you had spent three months.

Most importantly, the real question, the only question in my view should be: were those hours worth it? Did you have a good time? I’d rather play 6 hours of unadulterated fun than 60 hours slogging through tedious gameplay. The Metacritic score for Zelda phantom hourglass is 90% but personally  I gave up the fourth time it asked me to go down the exact same dungeon… Like so many games, we could have artificially diluted the game experience to make it twice as long but instead we chose to respect gamers and their time. During production we always picked quality over quantity and I also stand firmly behind this choice.

So I’ll wrap everything up with a question: is Saint-Exupéry’s Night Flight a better literary piece than The Little Prince because it is longer and less accessible? Does it even make sense to compare them this way?

Whatever the answer, I personally really look forward to the day I’ll get to play the gaming equivalent of The Little Prince. Even if it is short and simple.

“As beautiful as it is joyous to play, as charming as it is fun and as impressive as it is surprising, Soul Bubbles really deserves your attention. (…) It’s one of the purest gaming experiences we’ve had for a long while. (…) It’s beautiful, it’s elegant, it’s clever – if you don’t like this game, you’re dead inside.”
- The Official Nintendo Magazine.

“(…) now and again a developer comes along with a creation that is so well designed it makes everything else look a bit slapdash. Mekensleep is one such developer and its game, Soul Bubbles, is triumphantly good. (…) The design of the levels is bordering on genius. (…) If superb gameplay wasn’t enough, Soul Bubbles looks utterly enchanting too. (…) A game that in years to come will be looked back on as a classic.”
- NRevolution

“A simple and brilliantly executed idea. (…) This is quite simply one of the best games for DS we’ve played for ages.”
- Gamesmaster

“It’s quite amazing how inventive developer Mekensleep has managed to be with bubbles; they’re put to every use imaginable in the game, and new ideas are constantly introduced at just the right pace, all the way up to the final fiendish world. (…) More than anything, Soul Bubbles is just great fun to play with – blowing a bubble around has never been more fun. There is surprising depth to its puzzles, and it’s great to see the DS host such a great and intuitive idea again after months of copycat shelf-filler.
– IGN.com

And in French:

“Ce titre incroyable est un OVNI féérique (…) A la fois beau, intelligent et empreint d’une réelle poésie, Soul Bubbles est de ces titres exceptionnels qui séduisent toutes personnes qui s’y essaient.”
- Le Magazine Officiel Nintendo

“Rare sont les jeux qui m’ont autant emballé sur cette machine. Déplacer cette bulle dans ce labyrinthe est si simple et prenant ! Le titre fourmille de bonnes idées et l’envie de découvrir la suivante est plus grande à chaque fois. Les réactions physiques de la bulle surprennent tant elle paraissent réelles. J’ai été également charmé par la qualité des décors et l’atmosphère générale du titre. La console éteinte, on se sent aussi bien qu’après un week-end à la campagne, loin de la pollution les poumons bourrés d’air pur et frais. (…) Le pari est totalement réussi pour Mekensleep. L’OVNI du mois.
- Console+

And with that, I’m off to Japan…

“(…) it’s a demanding little game that’s a lot tougher than it initially looks. (…) Soul Bubbles has taken us completely by surprise. The game is dripping with character and could end up being a cult favourite.”
- Nintendo Official magazine

“Soul Bubbles has a compulsive quality to it – no doubt exacerbated by its gorgeous aesthetic design and beautiful ambient score. (…) Mekensleep may well have hit upon the DS’s very own answer to LocoRoco.”
- Edge magazine

“Soul Bubbles is perfect for the DS and has a great sense of style, humour and accessibility for all gamers. This could definitely be a cult hit. (…) gorgeous graphics and a definite ‘aww’ factor.”
- Gamesmaster magazine

“Innovative, original and beautiful. Prepare to be blown away!”
- NRevolution magazine

“The level design and general polish is up there with Nintendo’s own products. (…) The art style is highly seductive. (…) Bitter experience often stops us from making early recommendations when it comes to third-party DS games, but with Soul Bubbles we have no hesitation”
- Games TM

Now this is exactly what I needed to justify my vacations… Thanks so much guys!

Time to relax… Has anyone heard of a good surfing spot in April? :)

Vite, il faut finir le jeu !