C’est officiel, j’ai quitté Pinpin Team, société que j’ai co-fondée il y a plus de 12 ans. Je me lance maintenant dans de nouveaux projets de jeux vidéo en indé. J’ai envie d’expérimenter beaucoup de choses. À moi la liberté totale !

Pinpin Team fut une belle aventure avec des gens bourrés de talent à travailler sur des projets excitant qui m’a apportée beaucoup d’expérience sur le monde du jeu mobile. J’ai travaillé sur plus de 150 jeux quand même, ça représente des millions de téléchargements ! (L’hyper casual aidant bien sûr 😉)

Pour finir je souhaite à tout le monde une bonne année 2021 !

Capitalism and Colonisation the worst way with a sweet frost on the top.

Capitalism, debt, overexploitation are Animal Crossing: New Horizons background

I just realized Animal Crossing: New World is what I dislike most about our capitalism world:

• You get everything right now… but you’ve just contracted a credit without knowing it. In other word, you’ve been tricked! Hopefully it’s a game there are no interest
• Everything is made for you to spend more and more to get stuff you don’t care about.
• Pleasure island? Not really, you spend lot’s of time working hard to get coins… doing the same thing over and over!
• or by ripping ressources from desert island. But don’t worry you’ll never came back to this island ever again luckily you’ll never see the rampage you have created. This is colonialism and overexploitation of natural resources.

You live the American Dream. Everything is colorful, beautiful. There is never a bad thing happening in this world. Everybody is friendly. Except Tom Nook maybe who is a profiteer abusing everybody else.

I am an adult, I know it is a game. Does my kids know the world doesn’t have to work like that?

This is no value I want to teach my kids

I need my rewards. I deeply need my rewards. Oh my god! I’m an addict

What keeps me going on are every rewards I get for my hard work:

• Having a bigger house to put everything I bough or build in.
• Completing my collections at the museum. It is true I am a completist and I don’t want a hole in my collection.
• Finally, I need to know what comes next when I have just finished repaying my multiple loans for house, bridges and more.

That is the hard way to realize I am addict to this game for these reasons. I often complete game sessions without unlocking anything new and I realize the I am quite depressed about it. There are so few moment of fun in this game. The only moment I feel happy is when I progress in the game to see what come next.

This is the same mechanism as in mobile free to play games without a way to skip laborious part by watching ads or paying real money. Instead you need to fish, catch bugs and craft again and again.

I am not the only one to see there is something wrong about this game

I’m reassured to see other people feeling the same about Animal Crossing. Just doing a quick Google search show me interesting contents such as this article from Wired.

Maybe in 2020, Nintendo could have been more subtle. Is Animal Crossing a criticism of the American way of life or derives of capitalism? I don’t see anything telling that. You just have to accept you are not in control here. Tom Nook is. He chooses what I do on my Island. In addition I am his slave working hard for his sake and receiving some peanuts when I complete task he orders me to do. He’s some dictator ruling on the island and giving me meaningless title doesn’t change a thing.

I don’t want to be Tom Nook slave or pet.

I’d like to improve quality of life on my island my own way at my own pace. I am honest. Lying and tricking people so they move in is not part of something I want. I am against overexploitation and disrespect of the environment I was offered. I already have a work, why should I spent hours doing a boring task when I am playing at a game. (by the way my job is to create video games and it’s not boring at all!)

At last: I don’t want to read the same text over and over!

Nintendo! This 2020 you can’t do this anymore, it’s so annoying! I’ve played the game for 40 hours and I feel I spend 30 of them just pushing button B the skip the same text I have already read a hundred times. I’ve just talk to this character a second ago. Why do he have to tell me the same boring stuff each time?

The game is based on repetition and you don’t do anything to make it feel less laborious. Again: Why?

For instance, there are so many ways to improve this felling of losing time at boring stuff:

1. Add an option to skip unnecessary long and boring introductory dialogs.
2. Why not an option to choose how many objects of the same type player want to craft at once.
3. A way to store quickly a lot’s of stuff in your house. Same kind of multi selection than in store and museum?

They are so many things you can improve in Animal Crossing: New Horizons Nintendo.

I wanted to be part of Animal Crossing turmoil

In conclusion, I think I played this game because of social pressure. I didn’t want to be left over by colleague. However, I quite regret it since I’m an addict to a game embracing capitalism.

Game In Progress, qu’est-ce que c’est ?

Le S.E.L.L. (Syndicat des éditeurs de logiciels de loisirs) vient de publier le documentaire Game In Progress. Il explique les phases de production et les différents métiers du jeu vidéo.
Il se découpe en 5 épisodes dont les 3 premiers sont disponibles sur Youtube.

Épisode 1 – La bonne idée

La création d’un jeu commence par une bonne idée, voir plusieurs. Découvrez où puisent l’inspiration les nombreux créateurs de jeu vidéo.

Épisode 2 – L’art de la création

Le deuxième épisode donne la parole aux artistes du jeu vidéo.

Épisode 3 – Le jeu se raconte

L’élaboration du scénario est traité dans le troisième épisode.

Épisode 4 – Les règles du jeu

Avec ce quatrième épisode, il est question du game design.

Lundi 18 mars 2013, j’ai participé au Meetup Using Flash for video game development organisé à Isart Digital par Yopsolo.

J’y ai présenté avec Alexandre Imbert l’expérience de notre société Pinpin Team à travers nos jeux Simply-Land.com et PlayPOP.com.

Ça fait plaisir de rencontrer la communauté Flash parisienne.