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Catching the Rain

Quantic Dream's Guillaume de Fondaumiere on Heavy Rain, emotion in games, and the maturing dev-pub relationship

Following on from part one of this exclusive interview with Quantic Dream co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumiere, in which he talks about his role with the EGDF and the importance of games as culture, here he talks more about the development of Heavy Rain.

Specifically he updates us on where production is at, as well as the challenges of emotion and the maturing relationship between developers and publishers.

GamesIndustry.biz How is Heavy Rain coming along - the last few miles of the marathon?
Guillaume de Fondaumiere

It feels very good, we're very happy. We delivered the alpha of the game on April 15 - on time, on budget - so we're pretty happy. It's a great moment, because we now have the whole game in our hands and we can play from beginning to end. So we're now entering the most interesting part of the development, I think, which is perfecting it - making sure that all the scenes are as we expect them to be, at the same level of quality. It's a great moment to be at.

GamesIndustry.biz "On time, on budget" - that's good, something that doesn't happen enough in the industry, one might argue. How have you managed the process to make sure that's happened? Is it as simple as just having the right management procedures in place?
Guillaume de Fondaumiere

I think we prepared for a long time, before we started production of Heavy Rain, and I think that back in 2005 when we were finishing Fahrenheit and starting to look at next-gen consoles in particular, we understood we could no longer produce games the old way, like in the old days.

We understood we'd have to double the structure in our studio, that we'd have to rely on external resources to produce our next game. And for almost a year and a half we not only worked on technology in setting certain standards, and the quality bar on the development, but also on the organisation.

You don't work the same way when you outsource - especially when you outsource 500 man-months of production - than if you have everybody working in the same room on a project. So it took quite some time, but it's been quite successful, and we're very happy with how we organised internally to be able to work with faraway outsourcing companies, the way the outsourced work was delivered, and the way that the whole thing integrated into the final game.

I don't know if we found a recipe, because I think each studio and each project is a bit exceptional in a way, but for us it turned out to be a very good experience. Of course, it's extremely difficult to plan a production on a new platform and to basically create two, three, four times the amount of data that you'd have had to for previous cycles on other consoles.

But from what I can tell, looking especially at the games I've seen at E3, a number of developers are doing this successfully. I think we've reached another stage in the industry where developers can be much more mature.

I think it also has a lot to do with the way that publishers interact with developers. I must say that we've enjoyed a great relationship with Sony. The Worldwide Studios group in Liverpool has been really dynamic, it's been a great working relationship. This is also very important - when you don't have to worry about whether the publisher is going to pay you, whether they're going to accept this and this, whether they're going to ask you to do the same thing two, three or four times, and so on.

Unfortunately we've all experienced that in the past, and you're using up a lot of time and resources - but thankfully we've had a great relationship with SCE and I think, from what I hear from other developers, not only are developers becoming more mature, but also publishers.