Masterclass Jeux Video (13 December, 2016)

On December 13th, 2016, Michel Koch was a guest at Masterclass Jeux Vidéo.

Video

Masterclass Jeux Vidéo Michel Koch (Life is Strange)

Transcript

Olivier Bal: Good evening, everyone! Good evening, good evening! Thank you.

Olivier: Welcome everyone. We are very, very happy to welcome you for this 16th Masterclass. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you on behalf of our partners: Jeux Vidéo Magazine, la Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, and OrangeTM. Tonight, to close this 2016 season of Masterclass, we have the immense pleasure of receiving Michel Koch, co-game director of Life is Strange and artistic director of Dontnod. You will see tonight that Michel has been part of all the adventures at Dontnod. As an artistic director on Remember Me, he has participated in the creation of the game’s fascinating universe, of this Neo-Paris, a mind-blowing futuristic vision of our good old capital. On Life is Strange, with his whole team and Raoul Barbet as co-game director, they gave life to one of the biggest successes of the last few years. Thus, with its unique take and intimate narration, Life is Strange comes to prove, if it was still necessary, that video games can talk about any subject with a real sensitivity. Tonight, Michel will talk about his approach on the art direction, the importance he gives to visual narration. He will of course come back to Dontnod’s great adventure, a studio with international renown without sacrificing its identity. I’m sure we’ll have a wonderful evening with Michel but also with Nilin, Max, and Chloe. Let’s go!

Video from 01:45 to 03:23:

Olivier: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Michel Koch!

Michel Koch: Good evening.

Olivier: Hi Michel. Welcome.

Michel Koch: Thanks. Welcome, everyone.

Olivier: It's a little crowded.

Michel Koch: That’s a lot of people. I can’t see anyone.

Olivier: It’s okay, it’s reassuring! Let’s go over there. So, Michel, you already know the Masterclass since Michel was at David Cage’s first Masterclass. So, welcome. Feel at home for the next few hours. So, as you know, the Masterclass is built around your career. We’ll start at the very beginning; the first step: your youth.

Michel Koch: Oh boy.

Olivier: You played the game, indeed... it wasn’t easy. So up first, you are from Épinal.

Michel Koch: Indeed.

Olivier: In a few words, what kind of kid were you? **00:04:09**

Michel Koch: I was a little redhead, as you can see. What kind of kid was I? A shy little kid who spent a lot of time in his room playing his CPC 6128 and his NES, when I received it at 7. I also played the piano, but I stopped. I was a kid who, at the time, had very, very good taste in clothes, so I think these clothes are really good. (*sarcastically*) **00:04:35 picture**

Olivier: We are from the same generation. I had the same at home.

Michel Koch: I think that’s what made me want to do art, this assortment of colors.

Olivier: Do you remember your first memory of video games? There’s a pretty great picture. **00:04:49**

Michel Koch: With very pretty pajamas. Yes, absolutely, my first memory of video games is with my CPC 6128 where I played a lot with Sorcery. That's pretty old. Then there’s me with my NES with obviously Mario, the first Zelda, and - in particular - I loved Zelda 2, which plenty of people hate. That game was amazing. In the picture we can see, it’s Hero Quest. That was cool.

Olivier: Cool game, I briefly played it. In fact, you weren’t interested to work in the video game industry at all when you were young? Then growing up, as a teenager. **00:05:27**

Michel Koch: Not really, since when we see video games, we think they’re toys; it’s to have fun, and they’re not a job at all. I studied sciences. In fact, my mother is a math teacher... Yeah, there was a long-hair period, it’s true **00:05:39 picture**... Back to science studies: I studied math, and afterwards, I could become a computer engineer - either a programmer or a telecommunications engineer, so still a link to technology. In fact, my life took a new direction when I started visiting engineering schools where I initially wanted to go. I told myself that this wasn’t at all what I wanted to do. On the side, out of passion, I was working on graphics - a bit of 3D and a bit of drawing. Thanks to my mother who supported me throughout. I changed directions completely and went to a graphics school in Grenoble.

Olivier: At Émile Cohl, right? **00:06:20**

Michel Koch: Nope. Émile Cohl comes after Supcréa. It’s a short training of 2 years after high school in general graphics design to become a computer graphics designer with Photoshop and Illustrator. It’s in this school where I learned the more classic style of academic drawing since we had a drawing course, live model course, and illustration. It helped the progressive switch in career orientation. I told myself to try an entrance exam to finally see if illustration or drawing can lead to something. It worked, and I continued at Émile Cohl.

Olivier: Afterwards, you found yourself struggling a little bit for a year looking for jobs.

Michel Koch: Yeah, that’s what it was. I didn’t finish the program at Émile Cohl. It was a very expensive private school, so I only did the first 2 years. The foundation year is the first year that really forms the artistic base - the academic drawing. We had up to 8 hours of charcoal drawing. It was still one of the best courses I had... It’s almost masochistic to say it, but it was really good. For 8 hours, we were with our raisin format pad (editor’s note: 50x65cm drawing pads) and our charcoal, trying to draw boxes that were in front of us. They had to be perfect. The teacher would walk by with her chamois cloth (editor’s note: artistic blending tool), and if it wasn’t right, she would erase everything and we had to start over. It was a bit embarrassing when there was half an hour left out of 8 hours, and she would arrive and erase everything, but we learned. On the other hand, the last few years at Émile Cohl are very expensive, and I also see that it tends to... well, it’s a very good school, but I saw a lot of people whose drawings I admired become somewhat formatted by the school. So, I thought to myself, should I keep paying for such an expensive school and finally have a small *unintelligible*. (editor’s note: speakers spoke simultaneously)

Olivier: Like having blinders on...

Michel Koch: I told myself that I should try to freelance. So, in the beginning it was pretty hard. I found myself alone with my graphic tablet, my sketchbooks, trying to make drawings to create a portfolio. With it tucked under my arm, I went canvassing every publisher.

Olivier: You gave us a lot. **00:08:20**

Michel Koch: So that's already a bit later. It was already before I... after those difficult times, but the beginning is really... I made a portfolio, but it practically had nothing since I didn’t get any commissions. I went with drawings without really knowing how to make a portfolio. I attended book fairs, fantasy and science-fiction fairs to meet with publishers. At first, you get to meet some of them... they... you give your business card, your website, and they still don’t call back, but little by little, I started getting contacts and started my first paid jobs. It was for a small digital book publishing house, about 12 years ago when no one bought digital books.

Olivier: Forerunners...

Michel Koch: There was no Kindle nor any reader, so it didn’t sell at all. **00:09:09 picture** I was paid per sold copy, so I must have earned around 45 euro on an illustration after 3 years of sales, when they managed to sell 80 digital copies of a book, so that wasn’t so bad. I learned about illustrating a novel - finding an idea for a novel’s cover. It allowed me to create images. Even if, at first, it was badly paid jobs, it helped me to fill my portfolio with visuals that had a purpose rather than just my own personal drawings but which really were commissions with a goal in mind. Little by little, it started to work out where, the following year, I was able to meet familiar faces I had seen at previous festivals, showing my new works. I was able to do covers for Folio and Pocket (editor’s note: French publishing houses) - those were really in the French environment - and little by little, I was able to make illustrations internationally, working a lot for White Wolf. So, I did a lot of cover illustrations for the World of Darkness universe. I did the covers for Vampire, for Werewolf, for Mage... actually for quite a few happy and very colorful worlds.

Olivier: Very happy worlds!

Michel Koch: Very happy worlds indeed, as we can see a bit from the picture on the right, for example. **00:10:25 picture** For 4-5 years, I did a lot of that, a lot of role-playing games, card games, and novel covers. It wasn’t that bad, we worked from home, we didn’t go to bed, working all night, sleeping during the day. It’s a strange but interesting rhythm, and little by little I started to shift towards video games. In fact, I was mostly working in publishing, but afterwards, I started to see freelance ads for concept arts where I started to get jobs for games.... I think it was for 3DS games, but that was a bit later. Then it was for...

Olivier: R.U.S.E.? **00:11:00 picture**

Michel Koch: Yeah, it was the concept work for R.U.S.E. by Ubisoft. I was already making concept arts for small games, and this was a bit more. I had more contacts. But the first projects? Yeah, it was for a 3DS game called Baby City, and I had to make the concept art. It’s a babysitting game, as its name suggests with a pun. Anyway, I made some concepts. Maybe you have them.

Olivier: I don’t think we have them.

Michel Koch: No? Alright.

Olivier: In black and white?

Michel Koch: Yes, that’s it!

Olivier: No, I don’t think we have them.

Michel Koch: I made a concept for the pediatrician's office, a concept for the children's clothing store, the entire house in the game where the main character had to take care of the children and babysit. I know that it doesn’t sound interesting...

Olivier: You have to *unintelligible*. (speakers spoke simultaneously)

Michel Koch: But, actually, it’s interesting, because even with the notes that were given, it was necessary for me to go read more, to search how a pediatrician's office looks, what they wanted the house to look like in relation to the desired gameplay. There is no such thing as a bad commission. It was really interesting; it gave me my foundation to start doing environmental concepts while reflecting what the game is telling, what we are trying to say. Afterwards, I had the chance to work for R.U.S.E., which was a great project. That was really awesome to work on these concepts, with World War II documents. That was with Eugen Systems. I worked remotely but talked every day with the artistic director - I think it was Thierry Dunter - who gave me feedback. It was my first experience on a big game with all the constraints that were given, so I could really try to bring something. It was the beginning of something that I hold dearly: the concern for details of the environmental narrative, and the importance to think about what we had to tell through these concepts. In fact, these are concepts for the war room.

Olivier: Briefing rooms?

Michel Koch: Yeah where the briefings were given. In the end, it’s not important in relation to the RTS itself, but I still wanted to try and educate myself properly, to bring a certain credibility to these environments.

Olivier: I don’t know for which game, but you also did beautiful art for Star Wars. Was it for something official or... ? **00:13:18 picture**

Michel Koch: So, it was for the Star Wars trading card game. It was a digital-only trading card game. It was a bit like Hearthstone but before its time. It didn’t work as well as Hearthstone because it was probably too early. Yeah, I did a lot of illustration for this game and it was amazing working for Star Wars.

Olivier: Are you a fan of the franchise?

Michel Koch: Yes, absolutely.

Olivier: It must be something to make your first Millennium Falcon.

Michel Koch: Yes, it’s pretty nice, there’s a way to... it’s a kid’s dream to work for Star Wars. **00:13:40 picture** Obviously, everything has already been designed, so there’s always a way to get information with references. I really liked trying to work on the atmosphere, the lighting, on what the image could tell beyond the design details that are already marked out.

Olivier: How was the... you were already in this video game world... how was the first contact made with Dontnod? A young studio created a few months prior in Paris. And how were your first interactions with them? **00:14:10**

Michel Koch: It’s a great story. In fact, I met with Aleksi Briclot - one of the co-founders and the artistic director at the time. I met him about 1 year before I started working for Dontnod. I joined Dontnod at the end of 2008, and I met Aleksi in 2007 at the Utopiales de Nantes. It’s a science-fiction fair where I was invited to show some of my work, and I think he was there for a big exhibition. We talked a little. We didn’t keep in touch, but a contact had been made. At the end of 2008, I saw an ad on the Café Salé forum: Dontnod searching for a concept artist for a project. I told myself I had to try, so I contacted Aleksi and sent the last images I did from R.U.S.E. and other projects. He liked it since he was familiar with my book covers but not my environment concept arts. I was offered to do a test on a two-week assignment to start doing the very first concept on Adrift (now Remember Me) very early on. At Dontnod, I believe they were 7 people at the time - the 5 founders and 2-3 employees. I was working remotely. When I started working with Aleksi and Alain Damasio on concepts, the game had more of a fantasy touch to it at the time. It’s really in a flooded Paris of 2084 where water has a very important part, and the current political themes were present. The first concept art was all focused around the water element.

Olivier: We had a lot of art like that earlier, yeah, absolutely.

Michel Koch: They liked what I had made on this assignment and proposed that I switch to a full-time freelance concept artist to continue working with them.

Olivier: Did you move out?

Michel Koch: No, I still worked remotely. I lived in Strasbourg, and I went to the studio about once a month. At the very beginning with Aleksi, we started to sketch out the universe by working on the buildings, the streets, the graphic charter we established to decide what stayed the same from the real Paris and what we would change to blend science-fiction and contemporary. We tried to do this prospective work that had already been done in universes like Blade Runner, for example, or other science fiction universes. We were trying to make our vision of a futuristic Paris, what it would look like without reinventing the wheel... I worked remotely for 8-12 months, and then they offered me to become Lead Concept Artist to be in charge of the concept art team at the studio in Paris now that they had more people. That’s when I definitely moved to Paris.

Olivier: Okay, before we move on to Remember Me, with your experience as a concept artist, what makes a good concept artist? Beyond the ability to draw. **00:17:25**

Michel Koch: It’s a pretty big question. I think there’s plenty.

Olivier: You have three hours.

Michel Koch: I have three hours, that’s fine. In fact, there are plenty of things. Obviously, there is drawing, the artistic and technical qualities that are obviously important. I know that we at Dontnod... and we look a lot at the ability to give clear explanations within the drawing when we go through the portfolios. It’s the ability to transmit information that will be used by the 3D graphic designer. We could have the most beautiful drawing or concept art in the world, if it isn’t clear, isn’t accompanied by documentation or that it isn’t clear for a graphic designer, then it’s useless to us. It will make a beautiful image for a book or a portfolio but not necessarily useful for game production. In game production, we have limited budgets, we have to be efficient. Concept artists are at the very beginning of the production chain, because they are the ones feeding the environment graphic designers, the characters graphic designers, the FX artists. Their job is really to give the tools to create. The concept art itself isn’t used in the end game. Concept art is sometimes used as a bonus content, like in art galleries but in the end; the concept art is just a link in the chain. The final game is in 3D or some kind of render. So, a concept really has to be clear so that when the 3D graphic designer receives it, they don’t have any questions about it. For me, a good concept art is sometimes less appealing than what was imagined but is clear, readable, and perhaps has a second view beside it or has additional photos given as a reference. It’s a package deal. It's more of a designer job than an artist. It's my vision, that's how we work, given the size of the team at Dontnod; that's how we have to work if we want to be effective in practice.

Olivier: We're now going to talk about Remember Me, but first, we're going to watch a trailer before getting to the heart of the matter.

Video 19:27 – 21:15 English version

Olivier: Even if you weren't initially on the project, do you know where Adrift's original idea came from? **00:21:23**

Michel Koch: I think the original idea came from a drawing by one of the five founders, Hervé Bonin. Even the name Adrift came from it. The basic idea was this drifting world. It was really first and foremost an idea about the scenario. A narrative bible was written by Alain Damasio and by many scriptwriters who worked on it. **00:21:54 picture** There was Stéphane Beauverger, who’s also a scriptwriter for Vampyr and who was...

Olivier: Wrote Le Déchronologue. It's an excellent novel. I recommend it.

Michel Koch: And that he was the scriptwriter of Remember Me. In other words, Alain laid all of the basics and then Stéphane really wrote the game, what we have in the game in the end. There was also Jean-Luc Cano who worked on the scriptwriting team and is also a scriptwriter for Life is Strange. The original idea came from a pitch by Hervé, which was then worked on by a team with Jean-Maxime Moris, the director, and Aleksi, artistic director, to create the world. I joined them a little bit later and then, there we see the image on the left **00:22:27 picture**. It was the first visual of a more fantasy looking Paris, in fact, when the water was much more present. The water is still present, but we reduced the level of fantasy to shift toward more future-oriented science fiction. That was the foundation right at the beginning, when we were still looking for direction at the start of the project.

Olivier: There even were gameplay phases that integrated with the water. I think Nilin was supposed to have some kind of hoverboard.

Michel Koch: Yes, completely. There was the...

Olivier: I think we have something on that.

Michel Koch: Maybe there’s something.

Olivier: Look. **00:22:57 picture**

Michel Koch: Yeah, exactly.

Olivier: Did you make a prototype gameplay like that or... ?

Michel Koch: I arrived and there were already prototypes in progress. There were videos, in fact, that were fake prototypes but there really wasn't any Sensen (editor’s note: Remember Me's Sensation Engine) gameplay. There was, on the other hand, a development of fluid technology (editor’s note: FLUIDZ) at Dontnod to manage large bodies of water. In the end, we barely used it but there was a lot that was created around it. Production difficulties, moving with Sony, followed by the move to Capcom changed the global scope and some of the elements. In the end, the story still is based around memory, the narration still is present in the end even if it obviously underwent quite a lot of change.

Olivier: I can imagine. I believe the idea of memory remix came up very early in the development of the game? **00:23:43**

Michel Koch: Yes, when I arrived, he had already told me about it. He already had it in mind. I think it was Jean-Maxime and Alain who really had this idea of focusing on memory. In Remember Me, memories are completely digitized; everything is recorded, a bit like an episode of Black Mirror. **00:24:07 picture** So that's it. Everything you experience is recorded; it's a memory that becomes digital, and therefore you can save it, upload it, read other people's memories. You have a group of people called Memory Hunters who have the ability to steal memories from people and then sell them on the black market. Nilin has the special ability to remix these memories. In other words, she goes into the Sensen - this chip that is in everyone’s neck - to find a memory and change it, making the user believe it really happened. **00:24:44-00:24:57 picture** That’s the main idea for Remember Me. It’s those moments that you could go into a person’s mind, find a particular memory, see it and try, through a system of choices and consequences – of cause and effect – to change small elements of that memory so that the person reacts differently. It’s actually one of the foundational ideas for when we started working on Life is Strange. When I arrived, it was super interesting to work with them on the visual aspect.

Olivier: About that, how did the world come into being? **00:25:10**

Michel Koch: Before I had arrived, the first prototypes had the memory remix in a 100% realistic setting. The rewind effects were like rewinding a VCR with some glitch effects to show that it had changed, but we started working on it after my arrival. We found out it was a real problem. It didn’t feel like we were in a memory, a different place; it felt like watching a scene, like a flashback, and it lost its meaning. We started to think how we could change into a different and interesting visual render for the memories. We're talking about digital memory in terms of numerical memory, so we tried to combine the two. For me, a memory is often blurry, incomplete, since we usually don't remember everything. For example, there are moments of our childhood or of our past where we remember a detail like a person or an item like a carpet or a bouquet of flowers, yet we don’t remember the walls or the ceiling or other elements present. We tried to take that aspect into account so that’s why I think it had... so we’re seeing images of the first concepts I made. Yeah, there was precisely the idea of having an empty space, to avoid showing everything. Sometimes some elements were on their own, floating and using the aspect of the cubes to bring this matrix and digital memory side.

Olivier: We're going to talk about Paris. Was it a difficult choice to place the game in Paris or was it done naturally? **00:26:50**

Michel Koch: It was part of the elements that were in place before I arrived at the studio, so I think that it was done naturally since we’re a Parisian studio. We had easy access to the references **00:27:00 picture** What I mean is that, on Life is Strange, we went further away to look for the source material, but on the first game, there was some interest to keep it close, to go out and take pictures of Paris. We had references from a point of view that was necessarily a bit political and narrative. I think it was something that Alain Damasio really cared about and Paris is not seen that much in science fiction. There are other cities that we tend to see a lot, and it allows us to distinguish ourselves too, to try something new, something different.

Olivier: How did you approach your vision, the artistic direction of Paris in 2084? **00:27:38**

Michel Koch: I was already super attracted to the project when it was presented to me, because there’s clearly a part of Paris that is superb; it’s a city that has a lot of history which you can still see. **00:27:48 picture** Paris is still in constant evolution, but with the law on urban planning, there are laws that restrict the right to build towers everywhere. There are things that remain. In our opinion, some elements will continue to remain in the future, like monuments or stone walls that will be preserved, so we tried to find a balance. In fact, the question was present every time we designed a building or when we remodeled a district: what should remain of the current Paris and what had to be transformed. So, there was this initial rule at the micro level; we thought we were going to change everything that was perishable. For example: windows, shutters, posts, glazing, everything related to technology. People change their windows quite regularly. We wanted to keep the facades, the stones, but change the necessary elements, therefore the windows... everything that was street furniture. **00:28:38 picture** We worked a lot on street furniture, on information terminals, on all the elements that evolve very quickly with technology while keeping what makes the romantic charm of the modern-day Paris. Then, there was the macro-level of the question. There are towers and buildings in the background. We imagined what we’d see if the law that restricts skyscrapers got abolished a while ago. We added skyscrapers. **00:29:04 picture** It's something that works very well as seen in Blade Runner or in other works of fiction. It works right away to evoke... When you see the visual, you recognize that it's Paris and immediately understand it's not Paris today. We also worked a lot with the script-writing team on the environmental prospect, including the choice of wind turbines, green energy, green roofs, all the elements which should happen - we hope - and try to push in that direction, all the while... We looked at a lot of what was being done in science, in fact, in prototypes, things that will happen in 10, 15, 20 years’ time even if our game takes place in 2084. We decided to use these elements. Maybe it will be much more advanced in 2084, or maybe not, but at least we’re starting from credible ideas, to globally have elements that have a chance to exist in any case. **00:30:02 picture**

Olivier: We also discussed in Jonathan Jacques-Belletête's Masterclass on Deus Ex. He talked about the fragile balance between entering pure science fiction and still having something with a basis in reality. It must be very complicated, when you create a world like that, to find this balance between fantasy and credibility? **00:30:17**

Michel Koch: Yes, for sure. After all, we create entertainment products first and foremost. There was a time when we had a lot of discussions with the concept artists, with Aleksi, about how far we were going to push the "bigger than life" aspect, creating things that will certainly never happen, but would still be cool to see visually. For example, in Remember Me, we have humanoid robots that are called "valets" who sweep. **00:30:44 picture** I don’t think it's ever going to happen; it's a bit silly to use a robot that's going to cost millions of euros to simply sweep the floor but, visually, it was interesting in terms of sci-fi look. We were able to do quite a few things with these robots; we could define, create colour variations and place them everywhere to bring a futuristic touch. It's clearly something that won't exist but that works. Next to the valets, we made small drones, which I think are perhaps more credible, having a much more compact, functional design. They may have a better chance of existing, but it's always playing with the balance. It's always cool to see big robots. People like to see robots, and concept artists like to design robots, so we put in some robots.

Olivier: We have to give them robots... give robots.

Michel Koch: Is that the best idea? I don't know, but it still works.

Olivier: We're now going to talk about Nilin, the heroine of the game. Was she a complicated character to design? How much time did it take to create her? **00:31:46**

Michel Koch: Yes, there were a lot of iterations on Nilin...

Olivier: We can see the first concept art. **00:31:48 image **

Michel Koch: It's not easy, so this is the very first version that was designed before I arrived, when the game was much more oriented toward... with the jet ski, which is called a "wave board," so that's why she wears this sort of sports suit...

Olivier: Extreme?

Michel Koch: Yeah, extreme sports. She fitted well with the game as it was. She then fitted less with the subsequent evolution of the project. It's complicated for a main character in a science fiction universe. Are we going to give them a rather classic sci-fi combination look? Are we going to... so we tried to apply the same rule, a little bit of what we did on the environments, that's it... Those are the images with the first design. **00:32:29 picture** Those were images used to show the atmosphere of the fights and some elements of the game. When we went back to her design, we wanted to root the game in a credible realism, even if it was in a science fiction setting, so we asked ourselves different questions and, finally, we gave her jeans.

Olivier: Yes, and the rest also, yeah, which had a certain...

Michel Koch: I don't know if it's the best design idea in the world either, but it still works pretty well, which means it's still a timeless one. There will probably be jeans in 50, 70 years, and after that, we mixed it with much more futuristic elements. We knew that she fights a lot so we added outfit elements that can help her fight. **00:33:00 picture** There are these greaves (editor’s note: shin armor); there are... so there's also the whole design of the glove, which is called the "spammer," in fact, which was based on augmented reality and these virtual elements that float all around her arm as well. In hindsight, I have a bit of difficulty to project myself on how good or bad the design was, but in any case, it made sense in relation to the overall approach we had taken on the overall direction of the project.

Olivier: The years go by with Remember Me in the works, having a rather long development time. You quickly advanced within Dontnod, going from concept artist to lead concept artist, and then you eventually become Co-artistic Director with Aleksi Briclot. How did this progression affect you? Did it develop naturally? **00:33:54**

Michel Koch: So, how did it affect me? Well, I had already been drawing less as I went along, but then it's interesting, because the project was really exciting. I had participated from the very beginning as a concept artist and lead concept artist to lay the foundation of the universe with Aleksi... with the concept art team. So, when Aleksi decided to take some distance, who wanted less... to be able to start over on personal projects, offered me to become Co-artistic Director with him. Well, it first made me happy, and I accepted quite quickly since I thought it was really interesting to work with this team which is great! I know that we had hired artists who were extremely talented. I'm not necessarily the best concept artist in the world, and I find it interesting to work with people who really are great in their field, and I knew that I could supervise them and push them to give their best in the vision we had set up. It really made sense to me, and it allowed me to take a step back on the project and to really supervise the overall artistic vision as a whole. There’s something that I think is very important in general for this project and for what we did on Life is Strange, and that’s to surround yourself with good people. **00:35:13 picture** To recognize that there are people who are much better than you at doing something and not to hesitate to give them the reins or the tasks that will help them do their best. They will be able to be full-time on a particular design element while I took a step back and was more involved in supervising the team, doing paintovers, working on lighting, working on the overall vision of the project.

Olivier: I would like to come back to the involvement of the two writers, Stéphane Beauverger and Alain Damasio. Alain Damasio's La Horde du Contrevent that you must absolutely read. Were they people who had video game knowledge? What were their views on the experience you developed? Was the dialogue easy? Finally, what did they bring through, you know, their experience? **00:35:54**

Michel Koch: It's great to work with them and really challenging too, but there were also a lot of wonderful things coming out of it. That is to say, Stéphane had worked a lot in video games before; he had worked for Ubisoft, for Blizzard, so he had the knowledge, an expertise of the video-game-making pipeline, constraints such that we can't do everything. Alain, on his side, not at all. He really had this creative vision that can go in any direction, so sometimes that’s exactly what he did; he went in every direction. That is to say, the narrative bible of Remember Me is more than 1,000 pages long, I think, and, in the endgame, only 5-6% was used, but on the other hand...

Olivier: It gives a background to this universe.

Michel Koch: Well yes, it gave us a lot of food for thought, but it's true that his first version of the project script was unrealistic. I remember an example: there was a level of the game where we passed into a kind of... I don't know the name of the environment anymore, it was a sort of zoo, a building, a foundation that preserves living specimens. And in the scenario, he had written there are were 120 species of animals that were almost all visible. He thought that we could maybe model everything, show everything, but then we can't, otherwise we would have just made this one scene after 4 years of development.

Olivier: Available in a futuristic zoo!

Michel Koch: You couldn't show it nor talk about it, but we kept everything he created that was really interesting. There are lots of little elements that we used on the environmental narrative such as flash info, in flyers, in graffiti that we find on the walls that refer to elements of the universe that exist. Those might not at all be developed in the game, but that gives this credibility to the universe. It’s anchored into something bigger than just the story we're telling, and it's very important. That's why we really used everything that was created even if, in the end, I think it could have disappointed them to have written so many things and not find them completely in the game, but, in the end, it's still proved useful. I know they did the same thing at Arkane on Dishonored; the whole country had been mapped, and, in the end, it only happens in a city, but it creates, it gives... it allows the artists and the team making the game to know what is happening, to understand... to really have material to breathe into every little detail.

Olivier: It took 5 years to do Remember Me. That's a long time. Was it a difficult process? Was it too crazy, too much for a young studio? **00:38:06**

Michel Koch: So, it's probably a little crazy at first, yes, absolutely.

Olivier: It’s necessary at times.

Michel Koch: I must say, those 1,000 pages I was talking about, that was a little crazy. There are a lot of things... the game is far too long, we had to make cuts, to reduce elements. I believe that Stéphane rewrote the story twelve times in relation to production needs, the change of publisher, the publisher’s requests. In fact, he had to reduce and readjust... so yes, it's certainly a crazy project, but it also shows the studio was ambitious and it motivated everyone. When we arrive and talk about it or when someone comes to work at Dontnod and we introduce Remember Me, well it hypes you. There’s ambition even if at times it was like wearing blinders, thinking we can do everything. There’s still real passion for the project. So that's great, and then constraints also help, I ... we'll talk about it on Life is Strange. I'm really in favor of constraints that can really...

Olivier: Constructive?

Michel Koch: Yeah, constructive limitations help make a better project because Remember Me suffered from this over-ambition present from the beginning. In the end, the final scenario has loose ends, created from the cuts we were forced to make. Like removing a character at the end because the cutscene had been shortened. In the final scene, there are two scenes which would have worked better if there were a third scene in between, but that scene was removed, so there are things that don’t work as well. So sometimes having more constraints at the beginning can be more beneficial, I think.

Olivier: In February 2011, so you have a publisher on Adrift called Sony. How is the news taken when Sony decides to withdraw from the project? **00:39:49**

Michel Koch: So, I don't know how everyone experienced it. On my side, it was going well overall. It didn't affect me, especially since we were moving forward on the project. It seemed a little risky.

Olivier: You had been developing for two years. What was it like?

Michel Koch: Yes, it had been about 2 years, I think. It was bad luck, Sony decided to cancel, I think 5 or 6 projects with European studios at that time, to only keep Quantic [Dream] as a European studio, I think, I believe... So that's the hard part because of the fear of "what are we going to do with it?"; but, at that moment, the company’s higher ups were still reassuring, saying they were looking for another publisher, we're still going to find one. And finally, it worked, since Capcom signed not so long after that, I think. There are people that probably didn't experience it well, but at my level, at the level of the concept art team, the art team, we kept moving forward and producing.

Olivier: You had your vision, you moved forward. With the arrival of Capcom, did it give a different vibe, a different atmosphere to the game? Did they try to bring something? **00:40:59**

Michel Koch: Maybe a bit, I think. When we signed with Capcom, we had visits from Ono-san, the producer of Street Fighter, who’s perhaps much more critical or more combat oriented. There was probably a small change of scope where the game went from a more action-RPG to action adventure. Whereas, in Sony’s version, there was more exploration mechanics in Adrift - at least a little more semi-open mechanics. There was a shift, the project was a little more linear, a little more focused but which also pleased the management teams, the game director and all that. So, I think there was necessarily a kind of Capcom vision a little bit but that was what the team was following anyway, so it wasn’t a complete betrayal of what the creators wanted to do. For the artistic direction, it didn't change anything; the game remained the same apart from having to adapt to a more linear design and reduce open zones, but it didn't fundamentally change the approach we had on the universe, on the vision of the game. We had already reduced the impact of the water a lot for Sony. We were already going along those lines.

Olivier: Okay, you were already headed in that direction. How do you look at Remember Me today in hindsight, a few years later? **00:42:24**

Michel Koch: Well, I see it with a lot of affection because it's the first project on which I, as a Concept Artist and then Artistic Director, was able to work on a complete universe and learn a lot by working with all the talented people on the team who were there working on the universe. To work with writers like Alain, Stéphane or Jean-Luc, and the others - there were up to 8 of them - so there were a lot of people who created the narrative of the game. I learned a lot about what a production is, a lot through mistakes too. In fact, on Remember Me, I think we used 30% of the concept art we made in the end. You saw the Remember Me art book; it’s full of elements that ultimately weren’t used. So, we wasted time and resources.

Olivier: At least they’re useful tonight.

Michel Koch: Yes, they got a purpose (*laughs*)... so we still wasted time, resources also, because of iterations of the game, scope changes, level design changes. These kinds of things happen but we certainly produced too much. We spread ourselves too thin. We certainly also wanted to go too far sometimes and maybe weren’t sufficiently effective. I learned a lot about 3D which I didn’t know. Beforehand, I was simply an illustrator in my corner, so I discovered what 3D graphics artists need when they have a concept art. The constraints of a 3D engine, the problems of creating the lighting, the problems of making a game with rain. We did a lot of things we wanted visually that are the hardest to do in the engine we had at the time, so they weren’t necessarily the best choices, but we still did it. I also met great people. Almost all the people I worked with on Life is Strange were people I met on Remember Me. Whether it be Raoul, Luc, Jean-Luc, these were people... we worked together on Remember Me. We could make a close-knit team and then work on Life is Strange. The foundation for Life is Strange comes from the ideas that we liked in the memory remixes. We learned to work, the studio was created, to build a team so we have... well it’s a seminal game in any case that allowed us to do the rest. I like the game in itself, I do see the flaws, but I see them with a lot of affection nevertheless. There are many things I find very good, others less so.

Olivier: We will of course now talk about Life is Strange, so let’s watch a trailer and get to the heart of the matter afterwards.

44:58 – 47:20 English trailer

Olivier: Where did the original idea for Life is Strange come from?

Michel Koch: As I was saying earlier, there really was this idea - the memory remix of Remember Me - which we liked a lot. So, after Remember Me there should be a discussion with Capcom to see if there is going be a Remember Me 2 or not. There are other "Triple-A" projects in development, and we have Hervé Bonnin - one of the studio's founders - who came to see us with a very small team at the beginning. We really weren't many and...

Olivier: You're still developing Remember Me?

Michel Koch: Yes, near the end of Remember Me. He came to see us and said that he would like to launch an independent project that we would own... a little game that we would do in parallel with big projects. Hervé wanted... there was Jean-Luc, Raoul, Ronan; there were other people who have since left Dontnod, and then me. He came to us and offered to start planning on the side... a few hours a week on a side project, on a little game that we could make by taking the idea of memory remix, almost keeping only that to have a game that would only belong to Dontnod and not to a publisher and so on. It didn’t exactly happen like that, but we’ll get there... We started working on it, and in parallel, we also worked on the other projects. We started thinking about potentially what could have been in Remember Me 2 and other things that we can't necessarily talk about, but we managed to find 2-3 hours a week to think about it. Okay, so we have the memory remix, what do we do with it? We thought that one of the points, which I had really enjoyed working on in Remember Me, was all the environmental narration: everything that we were able to say through the environments. In the end, Remember Me is an action game; it's a game where you have to run all the time, jump everywhere, and fight enemies. You don't have too much time to look at the environments all the time. You always move forward, and it's the pace of the game that dictates it. It works, but we can certainly say that the work we did on these sets... for example: if we had an adventure game based a bit on the old point and click games, much more laid back, simpler, much more... where we you could take your time. Couldn’t we couldn’t bring forth this strength we had on environmental narrative? On the fact of telling... letting the player take their time in a set. We had this notion of memory remix, so we started thinking about what we would like to do in fact about this type... having the idea of this type of game to be much more focused on narration, more laid back with the idea of a memory remix. Soon after, we thought about this rewind gameplay, so that’s no longer in a person’s memory. It’s really the fact of going back in time in real life at any moment. We started to think much more about which character, which story, what do we want to tell, what is interesting to tell. So, we quickly had this notion of choice and consequence that seemed important to us. We then could think about the setting, the world. I think that pretty quickly in the team, we all had this kind of fondness for some American series, for some teenage universes, the teenage world, what we can tell about in this period of our lives. Adolescence is where everything is created, it becomes a pivotal moment of our lives before making choices and becoming an adult. We came up with this idea of a little bit of teen drama. We started to think about different characters. We had several possible ideas, but we had one of the characters written: that’s Max. Little by little, the design ideas with the rewind, the story ideas... everything started to fit in with each other. We finally arrived at the first draft which, in any case, is quite close to the final game. So, a first draft of what Life is Strange, which was called "What If?" at first... what Life is Strange could be.

Olivier: We have plenty of sumptuous concept art, artwork, and you brought us a great gift, even two! First, we have the mood video from Life is Strange. So, what is a mood video? It's a video with a different purpose made out of a montage of film clips that inspired you to show a little bit of the flavor, the atmosphere that you want to give to the Life is Strange project. We'll try to watch it. I hope the sound works, because it's a great gift, so I trust you in production. Pressure, pressure... Go ahead, please.

51:43 – 53:24 Mood video

Olivier: It's a great gift.

Michel Koch: There are some things that remained, though.

Olivier: Yes, I find that, well, for me, the flock of birds is a thing...

Michel Koch: The tornado.

Olivier: Striking memories I have of Life is Strange

Michel Koch: Yeah, we started it at the very beginning when we were a small team. That's before we had concepts, before we had 3D, before we had anything. We had to work on what we call a mood video. It’s where we take bits of film, video, or something that already exists, and we produce nothing really new to try to show internally, because we had to sell this project internally at first. We always had the idea of making an independent game, so we had to convince the founders of Dontnod that this project idea was interesting. So, we made this mood video, which is a short video of one minute thirty - I don't know exactly how long it is - which sets out the overall intentions of the project from a lot of film, lots of effects, choices of music, choices of elements that create a bit of an atmosphere. From the beginning, we were on this idea of a tone... a little bit like independent cinema, lightfix light, which we call light in the field [of view]... backlight. This tone that feels close to everyday life, normal people who have something supernatural happening to them, and so it's something we really worked on at the beginning to showcase. We were pretty happy with the result, and it set the tone for the project, so it's interesting to see, because it has nothing to do with what we did next.

Olivier: Oh yes, there are still things left, but you can't know because you haven't seen it. (*laughs*)

Michel Koch: In the sense that we never have the rights on what we use, it's bits of film, so the characters are not the right ones, but it showed what we wanted to do...

Olivier: The intention...

Michel Koch: ... and it's true. I think, in the end, we still kept part of the tone anyway, it really allowed us to try to sell the project’s intention.

Olivier: In addition to that, you brought something else too. It's one of the game’s earliest demos, so it's really rough. Please be indulgent, but that shows Max's room. (Editor’s note: this is an error. He means Chloe’s room)

Michel Koch: It's also a work-in-progress version of the demo very early on. I thought it would be funny to show a little bit how ugly it can be at first.

Olivier: Yeah, you’ll see that the voices are special. Let's watch it, and we'll talk about it afterwards. It's a montage that we made ourselves.

55:44 – 56:32 Demo video

Olivier: This is some rather exceptional dubbing. I don't know how you found that, but it’s true that it’s quite unbelievable... It’s a software?

Michel Koch: Yes.

Olivier: It's great.

Michel Koch: They’re synthetic voices.

Olivier: I sure hope that they are synthesized voices.

Michel Koch: There's no one at Dontnod who did those voices.

Olivier: If it's someone, you have to introduce them very, very quickly. I find it very interesting that we really find the DNA of Life is Strange in terms of artistic direction. The room is really more or less...

Michel Koch: Right at the beginning, yeah.

Olivier: ... the atmosphere we will find in the game, and it already has this rewind mechanic.

Michel Koch: Yeah, actually I thought it was funny to show that because we didn't show it to publishers at that stage since it’s really ugly, but it's to show how - as I imagine you know - in the production cycle, there are always times when it's super ugly. We didn't have a real motion capture system, we did it with motion capture suits, and I think Raoul was the one who made the father's MOCAP. That's why Chloe shakes on the bed, because we had animation anchoring problems. It’s really in a very... very, very rough mode to go very fast to start showing a little bit of the feeling of a scene with a rewind moment. It's a super rewind effect; it's perfect. But it wasn’t too bad to show. In the end, we continued on this scene, and in the final scene, for those who know, the scene is pretty close to it. It’s finished, of course; it’s better too, but at any rate, the foundation was there.

Olivier: It’s this scene that you have refined, working on it to become the demo that you will use to approach the publishers. **00:57:57**

Michel Koch: Exactly, yes. It is with this demo that we pushed the project forward, to get validated by Dontnod’s higher ups and show the others that we were continuing and then... originally, it wasn’t planned to go and show to publishers since the idea was still to make an independent game. Dontnod thought they would sign another project on the side with Capcom not wanting to continue with Remember Me and the projects that were starting to be prepared [that] weren’t signed at that time. There was a moment in a few last-chance meetings: the directors of Dontnod were saying they could start showing the demo to publishers, just in case. "Here’s a side project we have. We don't think you'll be interested," and finally Square Enix liked it, for example.

Olivier: We're now going to talk about the fact that you're going to change roles with Life is Strange. You became co-game director with Raoul, whom we are honored to welcome here tonight.

Michel Koch: Who is right there.

Olivier: Right there and part of the Dontnod team... There's someone who wanted to ask you a question about it.

00:59:03 – video with Christophe Brusseaux.

Christophe Brusseaux: Hi, Michel. We know that artistic directors and concept artists are often people in the shadows; they illustrate the project of an author or a game designer team. You, who are now the game director, can you tell us about the changes this double role has brought to your approach to your project or even your work?

00:59:22 - video end

Michel Koch: Thank you, Christophe, for the question. It's a very interesting question because it's true that we work together with Raoul, so in co-direction we try to have a little bit... we try to agree, here’s (*laughs*) **00:59:44 picture** We don't always agree, but we manage to agree anyway which is good since it also creates a real challenge to always question each other’s ideas. There’s no single-mindedness moment, going forward, head down. We can really question ourselves if we have to, and we also do it with the teams, because it's important to keep the overall vision. We have to keep a course, but it's also important to be attentive to the people. If we hired them, they're talented people, and there's probably a reason why-- If, at some point, someone doesn't like something at all, there’s probably a good reason. The fact of wearing the two hats on Remember Me... as I was saying, we created too many concepts, we did too much... we sometimes spent too much time redesigning, because we didn’t like it or because we thought it could be better, and so on. On Life is Strange, regarding the artistic aspect (*laughs*), we were very happy. We look very happy there. **01:00:29 picture** On Life is Strange, I necessarily owned the artistic aspect. It was important, but there was also the fact that we had the global vision of the game, what the game must tell, what feelings should players experience, how the game must be made. Production must be able to move forward. It's not barriers that I put around myself for the artistic direction, but I think it’s a way to work, perhaps more effectively.

Olivier: More structured.

Michel Koch: To sometimes tell myself that I can’t push something any further. What's important is what we're going to tell. It's the scene itself. It's not necessarily the level of detail of an element, of a specific texture here and there. **01:01:06 picture** And so, yes, that's Luc and Raoul (*laughs*). **01:01:11 picture** It's a picture just to show that we made reference photos for the lighting.

Olivier: You were in Oregon?

Michel Koch: It was in California. It's still on the west coast.

Olivier: Not too far. You’re working, as we can see.

Michel Koch: Indeed, we were working... So, wearing two hats is really interesting, and I think it's important to be more... to have a greater awareness of what game production is, of deadlines... of what’s important for the game in the end. Each profession must push as much as possible to give the best of their specialty, whether it’s the visual, the 3D, the sound, etcetera. In the end, I think it’s good that everyone has knowledge of the overall agreement, to have a sense of where they can go and what will be beneficial for the project. As we say, perfect is the enemy of good, and I think it applies to us.

Olivier: How do you divide the work with Raoul? Did you each take your favorite field? **01:02:12**

Michel Koch: Well we... so we met during Remember Me. I was on the art team while he was on the cinematic team, so we inevitably have affinities. **01:02:21 picture** He was more on cameras and design in general while I was more into art, but we really work together on everything. Neither one takes a decision unilaterally if the other doesn’t agree. If the other does indeed disagree, we discuss it over until we decide on one of the two options or we find a third. I also learned to be more involved in the narrative aspect, which I hadn't done much before. I developed a little more on this project while working with the scriptwriter; I worked with Jean-Luc. At the beginning, he wrote the story in French, but as soon as he finished writing the complete story of the game for all 5 episodes, the different branches and the general storyline, it seemed important to us to work with an American scriptwriter. I believe we had made a mistake with Remember Me to write everything in French and then translate it. What was horrible later was that the final French version of the game was a translation of the English script, thus ending up being a translation of a translation. It's very logical... (*laughs*), but that's how studios and publishers work. You have localization and so on, so we really wanted the original version of Life is Strange to be directly in English. We have this demo we saw where the voices are in French, but everything in the final game was written directly in English. All the dialogues, Max's notebooks, everything we can see, everything we can read, was written in English by Christian Divine. It’s a cool name! An American screenwriter living in San Francisco who we really met by chance through an acquaintance of an acquaintance. We had started to do writing tests with a lot of screenwriters, and we weren’t super convinced. We had really gone through classic ads, and at that time, this mutual acquaintance introduced us to Christian. He kindly took the test, and we really loved what he wrote. That was it. The writing style used on the texts between Max and Chloe, all... the language he used. We really discovered our characters in a way we thought, well, that's them. So, I worked a lot with him to give him writing guidelines; namely, we didn't write things down in advance, but we... gave structures like an example of a dialogue in one of the branches, general intentions, and we really let him contribute a lot to the way the characters talk. For example: he invented the way Max and Chloe talk, and he did a really great job. And so, we learned jobs that were slightly different from our previous roles. For example: in terms of pure game design, even though Raoul had more experience than me there, we weren’t full-on game designers initially. By working with game designers, we learned to give meaning and direction, to work with them and to see how we can bring out the best out of each type of role, I think.

Olivier: On Remember Me, let’s say you were more a contractor despite the passion you have for the project. Here, it sort of became your baby with the rest of the team. Did it change your relation to the notion of a game, so to speak... to the thing you’re working on? **01:05:34**

Michel Koch: That’s a difficult question. Necessarily, our perception changes. For sure on Remember Me, my goal and mission was simply to make the game beautiful in general. If I simplify, we can find an interesting universe, we can create interesting characters, but, in the end, it’s the visual of the game that counts. On Life is Strange, our goal was to make an experience for the player, to ensure that the players felt what we wanted them to feel, that maybe they asked themselves the questions that we wanted to talk about, that they felt attached to the characters, that they felt empathy for the characters in the game. Of course, that they find the game... that the visuals serve this purpose. So, really, the artistic direction - the visuals - had to be in the service of the game’s intention and not simply be visually beautiful for their own sake. So yeah, it changed our perception.

Olivier: You have chosen the setting of the game to be in the Pacific Northwest, in particular the Oregon area. Why that choice, that region? **01:06:39**

Michel Koch: So the very first versions of the scenario, I think Jean-Luc had different variations, but for sure it was in the United States, because we knew there... we are in our thirties, we grew up with American series, there were fans of Twin Peaks, of Buffy, of The X-Files... of quite a few American series. **01:06:55 picture** We know that the United States is... it’s also a big market, but beyond that, and beyond the fact that it’s easier to make a game in English when you have to sell it. There’s really something fascinating about this country, its contrasts, that ability to talk about a lot of social elements; there’s everything in the United States. We can talk about a lot of things since it’s still a global reflection of Western society. For the Pacific Northwest, I was mentioning Twin Peaks and the X-Files, which were shot in Vancouver. They went to that region with the Pacific Ocean, fir forests, mist, and at times, its bad weather. There’s this almost magical side to this region, quite majestic. Everything is big; in fact, it's huge. And I had the opportunity to go there the year before to Seattle for another trip. It wasn’t a documentary trip, more of a business trip, but since Jean-Luc and I were already working on the idea of the scenario, I had to take some pictures and start doing a bit of research in case it could be of use. And yes, I also fell in love when I was in the region, on site. It wasn’t just this fantasized vision from television. Seeing it in real life reinforced this sense of grandeur with plenty of contrasts and these almost magical, immense forests of fir trees, and the Pacific.

Olivier: Talking about Oregon, we have a surprise question - someone who wanted to ask a question.

01:08:41 – video with Steve Gaynor (English).

Steve Gaynor: Hi, Michel and everyone there at the event tonight. I’m Steve from Fullbright, and I had a question. As you know, I am from the Pacific Northwest, from Oregon, and something that really struck me about Life is Strange is how authentic that feeling of being on the Oregon coast you captured in the game. So, I wanted to ask: how did you and your team accomplish that? Especially coming from someone who is very familiar with this place, thank you very much.

01:09:11 - video ends

Olivier: Lovely compliment!

Michel Koch: Well, yeah, thank you. By the way, Steve, there are games from Fullbright that are great. If you haven't played Gone Home, go play Gone Home, and we expect a lot from Tacoma.

Olivier: Which will maybe come out one day.

Michel Koch: I think it's coming out soon, I believe they're nearing the end. It's a great question, and it's really nice to know that he found it authentic. How did we do it? We did a lot of research, because we didn’t want to only take inspiration from TV series, from what we have already seen on TV, to make a copy of a copy of that reality. We didn’t want to go as, "We’re a French studio, we only saw the Pacific Northwest through TV shows, and we’re going to make a version for ourselves with a pinch of fantasy." We wanted to avoid the mistake we can see from the other side, where we see the French portrayed as only people wearing berets and holding baguettes. So, ideally avoid doing that. **01:10:10:07 picture** So, we really tried to research a lot because it was already something we did a lot on Remember Me, where we had the chance to be in Paris. I think that research is essential when we want to make an authentic game, so we did research for everything, even details like the width of the streets, or the little signs you can see in a high school. When I was in Seattle, I was able to see a lot of objects like the facade of a high school with all the little signs around it. Like one of the signs was a “Gun-free zone,” meaning you can't bring your weapons here. That’s the kind of detail where, if you don't see it, you don't necessarily think about it. **01:10:48 picture** Well, you can think about it but not necessarily think about putting it there or know where to put it. We did a lot of research like that when we could physically be there, and then we did it through social networks, like using Google. Google Street View is great; you just walk and look around. We would go through different streets to find common elements. If we saw it on, let’s say three streets, then it becomes something you can use. We used Craigslist a lot for the items of the game; in fact, we went on it to see the items for sale. For those who don’t know, Craigslist is the eBay or the American’s "leboncoin." So, we went on Craigslist looking for items that were for sale in the Oregon towns that corresponded a little to our references in the same area. For instance, for Chloe’s house, we looked for houses for sale in Oregon in a price range that matched the family's budget, so we found two to three houses that seemed pretty good to us. We found several since we didn’t want to do one as is. We really took inspiration from the position of the rooms, the structure of the house, the shape of the stairs, looking at the things that exist in Oregon. In fact, we did that for pretty much everything. Of course, we were very lucky to have Christian, the scriptwriter, who really did a good job advising us, doing some kind of audit in terms of what we were doing, to point out the mistakes, because we were making mistakes. **01:12:13 picture** There were mistakes that he pointed out to us that we had to keep, because, for example, there was one...

Olivier: You disagreed?

Michel Koch: No, it was because we had a puzzle with a design element that was on it. It was in Episode 1 in the dormitory where we have Dana locked in her room, and, in fact, it’s impossible to lock someone from the outside with American doors; it’s from the inside only. He explained to us that it was not possible for it to be closed from the outside. But since we were a bit late with... exactly, it was already designed that way, so we left it in. No one has brought it up before, apparently, but it’s a mistake. On the other hand, we changed things. For example: we had a first version of the scene when we discover Warren for the first time, where Max goes to give him his USB key. For those who didn’t play, Warren is Max’s.... overwrought lover who is always in the friend-zone, and...

Olivier: Yeah, that’s right, and a little desperate.

Michel Koch: And so we arrive in the game, he starts to lean forward to hug her, and she just hands him the USB stick, like, “Here take it. I’m not giving you a hug.” Well, our first version that we shot in motion capture, he leaned forward to give her a kiss on the cheek, but in the United States, they never kiss like that, so he (editor's note: Christian) told us that it didn't work, so we changed it. There were also mistakes on little details. For example: we had screwed up on the size of the parking spaces for SUVs; we had made it European size, and we had forgotten to make big car spaces. Christian really helped us for the authenticity. We tried to rework as we went along.

Olivier: And which are very important, and it reflects on the finished product. This attention to detail is really fascinating. At the opposite end of the spectrum from this perfectionist side, the game offers a hyper-inspired artistic direction; it’s very close to a painting. Does it come from you, from the team? How did it emerge? **01:14:09**

Michel Koch: So, it's something that... in fact when we started working on the project, we had a concept artist who had worked at the end of Remember Me with us named Edouard Caplain who did a lot of the game sets, and I really liked his style. **01:14:26 picture** His personal painting style that was very loose with color schemes. When I saw his style, I thought it would be very interesting to try to push the 3D rendering in this direction. We simplified the imagery, to have fewer details, to not have the grains of the material like the plaster on a wall or the carpet. We kept the essential to make the imagery more readable. **01:14:56 picture** I knew I wanted a universe rich in details with posters, graffiti, all those elements that make a living scenery - all the small objects, the small props - but it’s still necessary that the image remains readable. To have something simple with rather dark textures, using many tints and textures painted by hand and not that many micro details allowed us to put the emphasis on the objects, the visual richness. Like Chloe’s room, I think we can say that it is very detailed with very simple textures. Those details bring out the richness of the environment. It’s much easier to bring out the story of a room through objects rather than through different techniques. It was something I wanted to try to push, to move away from the hyper-realistic and go towards something more... to evoke a feeling rather than shove in the player’s face, all those details, thousands of polygons and all that.

Olivier: And to place so many elements of the normal world into the game, to transcribe all those little details, objects. You gave us a lot of references, which we will see. Did it cause any issue in terms of rights? **01:16:08**

Michel Koch: (*laughs*) Of course.

Olivier: Did you have to reinvent every brand? Everything had to be redone?

Michel Koch: We could have Luc, the producer, come and talk about it.

Olivier: Yes, Luc, the producer who had to... here we have an example, you recreated car models. **01:16:19 picture**

Michel Koch: We had to. That was the biggest problem. So, we were lucky enough to work with Square Enix at the beginning. In Life is Strange, there’s a lot of stuff, we mentioned a lot of existing stuff, about movies, about Facebook, website brand names. We’re very lucky that Square Enix agreed to go in that direction. Even if we have the right, there are a lot of publishers who refuse to even mention it since they have concerns about it. Legally, we can use it as long as it’s a reference and we don’t say anything bad about it.

Olivier: You can refer to them.

Michel Koch: We can refer to them. We obviously do not have the right to show a trademark because there are copyrights on them. It was on objects where we had the most problems. It’s a realistic game that is anchored in everyday life, so we need to make a cup, a keyboard, a TV, a screen. The problem is that we can't make this screen here because they're going to tell us that it's registered somewhere and so on... a screen is still a screen, so it's been quite complicated. The worst were cars, since the automotive industry has a lot of lawsuits on their cars because games that reproduce cars do pay a lot to have them, so it's a sensitive topic. At first, we just started by making cars that looked like existing models, but it didn't work out. We had to do them all over again - it didn't work out, legally. We had to readjust and therefore really design them. Here’s two good examples of a Cadillac-like sedan that isn’t a Cadillac and a truck that isn’t an existing truck. It’s a lot of work to get to the goal of looking as close to an existing truck without actually being one. So, it’s the opposite of what a concept artist does where usually we try to do something that doesn't exist and do innovative design work. In this case, we did design work to bring it closer to something existing but without breaching any property rights. It was a bit more complicated to do.

Olivier: We’re now going to talk about the two heroines of Life is Strange, Chloe and Max. How were they created? Were they both created at the same time or did one come before the other? **01:18:11**

Michel Koch: No, Max came first. There had been quite a few iterations of the scenario when we worked on the core of what we were going to tell in the game. **01:18:19 picture** There was a variant where we had maybe up to 6 playable characters, or 5 playable characters. Each character had its own episode. Max was one of the 5 characters we had written, and after a while, we realized that we could just tell Max’s story; it felt more interesting. Chloe was not around yet. We had the tornado and this idea to have a sort of initiation to Max’s transition to adulthood. **01:18:50 picture** But we didn’t have Chloe, and the stakes were lacking. It was at the very beginning, even before anything was produced. We discussed with Raoul and Jean-Luc. I don't know when or how it was brought up, but we talked about if she got reunited with her best friend, a childhood friend, and we based our story on this strong relationship between two teenage girls. It solved a lot of things, because, narratively, Chloe became both Max's main ally and main opponent in terms of writing. **01:19:19 picture** In fact, Chloe allowed us to advance the story, to put Max in a dangerous situation, challenging her, to push her forward, and we could have two narrative arcs that crossed with Max who was moving in one direction and Chloe in the other. It’s at that moment that Chloe came to be.

Olivier: In keeping with this idea of seeming realistic, or in any case, of credibility. Have you done a lot of research for the look of the two heroines? As we’ll see, I believe there are slides. We can really see the details on the jeans, the shoulder strap, and you had to create T-shirts, create clothes, uh, yeah? **01:20:03**

Michel Koch: We had did a lot of research as it is a contemporary and realistic universe. The design part is less present in a game like this one. We didn't create costumes; in fact, we created outfits so it's very close. I really liked everything that had been done in terms of research, for example on Beyond (editor’s note: Beyond: Two Souls), we saw all the character boards who wore contemporary clothes, but they were really researched... on what we wanted to evoke because clothing says a lot; it tells us who we are, and it's more like a fashion designer job than a concept art. In the sense that it's what kind of clothes we're going to assemble, how the character is going to dress, that the character is going to evoke. So, we tried to find the defining traits of a character in their clothes. Max was a little more shy, a little more withdrawn, so things a little more... so here's the first version where she had this closed hoodie, a little bit... she closed herself a little more tightly. **01:20:55** Chloe, we tested even more punk variations, more or less alternative, etcetera. I find it’s super interesting from all this research on clothing that we don't create much, but we look for what the characters will bring up. What was interesting and important for us was that the characters change clothes during the game. We didn't have the budget to do too many models, though we ended up doing a lot for Max, so at least one simple element that we could do was change the T-shirts and T-shirt patterns. So it was a big job for concept artists, from Édouard Caplain or Frédéric Augis who did a lot of research: T-shirt design, patterns, sweaters. We had a lot of variants that were researched but, for the most part, aren’t in the game. **01:21:40 picture** We searched and often, when we had a certain variant that we were looking for, we created a t-shirt pattern at the beginning and that finally we used at the end on a secondary character. It's very interesting, because we can even tell things with the shirts, giving little nods, little messages or symbols in relation to the game itself. For example, the last T-shirt that Chloe wears in Episode 5 is an ouroboros that is a little different from a round ouroboros, but that is still an ouroboros; that makes sense at the end of the game and so on.

Olivier: Beforehand, about the positions, I mean, there are many strong positions the game takes. It’s a game that couldn’t have been easy to sell to publishers? Between the strong takes on female characters, the tone, the subject, how does it work? **01:22:29**

Michel Koch: It's already a game that wasn’t easy to sell within the studio.

Olivier: Oh yeah? Really?

Michel Koch: Well, it wasn’t easy since, when you start to have this idea, it’s different. You have to motivate the teams to work on it, motivate the management to make them understand that it's interesting because it's risky. **01:22:37 picture** It's a lot of money to manage a studio, so even at the management level you have to say to yourself, "Will it be possible? Do we believe in it? Will it sell and bring money to the studio?" **01:22:37 picture** So, even in the beginning, we had to explain a lot what we wanted to do. We had to fight a little bit to defend it, to make people understand that it's a good idea, that it could reach players, that it could find an audience even if, in reality, we weren't completely sure, because we knew we wanted to make the game, that we would play it, but we didn’t know at all if people would play it. **01:23:20 picture**

Olivier: Always a gamble.

Michel Koch: Actually, it was a very risky project, so I fully understand the fears the higher-ups and the publisher had. It's a game that isn’t action packed; it's a game where we really put a lot of emphasis on having a slow pace, taking your time, to have contemplative moments, to be able to lie on your bed or play the guitar without forcing the player to move forward and exit the moment; they can stay in there as long as they wish. Here we have two contemporary heroines, where we talk about friendships, we talk about subjects that I think are rarely seen. **01:23:59 picture** It’s also risky from a marketing point of view. When the publishers saw see the project, they can say, “Ah! We like it!”, but they certainly can add, “Will we be able to sell it?”, and that isn’t easy. We’re lucky that Square Enix appreciated it and had the courage to say, "We’ll see if it sells. We think it’s interesting, so let’s try it." I believe they were interested to try out the episodic style, to try to have a slightly more semi-independent game, something different from what they usually did. I think it’s also interesting for the publisher’s portfolio, for the brand image. They really supported us. They didn't ask to change the story nor the characters.

Olivier: Yeah, nothing at all?

Michel Koch: Nothing. Of course, there were discussions on some elements, on how to do some scenes and so on.

Olivier: Because the game deals with very, very hard subjects, there’s suicide, there’s abortion...

Michel Koch: Well, there were discussions on these scenes, that's for sure, where they had some concerns that some scenes were going to be too risky and so on. In the end, we defended our positions, and we really managed to find an agreement with them, to do the scenes as we wanted. And so, yes, perhaps this transition is interesting to talk about the themes of the game.

Olivier: Well yes, because... well, I find it's a game about nostalgia too. Did all these themes come one after the other or was there really this main theme? I don't know if it's nostalgia or not **01:25:30**

Michel Koch: The main theme was... the key word "nostalgia" was present at the very beginning, and we had this main theme of telling a story of transition to adulthood, a coming-of-age story - a fairly classic theme in literature and cinema. It was something that was close to our hearts. It’s a blend with this theme and the main theme that’s there’s a moment where you have to accept your choices, to go forward, to grow up, to stop looking back too much and have regrets, to stop wanting a perfect life because there’s certainly no perfect path; there’s plenty of bumps along the way. Sometimes you have to accept that something that hasn’t gone the way you wanted. Maybe that's what makes you grow. That was the main theme, but then we needed to get to that theme. Obviously, we had in mind a lot of important secondary themes that served the narrative, that aligned with Max’s story. We didn't add themes just to say to each other, "Here we want to shock by talking about this and that and that." These were moments that had narrative interest and made Max evolve. For example, we have a theme that was important to us: that was bullying, harassment, social harassment, which are themes that are unfortunately very present in high schools... for young people and even more so since the rise of social media. It was important for us to talk about this, to show the difficulties that teenagers can... which they can face in their everyday lives. We did it with Kate's character in Episode 2, and it also narratively served to show Max that her power could have more important responsibilities than just having fun with it and blowing things up and then going back. We had different themes that seemed important to us to approach, to try to show them in a neutral way, more to serve the story and also to bring a kind of, how to say, to... I'm looking for a word. I have it in English, but I don't have it in French, it's horrible... well, to talk about these themes so that people may become aware of some of these problems by facing those situations without necessarily taking sides, but just showing them the theme. The theme of euthanasia, for example; we tried to approach it in an ideally neutral way, simply by presenting a situation and letting the players form a kind of idea or personal reflection on it after the game.

Olivier: Life is Strange also has an incredible strength in making us want simple moments. I want to say moments of nothing, things like to water a plant or not water a plant, play a little guitar... It really consolidates the experience, that brings it to life and gets us attached to the characters. Why do you think it's so rare in video games, why don't we see more things that create something, not "real"... but at least create empathy? **01:28:33**

Michel Koch: Well, I think we're still seeing it a little bit.

Olivier: More? But not that much.

Michel Koch: Not that much for sure. It might be related to the marketing idea that you have to be constantly in the action to keep the player’s attention, might it be a spectator in the cinema or a player for a video game. Maybe it’s this side where you always have to go faster. It can have an impact on our society. Even in the evolution of cinema, the number of shots and cuts have quadrupled in the current films. I don’t know, it might be more.

Olivier: You’re thinking of Michael Bay.

Michel Koch: For instance, but not only that. There's still a kind of global acceleration that probably appeals to marketing. I find that we see moments where we can take our time... games that are much more contemplative. There are some, in any case, and we aren’t the only ones to do it. In any case, it was important for us, because we wanted to give ourselves this opportunity to show that it’s nice to take our time, to take time to think about what has happened, to be with ourselves, and that’s what Max does. When the player does it, it allows them to hear more about Max’s thoughts, to understand a bit more, to do an introspection on the previous scenes, about what she is experiencing. Besides that, we have a lot of elements that push the players to do it. We have the music that evolves, the camera shots that allow us to look at the scenery from other angles, to perceive other pretty angles, other moments of the game. We really wanted the player to feel like they're Max and could take their time with Max if they wanted to. But it's not necessary. We can also go faster.

Olivier: You can move forward.

Michel Koch: And I think that there isn’t necessarily a good or bad way to play the game. It's like using the rewind: you can go back, or you can also keep almost all these first choices every time and almost never use it. It's also a very good way - and maybe even more in line with the basic theme of the project - to say to yourself that you have to accept the choices you've made.

Olivier: Speaking of choices: you put players in front of some pretty tough choices. How do you find the right balance? How do you manage to create choices that the player takes as a human and not as a player? For me it's what’s more complicated. It's what Walking Dead has achieved, that for a moment the player stops thinking about the impact it will have on the gameplay, on what happens after the game. **01:31:10**

Michel Koch: I believe that the fact of having the rewind helped us; in other words, the mechanics of going back - to see the impact it has on the game - is part of the scenario. We really pushed the player to do it, and it becomes logical in Max's character and in the player's perception. They don’t cheat when they go back after a choice and they try another variant of the choice. They have exactly this power. Max has it, and it really becomes the main narrative thread. I think there is no disengagement of the player going, "I forgot to save" or "I'll reload my backup." I think that it’s the characters that are the most important parts in Life is Strange. It’s the development of the characters, their characterization, and the details that we can learn about them through the main plot but also through all the secondary narrative elements that are present in the environment. We tried to make these characters exist for the player because a Cornelian dilemma works better on a character the player cares about rather than when it’s about a character we don’t care about. After that, it was quite complicated when we created our choices. We obviously tried to think in a human way. Ideally, if we could get it close to 50-50, we were going to be happy. I think we managed to think of a choice that’s polarized and difficult to take. It's not the case for everyone; there are choices that are much clearer for some players. There’s always a fear when we start thinking about all these branches, we have to think about what the players will want, will the players want to do something that you don't offer them, because you can't offer everything of course. It's a lot of trial and error, questioning and hoping that we've done as well as we can.

Olivier: Yeah, I think so. I imagine you have feedback on the players' statistics. So maybe you can answer the fundamental question: is the player fundamentally good? **01:33:21**

Michel Koch: I find it hard to answer because I have the impression that we don’t have a lot of good or bad choices in Life is Strange. We don't really propose, maybe a few and still, we don't propose a lot of them to play as an evil or nice Max. We really have... there are some-- We see, in any case, the player doesn't want to kill the dog, that's for sure.

Olivier: It’s always about the story of the dog.

Michel Koch: We are sure about this one. I believe 5% killed the dog, and 95% didn’t kill it, so this one, it’s clear: the players like dogs. For the others, since we tried to make choices that are more intimate, in the way we feel about a relationship with other characters. I don't think we really have any model choices to offer anyway, so overall, we see that people-- for example, one of the first ones where we can laugh at Victoria or not, I think there are still more people who choose not to, so it pushes a little in the direction that the players are maybe nicer than prone to mocking.

Olivier: There’s hope.

Michel Koch: But is it really mean to mock Victoria? I don’t know (*laughs*).

Olivier: Music is extremely important in Life is Strange. You called on Jonathan Morali from Syd Matters. How was the collaboration with Jonathan on the game? **1:34:40**

Michel Koch: Well, we could almost have brought Raoul...

Olivier: Raoul was the one who supervised.

Michel Koch: ...who could have talked about it much better than I could. Well, we're really happy to have been able to work with Jonathan. Basically, we had a game, we had to find a musician, and we already had in mind artists we liked to get license titles for some scenes, for some moments that really spoke to us. At some point Raoul got this indirect contact with Jonathan’s agent. We told ourselves to get the nerve to try and talk to him more directly, to talk about the project. He liked it since Jonathan had never made game music before, only film music. He’s also a gamer and the idea really interested him. On one side, he had made movie soundtracks but wanted to go even further, to try video game music. There’s the interactivity, about the fact that it has to loop and all the constraints that there are to the game. It challenged him, it motivated him; the project spoke to him too, and he said yes to go on an adventure with us, and it was great.

Olivier: Yeah, (*unintelligible*) really likes the colors used in the game and its environments. We have one last surprise question but not the least, here we go.

01:36:02 – 01:37:46 video with Sam Lake (Creative Director at Remedy).

Sam Lake: Hey, Michel. Sam Lake from Remedy. Life is Strange is an incredible achievement. I’m sure that it will live on leave all to inspire other creators for a long time. Now I have a couple of questions to you. You can either pick and choose or answer both. My first question is about episodic pacing. I mean, at Remedy, we have used that in our experiences for a while now; you have as well. What do you think it gives you as part of an experience? What is the strength in episodic delivery, and how do you see taking that forward in the future? The other question is going back to Life is Strange. Time travel: we use time travel as a theme in Quantum Break as well, and, you know, working around an idea obviously forces you, as a creator, to think about it. Now that you’ve gone through the process, what is your thought about time travel? How do you see it? You know, if you were given an opportunity to travel back in time, would you take it? And what would you change? Thank you.

Olivier: Cool.

Michel Koch: These are big questions. I need to remember them.

Olivier: There’s a lot. First, the episodic content... the strength of the episodic content. **01:37:58**

Michel Koch: And time travel.

Olivier: That’s it.

Michel Koch: I'll start with the last one. So, time travel... already, it's very difficult to do in a game, as we used to say with Raoul, there were plenty of moments that we didn’t want the rewind since it complicated everything. It's just horrible to try to make sure that we didn’t have too many inconsistencies over the episodes and that it works and then it doesn't work, and it works a little bit. It's very hard, in fact. I think we've managed to get it to fit approximately. As soon as we start thinking too much, it doesn't hold at all. There's a lot of stuff that doesn't work, so it's very complicated. Anyway, no movies about time travel works, so I think we had to accept the inconsistencies of time travel after a while. If I could go back in time? I don't know; it's a complicated question, because I would like to have the rewind just sometimes to have a little more time each day for...

Olivier: Living two days in one.

Michel Koch: Yes, maybe to have more time before falling asleep, doing things, I don't know. Sleeping more, maybe, but who knows. The first question on the episodic model: we really enjoyed working in the episodic format. It was first a creative desire at the start. There were obviously points that were interesting from a marketing point of view, from a publisher's point of view for editorial purposes, to sell the project but really, originally, it came from a creative desire. There is this willingness in terms of the narrative format of a TV series. There is something very interesting with the cutting into episodes, obviously, where each episode also needs a mini story that stands more or less with a beginning and an end, often having an element, like a cliff-hanger, to create expectations for the next episode. We structure much more. In fact, in an episodic structure, we can know in each episode which character we are talking about, how much information we give for the story, how far into the story we go, how we end the episode. We were interested in the element of short experiences. We can play Life is Strange up to 3 to 4 hours per episode, but you can do it in 2 to 2 and a half hours. It all depends on the degree of exploration the player wants to do. We know that, in general, most players will play an episode in one gaming session, so we tend to control a bit more their gaming experience. We know the beginning, the end; we know we can put a calm moment, where we know, in general, people won’t stop playing and forget, never to return, as they normally might. This can be the case in 20-30-hour story games, with no possibility of segmentation if the player stops at the wrong time, like having to eat or leaving for work after a bad scene; sometimes players never return to the game. The structure of a short episode has this quality that is similar to a TV series, in fact, structuring the player's ‘playing’ experience and structuring the ‘non-playing’ experience as well, the waiting time. We saw how well it worked. I know that there are people who don't necessarily like the episodic model, having to wait 2-3 months between two episodes, but in the end, I have the impression that it still works. Myself as a player, it works. I like the 2-3 months of waiting time after playing an episode. I could draw up a lot of scenarios, and we saw that the community did a lot of that. It was pretty crazy the number of theories, discussions, fan-arts that took place between each episode. There’s this community that was born around this. There’s this sort of way to really structure the release of a game. For the question from Sam Lake, I love Alan Wake - one of my favorite games. I believe it came out in 2007.

Olivier: I don’t know.

Michel Koch: I’m not sure. So, when it came out-- actually maybe less than that; it's more recent than that. Anyway, it was really great, and the episode segmentation was really interesting in it. It might have been interesting to be able to sell it, to exploit it, but it works very well like that. I thought it was great in the preview still, when we had just completed the previous episode was cool. So, I'm really happy with the question, Sam's questions.

Olivier: Okay, but then, to go in the opposite direction from Sam's question, what are the constraints and complications with the episodic format? **01:42:18**

Michel Koch: Well, there are a lot of them. In fact, doing five episodes is a bit like doing five games, except that there isn’t any rest time, vacation, or team break between each game since each episode is a production. **01:42:31 picture** The producer Luc could very well talk about this and QA (editor’s note: quality assurance). With each episode, you have to test it, submit it to the manufacturer, to Sony, to Microsoft... You have to pass the testing phase. If required, you patch the episode. It really is like five episodes, five games, so there’s five times the work, at least in terms of directing. There’s also the fact that most features had to be functional with Episode 1. If we had published a complete game, like if Life is Strange had only come out at once up to Episode 5, we would have had ten more months to work with the UI, the menus, Max’s diary... All that stuff had to be ready from the first episode, so it was pretty complicated. There’s also the fact that it had to be correct on the first try, even if patching was possible--

Olivier: You couldn’t go back.

Michel Koch: --we couldn’t go back and change something narratively to fix a screw-up. What’s out is out. So, if we were working on Episode 4 and we realized we made a huge mistake that created a time travel problem, well it’s over, we had to deal with it, which became complicated. When you release the game in one installment, well you can fix the beginning if you want. On the other hand, what I like is that the episodic format forces us to work chronologically, something that's possible in a complete game, but it’s rarely done. **01:43:51 picture** Sometimes we work on the end of the game before the beginning, that kind of thing. In the episodic format, we had to do the episodes in a row, and, as a result, there is also a kind of structure and...

Olivier: Fluidity...

Michel Koch: Yeah, and even continuity of writing and directing that maybe makes sense too.

Olivier: You mentioned it briefly earlier, but Life is Strange has really brought together a pretty incredible community, between fanfiction, cosplay, fan-arts... We’ll get to see some of them. How did you receive this rather wonderful welcome to the game? **01:44:21 picture**

Michel Koch: Well, it really surprised us. We didn't expect it at all when the first episode came out. Actually, no, when there was the announcement of the game at Gamescom... I believe in 2013, that must be it, we already started to see cosplays of people who had enjoyed the trailer. It was really small, a mini community, but already we saw that there were people who identified with what they saw, what they heard, and who started to draw pictures of the game. After that, when the first episode came out, it was pretty crazy. We never thought it would reach those heights. **01:45:00 picture** At first, I would save all the fan-arts that I came across, and, within the first few weeks, I had more than a thousand saved in a directory, but I’ve since stopped. I don’t know how many there are but it’s... we honestly really didn’t think it was going to do that. Whether it’s fan-arts or cosplay, we get a lot of letters at the studio. It’s Anne, our community manager who receives - I don’t know how many - a lot of letters, manuscripts, email from people who talk about the game, how the game touched them. **01:45:27 picture** And yeah, it’s super fun, that’s for sure, and it's almost a little scary to say sometimes we created something that brings together so many people and without completely always knowing how and why they do it.

Olivier: How or why this love at first sight (editor’s note: coup de coeur / coup de foudre = love at first sight). You have very recently signed a partnership to develop a series around the Life is Strange universe. Can you tell us a little bit about it? **01:45:54**

Michel Koch: It wasn’t us but Square Enix who signed.

Olivier: Yes, Square Enix, of course.

Michel Koch: So, I'm not going to be able to talk about it much, because Square Enix is in charge of it. We know that they’ve been - for some time - in contact with different Hollywood studios. Well, it's Hollywood, they want to secure the rights. When they see something that works, they say that they want to buy the rights, even if they don’t know what they’ll do with it. For now, it’s on its way, but it’s at the very beginning. They’ve either just started writing or not even started, so we’ll see.

Olivier: And do we know at least if it would be a computer-generated series or a real series with real characters?

Michel Koch: Yes, I think it's a live-action show with real characters.

Olivier: Live? All right.

Michel Koch: Yes, it's live.

Olivier: Ok.

Michel Koch: That's about all we know about it.

Olivier: Well, not bad, not bad. I'm going to ask you a question, because if I don't ask you, they're going to do it. Can we imagine one day we'll go back to Arcadia Bay or not? **01:46:50**

Michel Koch: I don't know. (*laughs*)

Olivier: Oh, yeah? Okay, well, I asked the question.

Michel Koch: Well, you asked the question, that's it.

Olivier: So, I hope...

Michel Koch: Don’t ask it anymore.

Olivier: No one will waste time asking it later.

Michel Koch: (*laughs*)

Olivier: We’re now going to go quickly over Vampyr which you're not working on directly, but we're still going to talk about it, because that's really what's going on at Dontnod. We'll watch a trailer and then we'll talk.

01:47:09 – 01:48:39 Trailer

Olivier: So, you don't work directly on Vampyr, but what's your opinion on what's going on with the game in development?

Michel Koch: So yes, Vampyr is a second team in parallel, because we try at Dontnod to work with two teams simultaneously to have a project that starts, another that is in production, and so on. Obviously, there are a lot of transfers, of people and skills that shift from one project to the other. For example, the artistic director on Vampyr is Gregory Szucs who was a concept artist who worked with me on Remember Me, and there are many other people too. Philippe Moreau, the game director of Vampyr, was lead game designer of Remember Me, so there are team transfers, and it evolves. For me, I believe what’s great with Dontnod is precisely that we can have different projects. There’s Remember Me, Life is Strange, Vampyr, and I believe there’s one thing in common and that it’s the narration that’s pushed forward. As I said, it’s Stéphane Beauverger who’s the scriptwriter of Vampyr, and these are games where we can experiment, create worlds and strong narrative, whatever the type of pure gameplay that goes with it. This one is more of an action-RPG, so it clearly isn’t like Life is Strange or Remember Me. There's really this concern for narration, characters and the universe that I think is a guiding thread that’s important to Dontnod in all our projects. **01:50:11 picture**

Olivier: Since you are the artistic director at Dontnod, do you still have a look at what’s going on there? You told me earlier that you voluntarily took a step back on the project. Is it to let them develop on their own? **01:50:26**

Michel Koch: When I worked on Life is Strange, I needed to have the full knowledge of the project to be able to make the right choices, and I know it’s important to let them do the same thing. I completely trust Greg, who’s on the project. Obviously, I take a look and we talk together from time to time on it. I look with one eye, and I know what they are doing works pretty well. Besides, it’s a universe that I like; as we can see from my previous freelance work, I really like vampires. So, I take a peek, see that it progresses well, and I know that they are going in the direction required with the content of the game, where I have a bit less knowledge.

Olivier: Did you give any instructions before the start of the development? Things that seemed really important? **01:51:16**

Michel Koch: Not at the launch of the development of the game. I won’t be able to talk about everything. **01:51:20 picture** But there were other projects. Greg started different ideas, where we can find this one, where I had worked with him on larger projects, on bigger visions of artistic direction beforehand that we can also find in Vampyr. **01:51:20 picture**

Olivier: Okay.

Michel Koch: Since we had demos and discarded projects.

Olivier: Okay, and you are currently working with Focus, is this partnership going well or... ?

Michel Koch: Yeah, well I’m not directly in contact with the publisher, but it seems to be going well.

Olivier: Great news! We’ll now discuss perspectives before moving to the audience's questions. It’s more about your global vision about video games. Why do you find video games so fascinating, why is it a media that has always been in your life, why do you find them so fascinating? **01:52:08**

Michel Koch: It’s a good question. I think it's above all... it’s a medium that can generate the most immersion, sensations, and emotions. There’s also the fact that there’s interactivity, that we control more or less the character even in certain games that have little gameplay. For example, I think of Dear Esther; it's a little older now, but it's a game that's been criticized because we're only walking. It doesn’t seem like much, but the fact of walking, choosing when you hear the thoughts of the character and what we’re going to watch, it brings a bit more than simply looking at a movie. There’s this aspect, whatever the level of interactivity, the level of gameplay, the type of game-- There’s really this interactivity, action, the fact that the player presses a button that makes the story continue, to look, to aim, to shoot, to jump, to talk to someone, to select a choice of dialogues. Obviously, it’s something that fascinates me, how we involve the players in this media.

Olivier: We often talk about violence in video games. Dontnod's games, apart from Vampyr, are games... in any case, Life is Strange, obviously, it's a game with low violence, somewhat downplayed. Do you think that developers have a responsibility towards what they convey or, on the contrary, they shouldn't censor at all... they should tell everything? **01:53:43**

Michel Koch: That's a good question. I think Life is Strange is still a violent game.

Olivier: Yes, but in its themes.

Michel Koch: But violent in its themes, in any case. It’s violent because it is a reflection of society, a reflection of an everyday life element. Adolescence is a very violent time for everyone. There are plenty of-- and that's something we had. There's the age rating of the game. We got PEGI 16 for Life is Strange, which I think is very good. It was more problematic in Germany as they gave a 12+. It bothered us since we thought it was a bit young. There are still hard themes for a 12-year-old, but the age ratings are very different. In the United States it was 17+. It really depends on the countries and the vision of the society; it's a huge and complicated subject. It’s hard to have a game with similar age ratings in every country. As for violence, I think that we have a responsibility not to censor ourselves but a responsibility for what we say, that is to say that violence is not a problem if it is meaningful in what we want to tell, if it can be used for a purpose. I'm not a fan of gratuitous violence that doesn't tell anything, but if we need to convey a scene, if a character's violent behavior is there because we want to denounce it or want to show a reality, then maybe we shouldn't censor. I think it's important to be consistent with what we want to say, with what we want to tell with the main thematic line, because we have a sort of morality when we create a project. Whether we show it or not, we have a moral look on it. I think it's important that what we show in our game is in line with what we want to show afterwards. I think it's up to the public to make up their mind. For example, about whether we've shown gratuitous violence or whether it makes sense, whether it's welcomed, or whether it's just in bad taste.

Olivier: What do you think of the video game market today? **01:55:48**

Michel Koch: That's a tough question.

Olivier: Of course.

Michel Koch: Today’s video game market.... I really like the transition to digital that's currently happening. I've always been a consumer... pretty rapidly on Steam or on download platforms or on Good Old Games (editor’s note: GOG). I know some people don’t like it. I know it's always nice to have a box and so on, but I have more space, and it's just nice to have it digitally. It's something I find quite interesting, and then we could charge lower prices for the digital version compared to the physical version, but that's another question. I love the recent emergence of independent games which has really opened the door to a lot more types of games, a little bit like independent cinema compared to blockbusters, and we can see that indie games work; some of them work so well that the big Triple A are also inspired by them. I think we're still far from being a mature media - a media that explores and talks about everything. In the cinema industry, there are documentaries, for example, that are prize-winners in festivals. There are very few games that can be called a documentary game even if it's starting to come up in some indie games. We're really lucky to be at, I believe, a turning point where video games start to allow us to talk about a lot of things, to be able to have entertainment, to talk about social problems, to be able to be engaged, to just be fun. Just because we worked on Life is Strange doesn't mean that we're not a fan of entertaining games or anything. There's really a door, there's a space that's wide open and there are a lot of talented young creators who are going into it, as we can see a lot of games. Look at the game-jams; there's great stuff that comes out of all the game design contests, game-jams, and that kind of thing. It’s super motivating.

Olivier: Optimistic. What's your game(s) of the moment, your latest favorites, the games that have marked you recently? You told me one, that's why... **01:58:00**

Michel Koch: Yes, that's right. As I was saying-- So it has nothing to do with Life is Strange, for example, at the moment, I play a lot of Overwatch. So, it's very narrative, and it's... (*laughs*)

Olivier: (*laughs*)

Michel Koch: ... and again, the narration, it's there.

Olivier: It's there, all right!

Michel Koch: The story about the characters are pretty well defined, but at least it's different from work, so it allows you to relax, think about other things and not pay attention too much, because when I play narrative games and games that relate more to my expertise, I find myself constantly pausing, taking screenshots, dissecting a dialogue. It’s horrible. It becomes very hard to simply play. Otherwise, I've just started The Last Guardian, which I really like even if there are things to say, but I don't know. I can't say if I really like it because it's great or I like it because I have a huge nostalgia for Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, but the work he's doing on the animation, on the AI, is just fabulous. The work on the camera angles a little less... (*laughs*), but in any case, I played with great pleasure, and it works anyway, so we can maybe see a lot of flaws. Maybe we waited too long, but there's really the relationship with Trico... In any case, it works for sure, and it's very strong.

Olivier: Before we go to questions with the audience, do you have any advice for a young person who would like to get into video games today? What would it be? **01:59:24**

Michel Koch: So, "one" piece of advice.

Olivier: One! One sentence! No, but you can give two if you want.

Michel Koch: It's complicated. Well already...

Olivier: That question must be frequently asked? You must often have people come to see you.

Michel Koch: Yeah, well, then, it depends even on the job...

Olivier: Yes, on the job profile.

Michel Koch: The profile, yes. I would say, to work in video games, it already has to be a passion. It's not necessarily that video games are a passion but what you want to do, I think. It's important that you really like it, because it's still difficult even if you play games. It's still a job where there's a lot of hours. It can be complicated. We get along, there's a nice atmosphere, and it's nice, but it's still work, and so I think being really passionate is important afterwards if you want to... to make a game for example. I think what's important is to work with the right people too. I think that's something that we've noticed, that it's really important to trust the people you work with, to be able to delegate, to be able to trust the feedback you get; that's something that we've tried to do. It's that if people give feedback, even if we don't agree with it, that feedback exists and that means that players will think it too, so you have to listen. We can refuse it, we can say no, no, even if you feel like that or this player feels like that, we want to keep our vision but be aware that all the feedback that is given, it has a value. I think that's important.

Olivier: Okay.

Michel Koch: And then trusting the people you work with, that's pretty much it. **02:01:04 **

Olivier: Not bad, not bad. All right, great! We're going to move to the right side of the stage to answer questions from the audience. I hope there are a lot of them. Grab a little bottle of water. Hop!

Michel Koch: Ah, ah, ah, ah...

Olivier: Ah, ah, ah, ah, yes.

Michel Koch: I forgot about that, and there it was; it landed in the back.

Olivier: Small moment of...

Michel Koch: And then it's gone.

Olivier: Ah, you want us to put it back?

Michel Koch: Yes.

Olivier: Just a second, we're having a little technical problem.

Michel Koch: Ah, it came off my belt.

Olivier: Go ahead, give it. I'll put it back. Is it okay? Meanwhile, prepare the questions, study, we want good questions.

Michel Koch: It's good.

Olivier: So, let's get some light on the audience, please. Cool, thanks.

Michel Koch: I like the light in the eye too.

Olivier: So, don't hesitate to introduce yourself and well, good evening.

P1: Good evening, Stéphane. (editor’s note: for ease of notation, we will use P1: = Person 1)

Michel Koch: Good evening.

P1: I'm a gamer. I have 2 questions about Remember Me. The first one is... so I loved it, I thought the art direction was amazing. At one point, you said we could do it in a straight line, because there's a lot of action. For me, I stopped at every moment. I think I completed it in 20 hours, if it isn't more. I listened to every discussion, looked at every coffee price, or whatever, to see if it was the same.

Olivier: (*laughs*)

Michel Koch: (*laughs*) And was it the same?

P1: Yeah, it was the same.

Michel Koch: That's good.

Olivier: Okay.

P1: On the other hand, even if I loved it, I was very, very, very frustrated because it's too straightforward. You can't explore, so you mentioned it, but how did you experience it? Did you get any feedback on that level? And isn't it even frustrating for you when you play it again? **02:02:50**

Michel Koch: Well, yeah that's kind of what I was saying earlier... Thanks, already!

P1: I have a second question afterwards, sorry.

Michel Koch: That's what I was saying earlier, that yes, we are a little bit frustrated, that is to say that there is a lot of work that is put into the environment, into the world on our side but also on the writer's side. In the end, the type of the game does not take advantage of it too much, so maybe it's even a mistake from us to put so many details in the environment. Maybe we were even counterproductive in that sense, where you wanted to stop all the time, but the structure of the game is a little bit like corridors. It can give a bitter taste. If it had been less rich, maybe the core of the game would have been more emphasized, and it's on this proposition that, when we started working on Life is Strange, we thought, here we go, we have to get the whole core of our game, that everything makes sense. In other words, if you have sets that are rich in detail, you have to be able to spend time there, and there's an interest in spending time, and it brings things into the gameplay, so discovering more information about the characters, reading documents, that kind of thing.

P1: In terms of details, with the papers and the floor and all, it looks like the handiwork of an "ouvrier de France" (editor’s note: an honorific title and award for France’s best artisans in several categories, e.g. hospitality, construction).

Michel Koch: (*laughs*) Yes!

Olivier: Yes, craftmanship!

P1: The artistic work is incredible, but it's true that there's always this little frustration. We would have liked to see a little more, and my second question was still about Remember Me. It's that you talked about an art book. I didn't know there was one. Is it possible to... does it exist or not? Does it still exist? **02:04:19**

Michel Koch: So, does it still exist? It does, yes, but is there any still available? I don't know. I would say that...

Olivier: For the modest sum of 3,000 euro, we'll arrange it.

Michel Koch: Yes, that's right! Maybe there's some on eBay, or maybe there's some...

Olivier: In booksellers.

Michel Koch: Still in bookshops or on a site that we won't name.

Olivier: There you go.

P1: All right, well thank you.

P2: Uhm, hello.

Olivier: Where is he?

P2: Here!

Olivier: Ah! Good evening.

Michel Koch: Good evening.

P2: Michaël, project manager at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amplitude_Studios (editor's note: Michaël Breyton). I had a small question about publishers. In fact, we saw that, on each project, you had a different publisher. On Life is Strange, you wanted to be independent. The fact is that it fell for different reasons. Is it always a desire on your part to make a fully independent game without a publisher, or is it that you find it beneficial to work with your different partners? **02:05:09**

Michel Koch: Well, thank you for the question, and congratulations for Amplitude. So, I think, I can't speak here... well, I can't speak on behalf of Dontnod's management, either. I think, in the end, it's always an interest, a desire to have maybe not everything, but maybe a project of ours without a publisher, with more control, but it's really complicated. We know that the publisher brings a lot: it brings a marketing support, a distribution support; there are a lot of things. For the moment, within our structure at Dontnod, we don't have the means to publish ourselves. We don't have a QA team big enough to do this. So, there are solutions in terms of outsourcing, but maybe it's a medium or long-term wish, but in any case, with the publishers for the moment, it still works well. Even if there always are compromises to be made and it's never simple, I find a security with the publisher that sometimes allows not to take care of absolutely everything. **02:06:08**

P3: Good evening. So I'm Victor. I played Life is Strange, which I loved, and I'm also a scriptwriter for a TV series. So, I wanted to come back to this idea of a series around the game, which I think is super exciting. I just wanted to know if you knew more about the writers and if it was the original writers of the game that were going to be involved in the writing. Is there a studio attached?

Olivier: Do they have a phone number?

P3: (*laughs*) Well, do they have a phone number?

Olivier: You call Cyndy at "Metropolitain.com"!

P3: Here you go... and more broadly, is it also an ambition for you to push the studio towards projects that are a bit cross-media? **02:06:57**

Michel Koch: Well, then, I would have liked to answer you, but unfortunately, I have almost no answer to all this, since Square is managing the project. We know that it's complicated with Hollywood, so Square is basically managing the project with Hollywood, who is also managing it on their end. We know, in general, how adaptions work. It's not an easy discussion. If they make us an offer, well, we will obviously be happy to be able to be in touch and discuss with them, but we know for the moment-- What is good, is that there are people at Square Enix who are taking care of that, which is already better than a lot of adaptations, I think, of games that can exist where sometimes it's really just left alone without clear direction (editor’s note: “en roue libre” means freewheeling). So no, sorry. I don't have any contacts, and I don't know who the scriptwriters will be, etcetera.

Olivier: We're gonna go over there.

P4: Good evening. Antoine. I'm a developer at Quantic Dream (editor's note: Antoine Istria).

Olivier: Ha-ha!

P4: Hi! I'd like to come back to the pros and cons that you mentioned about the episodic formats. Does this mean, in each episode, you take into account all the feedback from a storyline point of view, an Artistic Director’s point of view, etcetera, or did you follow the plan like in a straight line? **02:08:21**

Michel Koch: Thank you for the question. I think it's like a straight line with a little bit of a bend in it when you need it. In other words, we took into account what we could, but, in reality, we don't have much time, because when we just finished an episode, we had roughly two months left to do the next episode. Obviously, we looked at the feedback, we looked at the forums, we looked at the reviews from journalists or fans, streamers; we looked at Let’s Plays on YouTube streams, and when we could, we tried to adjust a little bit, but we had a very limited margin of error, because we already had a story that was written, to tell with elements that we didn't want to change. We sometimes tried to make small adjustments. For example, if a character was liked a lot, we tried adding a little scene or even adding lines of dialogue to the character when we still had time to write that character for the episode, to flesh out a little bit a dialogue with that character. It was that kind of thing, but we could never change it completely. What I mean is if, by chance, we had seen it from the beginning that everyone had figured out the final outcome, then we still couldn't have changed that. And, at worst, it wouldn't have been that bad.

Olivier: Where's the microphone?

P5: Here!

Olivier: Ah!

P5: So, Julie Anselm, head of production and game designer at DOWiNO. I had a small question. As you said, you're very much anchored in all that is scenario, etcetera, the game world. And I wanted to know, as the productions go on, if you begin to see a kind of pattern for the creation of these scenarios? So, like you said, the mood-boards, you used different techniques. I wanted to know if it's starting to take a more global form. **02:10:04**

Michel Koch: Well, I think there is a base. In fact, when we started to work on projects... for example, when we work with Jean-Luc, he comes from the movies and TV industry so he has a very classical writing method - very classical in cinema, whether it's John Truby's method or Hero's Journey's method or whatever. In general, we start with that, to have a rather classical, solid base. Sometimes it almost seems stereotypical, but at least we know there's a narrative, dramatic structure that works. Afterwards, we rework it a lot. It's a job we did with Raoul after Jean-Luc. We rework the whole thing since, in the end, we’re making a game and not a movie; so the scenario, even the best one, it was still a linear scenario with branches in a film or TV series structure. We have to rework it thinking about the interactivity, the scenes, really what the player is going to feel. There might be a pattern like that, where we can start with very classic narrative bases, like a movie, but then there's a little bit of the recipe of what we do to turn it into a game. It's really to take it scene by scene. We think about what's at stake, the rhythm of what the player is going to feel, at what moment, if we want it to be stressful, a little bit calmer. We take a scene and we work with the designers to see what gameplay elements are going to be in a scene, if there are puzzles. Is it purely a more contemplative scene? Is there a dialogue that blocks the puzzle? Do you have to think more than usual to get through it? There's no real recipe at this point, for us, I think; we really take the episodes and the scenes one by one to try to do them, to try to find out what works best, I think.

P6: Hello, well, I'm Marc, or rather Faolin the internet. I'm an amateur streamer (editor's note: Faolin75 on social media). Actually, I had a question for Remember Me first, and then a remark about Life is Strange in terms of how to empathize, to make the player feel that the choices they make are as if it's really true in real life and not just a game where they can reload the game and change strategy if they want to. So, they're really faced with a unique choice, and that's how it is. So, my first question about Remember Me is can we still dream, even though I know it's a little bit complicated with Capcom and all the hiccups of the development of Remember Me 1, to be able to dream of a Remember Me 2? The famous reconstruction of Neo-Paris with the whole scenario which could be exactly what happens afterwards, because I think there's a lot to be created both in terms of script and probably even in terms of artistic direction. I know it’s a head canon since, unfortunately, I have very little knowledge in technical terms in the profession, but at the level of scriptwriting of the kind that fits my knowledge, we'll say, I see a huge thing that can very easily be developed on it. For Life is Strange, from experience of online streaming, I happened to cry several times mid-stream. For example, I’m about to spoil, so those who have not played the game, please keep quiet.

Olivier: No, no, no, don't say it.

Michel Koch: Don't.

P6: Okay, so just there are several sequences where I know that I'm a little bit shaken or the end, or, uh, it was really very...

Crowd: Oh, no, no!

P6: No, no, I won’t say anything! Don't worry.

Michel Koch: But okay.

P6: But the end really shook me to the point that it left a deep impression on me for several weeks.

Olivier: Ah, really?

P6: So, that's it. **02:14:11**

Michel Koch: Thank you. Well, yeah Remember Me has a vast world. I think we'd be super happy to be able to work-- to redo things on it. We don't own it, it's Capcom's, so if someday they feel like it, they can let us know, perhaps, to continue with it. Thank you for your comment on Life is Strange.

Olivier: So...

P7: Good evening. Mehdi. I'm a podcast host for “Je Game Moi Non Plus” (editor’s note: it’s a play on word with "je t’aime... moi, non plus" from a 1960s French variety song), and I do a show called Critical Book on jeuxvideo.com. I had a very simple question, which might bounce back a little bit following the threat of spoilers. I wouldn't do any of that; I can reassure you right away, you can put the tomatoes away. To ask, we were talking earlier about montage, how parallels can be made with cinema. This increasingly Michael Bay-like dimension in vogue, were you aware at the time of conception, in Life is Strange, from the simplicity of the game? What I mean by that is obviously to give the player the choice to rewind. It's not cheating, contrary to the parallel that we could do in the extreme with the Dark Souls series where you have save points, and you can escape from everything. Did you have the fear to exclude a chunk of players with this simplicity? **02:15:34**

Michel Koch: Yeah, maybe. Basically, what was important for us was the story we were telling and this notion of choices and consequences. To involve the player as much as possible in Max's story and in the choices she has to make, and we didn't want to make a complicated game, that's for sure. We're not going to lie to ourselves. We wanted it to be a game that's still accessible, because we didn't want it to have an artificial barrier of difficulty in telling the story and making Max's choices come alive. We didn't suddenly want something to happen that kills the player and forces them to start all over again, to go back to their previous point. In the end, it didn't make too much sense, especially with the rewind where she can prevent herself from dying. Plus, you're in a game where there's no real possibility of failure, that is, when you make choices in dialogue, there's no good or bad choice. It's going to steer the story and it's a, quote unquote, "way of failing" if you've made a choice where you're not happy with it, but you can either rewind or keep that choice and see what happens. So no, we didn't think that we would necessarily reach hardcore gamers, that's for sure. We were pleasantly surprised to eventually see that we have a lot of players that we received messages from. For example, on Twitter, we received a message from a guy in the United States who said, “Here, I play Call of Duty every day, and I cried in Life is Strange”. So, there’s at least one. (*laughs*) No, we saw the game reached a rather diverse audience in terms of distribution of people, age, and type of game. It’s great since it proves the fact... what we proposed as an experience, as a gameplay - an obviously simple gameplay of exploration, dialogue interaction and simple puzzles, with time travel - didn’t prevent the more demanding players to enjoy the game and the adventure.

P8: Good evening.

Michel Koch: Good evening.

P8: Damien, just Damien. At the very end, you said that you were not on the Vampyr's project and that Dontnod was doing two projects at the same time. Does that mean you are on another project? If so, or ideas or what? **02:18:07**

Michel Koch: I said Dontnod works with multiple teams.

P8: Yes.

Michel Koch: So, there you go. Obviously, we don't get paid to do nothing so, obviously, we think, we work, we do things, but I can't say more (*laughs*), but it's a good question.

Olivier: Over there.

P9: Hi, I'm Yanis. So, I'm a beginner 3D graphic designer and student developer at 42 (editor’s note: 42 is a peer-to-peer tuition-free coding and development programme with its roots in Paris). My first question has nothing to do with that; it's just who is your favorite character and why? **02:18:41**

Michel Koch: It's a difficult question.

P9: In Life is Strange.

Olivier: Ah, in Life is Strange.

P9: I didn't specify.

Michel Koch: Yeah, uhm... then it's quite complicated. It's an answer where I sometimes don't always answer the same thing. It's not very consistent. I like Max as much as Chloe, because Max was created to be the playable character, which has a side that you can identify with. It's a little bit... not emptier. It's not empty at all, but a little bit more open, so you can project your own personality into it. Chloe, she's much more defined, and it's been great to work on Chloe's character. Afterwards, for the secondary characters, I really like David's character, what we've been able to do with him, where we were able to bring in different narrative elements and even the overall approach to the character. Which we did, but yeah, it's quite complicated, because we like them all. We worked on them, and it's a little bit like our children and the characters we liked creating, so it's hard to favor one over the other, I think.

P9: Ok, and so for my second question.

Olivier: Ah, I didn't know you had a second question.

P9: It's a bit difficult, because your answer might spoil, so maybe we can...

Michel Koch: I wouldn't answer otherwise, then.

P9: Well, that's it, but what was your end game choice? **02:20:05**

Michel Koch: Oh, well, yeah, it would spoil.

P9: So, there you go.

Michel Koch: Yeah, so then, no. We can talk about it later.

Olivier: Over there.

P10: Good evening. Already, thank you for coming and sharing all this, in relation to all of Dontnod's games tonight. My question is mainly about the job of art director. I'm a student and, in fact, we see a lot of professionals that we admire a lot, who have worked on games that are very important to us, who have been in the video game industry for a very long time, who discovered video games through very old consoles that I personally didn't know at all, and that my generation is rediscovering through the retro gaming trend, so it's not really... it's more second-hand nostalgia than the nostalgia that we might ourselves have. So, to come back, you've lived through a lot of evolution in video games, which evolve very quickly and a lot of things that appear, for example, VR, the episodic content, a lot of things that record gaming sessions and bring it new possibilities to evolve even more and, therefore, as an artistic director, what things that appear in video games interest you? To push the narration even further, which is a little bit your guideline at Dontnod. **02:21:22**

Michel Koch: It's not an obvious question, because everything evolves quite quickly and there are things that we would like to see evolve more quickly. For example, graphic engines. But, actually, VR is something that interests us a lot, at least at Dontnod. We have been able to try a lot of different VR headsets, different experiences that are available, and there is really something strong, something to do. It’s still at the early stages for the moment, anyway, but we'd like to see what we can do with this medium by pushing more. On the pure artistic director side... after, it's complicated, because there's a lot of evolution in the technique. Will we manage to make better animations? Will we make better facial animations? Will we make a better rendering of the skin, a better rendering of things? Which is good, but we can do a lot of things with that, afterwards. Is that what will make for a better narration? I'm not 100% sure, even if it will help to have more empathy for a character, etcetera, and, obviously, in Life is Strange, we have a lot of visual elements that could be improved for sure, but we realize that it still works with all the limitations. The shortcuts we took on things where we had to make cuts because of the budget or things that were a bit limited sometimes - like the facial animation that I was talking about for example. Does it really make you go further? I don't know. Whereas VR is a real new medium that would allow us to tell things differently, away from just evolving more and more the technique on the existing medium, it will be a little more, but I think it won't necessarily make for better narration.

P11: Good evening. Antoine. I'm a gameplay programmer, and I'd like to know how you made the rewind indicator in Life is Strange? **02:23:28**

Michel Koch: Well, I don't know at all, because it was one of our gameplay programmers who did it after he told us it wasn't possible. After a while he said, "Okay, I got it," and implemented it. It was great! Honestly, I don't know. We could ask him, but we were really happy that we got it. When we started to give the idea, ah yes, we would like a spiral bar that's not really circular, but a slightly twisted spiral and everything. He told us it's complicated, and, well, they worked miracles.

Olivier: This will be the last question, sorry.

P12: Hi, my name is Vivianne. I'm a student in game design, and I'd like to know how the collaboration goes between a concept artist, who is particularly into scenery, and a level designer. In fact, how do you work? If it's the concept artist who starts, if it's the level designer who starts or if you have exchanges or if you're fighting to try to impose a particular concept? **02:24:27**

Michel Koch: So, there's a lot of discussion. On the question of who starts, it honestly depends. On Life is Strange, there's been... in an ideal world, there's often a level designer who lays some groundwork in relation to a scene that's going to be written. For example: do you want to tell a story in a scene? So there's some fairly quick groundwork to lay the structure, to link to the gameplay, to link to the structure of the scene. Sometimes, when it's a very realistic set, the concept artist can already start in their corner, when you know you have a living room to do, a house, a kitchen... There is a lot of research that can be done before, even if you really need the input of the level design, but, ideally, there is really a dialogue between the two. So that's the way we work at Dontnod. There are concept artists who often do the first research on the general atmosphere, which is not necessarily exactly the decor as it will be at the end, but they look for all the references, all the lighting atmosphere, the details of the objects, what we call props. The level designer uses the output of the first research from the concept artist, in parallel, to start creating their block which is necessary for the structure of the scene, and it is often at this moment, we can make a final concept which really corresponds to the necessary structure. Sometimes it can be a color picture, sometimes it can just be a line sketch to push a little bit more the level designer’s block. We don't have a miracle recipe that is always the same; we try to make the teams work together and that the concept artist is always there to give information and help the designer and the graphic designers to give them the necessary information to create the scenery.

Olivier: Okay, all right, thank you. Before ending this Masterclass and leave the last word to Michel, I would like to make some acknowledgements, of course, to the Masterclass team, all the journalists of Jeux Vidéo Magazine who put their heart and soul into this project, the team of the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie which has welcomed us for the past sixteen Masterclass events... I think we will have a lot of nice things planned in 2016... 2017! I have to get used to that. At the Cité des Sciences, especially on video games, there are some very nice things in the works, and then Orange, our partner who makes these Masterclasses possible and who shares the same passion, the same desire to talk about video games with you; and, of course, last but not least, thank you for being here. Thank you for being so many. It's great. We're very happy.

(applause)

Olivier: The next event will be in 2017. We have a very beautiful Masterclass in the works. It continues. I hope we will start season 5 quickly. I leave you the last word. I don't know what you think about it. There are some members of Dontnod here in the room. I think they deserve to come a little bit on stage if they want to, of course, to collect your applause, because it's teamwork. So, there's Raoul who's here; I don't know if he wants to come or not. Anne is also here (editor's note: Anne Chantreau, Communications Manager). I don't know. You can all come around! And I hope you will welcome them properly, because, as Michel said, it is above all about teamwork. Good evening. I'll let you introduce your team.

Olivier: Hey.

Michel Koch: Well yes, I think they’ve gone.

Olivier: Thank you for being here.

Michel Koch: He's gone, Luc?

Matthias Fuchs: Hi, Michel. (editor's note: narrative designer at Dontnod)

Raoul Barbet: Yeah, he's gone.

Michel Koch: Well, yes.

Olivier: Then, I'll let you introduce them.

Michel Koch: Good, yes.

Raoul Barbet: So, to talk I’m having to...

Olivier: You can talk like this.

Michel Koch: Or I'll introduce them, then.

Raoul Barbet: Thank you all for being here.

Michel Koch: Well, there's Raoul with whom we made the game and we wouldn't have made it-- The game wouldn't have been made without him.

Raoul Barbet: Thank you, Michel.

Michel Koch: Anne, our community manager. Juliette who is a character graphic designer, and Matthias who is a narrative designer.

Olivier: Give them a round of applause for their work. Michel, I leave you the final word on this Masterclass. What could you say?

Michel Koch: The final word is complicated.

Olivier: It's hard, I warned you.

Michel Koch: No, well, no. I didn't think about it. Anyway, thank you all for coming, I didn't think it would be so full. I hope we were able to say some things that you're interested in and that make you want to continue in this field and make video games, for all those who are students or those who already work in video games, and that you will continue, and that's it. I think, once again, I would like to thank the team and all those who are not here, the whole team here because Life is Strange is a team-made game. We wouldn't have done that... it's not a one-person game. It's not just us, it's a complete team. I wanted to thank the whole team and also thank Dontnod, obviously, as a whole and Square Enix for allowing us to make the game.

Olivier: All right, thank you. See you soon for the next Masterclass. Bye!

Olivier: Stay here. We'll all take a picture together. Come, come, like this, it'll be a souvenir. Come, come, come. It's cool. If you don't feel like it, if you don't feel like it, you don't have to come, but it’d be nice. I think we have to duck down a little bit to see everyone. That way he'll be like this and we'll take the audience.

Michel Koch: That's it, okay, it's that way. I didn't understand that.

Olivier: You're all here.

Crew member: Is the audience alive or... ?

Olivier: All right? Okay, thank you very much, thank you. See you soon.

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