To begin a series of meetings on Quebec and Canadian video games, the University of Montreal's Laboratoire universitaire de documentation et d'observation vidéoludiques (LUDOV) hosted Yan Pepin, president of Artifice Studio and co-creator of the action-strategy game Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves. The young multi-hatted entrepreneur talked about his experience in creating the second best-selling Canadian indie game in history when it was released. Despite a difficult production context, the game's creators managed to keep their cool and spread the themes, images and stories of Quebec culture internationally.
The development environment for video games in Canada has changed a lot in the last few years, mainly due to the CMF - Canada Media Fund - a public institution to which many studios turn in order to submit their projects for funding.
Yan Pepin and his team were unable to obtain this financial support because of the jury's lack of knowledge of the video game scene when the project began in 2009. The CMF's ecosystem has improved considerably, and since then, when a video game project is submitted for consideration, the jury is composed of specialists who are able to judge the project's feasibility and viability.
While the game was expected to take no more than two years to complete on a part-time basis, the creative team worked for over four years on a full-time basis.
This is a very common disillusionment for a first project, and this despite the expertise of Yan Pepin who worked at Electronic Arts as a Game Designer for several years before embarking on the adventure of developing an independent video game. This desire to free himself from the tutelage and organization inherent to any large structure is explained by the desire of Yan Pepin and the three other co-founders of Artifice - Louis-Félix Cauchon, Vincent Blanchard and Frédéric Arnaud - to create a game in their image.
The lack of financial resources and the absence of a conventional hierarchy had many repercussions on the quality of the game. Yan Pepin explains that every design decision was subject to several hours of deliberation. Not knowing which way to turn, the decision was often made to incorporate each idea, which brought with it additional difficulties.
One of the difficulties encountered by the team was when the game was released. While they were counting on the editorial board of the online sales platform Steam to judge their game and thus put it forward, the platform decided to put an end to the editorial board and to implement the Steam Greenlight system. This is a system in which each studio is free to present a game on the platform, with visibility being subject to user votes, with the danger of a game about a culture that is not very well known internationally being forced to compete in the popularity vote. Luckily, Sang-Froid was one of the first five games to benefit from this system and was thus able to have a very high visibility on the international scene.
Not without being hermetic to neophytes, they are particularly aimed at an audience of avid gamers because of their quantity and complexity. Yan Pepin reminds us several times that they have made a game in their image, a game they would want to play.
In doing so, for the creation process the team adopted a game design approach commonly called Top-down. In this type of approach, the game mechanics are at the service of a concept, in this case a universe and a story, in order to make them palpable, more real.
The story of Sang-Froid, co-written with writer Bryan Perro, brings to life multiple characters who evolve in a Quebec village in the 19th century. Yan Pépin is passionate about tales and legends, and for this reason he wanted the universe of Sang-Froid, like that of traditional Quebec tales, to borrow from the codes of fiction and fantasy while integrating elements from historical research to give credibility to the universe. An alcohol that really existed in Quebec during the period in which the events of Sang-Froid take place helps feed the imagination of the players. The use of Quebec folklore, beyond feeding one's personal aspirations, allows one to speak of the identity of a people.
Despite the omnipresence of religion as well as themes that revolve around Quebec identity, Yan Pepin defends himself from any political ambition. It was primarily the desire to see the imaginary world of Quebec folklore represented in a game that would please them that launched the adventure. And this appeal of playfulness, having met with success on the international scene, has turned into a vibrant plea for cultural diversity. .
The full video of the meeting is available on the Youtube LUDOV channel
Report written by Arnaud Guillard, student in the master's degree program in cinema, video game studies option. Translated by Jean-Charles Ray.
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