So, you were fired from your last job, right? What did you do wrong?
I didn’t do anything wrong! I was the boss and the founder [of InfraWorlds] and I raised ten million euros. The more money you need, the more stock you give away, and the more power you give your board of investors. And one day they had enough power to decide that I was to go. I wanted to put more money in specific creative projects, but they were more into making cheap games. I said: “No, not with me as the boss,” and I was hoping they would say: “Let’s not do that.” Instead they said: “No problem, you’re not the boss any more.” But that’s capitalism. As soon as you start dealing with huge amounts of money it’s a pact with the devil. Lots of founders are fired – it’s even the usual course of a start-up. You found it, you become the CEO, you raise some money and then the young wolves come along and say: “You’re crap, let’s do it the right way.” Yahoo is a counter-example, but usually you look at any company that’s raised enormous amounts of money, and the founder is either in a golden cage or fired. That’s why you get paid high wages – so you can pop out any day. Sometimes you get a golden parachute, but I didn’t have one – I thought if they didn’t want me then why should they pay for me leaving?
And Arkedo was your attempt to try something different?
Well, first I wanted to start a restaurant. I’m really into food. And I had just had a baby – I didn’t want to come back at two in the morning and never see my children grow up. But then [Arkedo co-founder] Aurélien Regard came up to me one day and said: “Do you want to do this game?” and he showed Nervous Brickdown to me on paper. And I said: “Hell, yeah!” I worked out that I could pay three people for a year and a half. We were really fortunate, as when we founded Arkedo everyone was developing for the PSP, and they were always asking us why we were banking our company on the DS. We are really happy that the situation has reversed.
Regard tells us that you’ve already got backing for your next project.
Yes, we went from showing off our new game to selling it within 12 days. And we had EA wanting a second meeting, and Ubisoft said they had been following us. It’s amazing. It’s my first time in ten years that I know my next project is already financed. And I’ve not sold my soul: we keep 100 per cent creative control and the IP is ours. We are really fortunate that we’ve found a publisher [Southpeak] who trusts us. We try to give them more than they expected, and try and make things as easy as possible for them. We want to think of it a bit like when you buy clothes – you can buy them either prêt-à-porter or, like the big fashion designers, make things for one girl. We’re trying to do that for them – we’re very small, and we’re not that expensive because of that, but we’re still making a profit, and at the same time, we’re spoiling them with additional modes. When they bought Big Bang Mini there were two modes and in the end there are six.
Have you guys been looking forward to Nintendo’s DSi?
We like the idea of the DSi – because it allows smaller projects, because of the downloadable side. But we’re going to have to see how the Nintendo Zone works. We don’t know how many people will use the DSi to connect to the internet – it’s quite a risk. We’d need at least 5,000 to 10,000 people paying to download our game. The bottom line for a cartridge game is 40,000 to 50,000 boxes sold in order to make the next one. In our case piracy hurts quite a lot, because the people who are most likely to pirate games are the first ones to like the kind of games that we do.
Shooter fans?
Yeah. I’m not so sure there will be that many people paying for Big Bang Mini! But at the same time, Nervous Brickdown sold almost 100,000 boxes. We might have sold double without piracy – but we’re pretty proud of that. You can make a DS game for €200,000 [£168,000]. It took us more to do it, because we spent quite some time polishing it – but it allowed us to feel proud of what we do. We could earn much higher wages from other people, but if we’re doing our stuff, we have to enjoy it. And have good food!