Interview

French developers are fighting against the odds for success, says Mysterious Cities of Gold publisher

Ynnis Interactive's Cédric Littardi speaks out

French developers are fighting against the odds for success, says Mysterious Cities of Gold publisher
The Mysterious Cities of Gold was something of a cultural touchstone for a generation of children born in the 1980s.

As one of the first anime series syndicated in the west, Mysterious Cities still resonates strongly in the memories of many gamers, and French publisher Ynnis Interactive has found success in the mobile space publishing two games based on the series.

The expansion of its latest project, The Mysterious Cities of Gold: Secret Paths for iOS and other platforms, was recently funded on Kickstarter, so we caught up with Ynnis' founder and CEO Cédric Littardi to discuss his studio's success and the current state of mobile development in France.

Pocket Gamer: How did the team at Ynnis Interactive come together, and what's your company’s main goal for the industry?

Cédric Littardi: Two of the things I like to do are to make things I believe in happen, and to make them with people whom I take pleasure in working with.

It's by following this train of thought that I founded my previous company, Kazé, 20 years ago. When I pondered the thought of getting involved into something new, I knew video games were one of the main areas I wished to work in. So I asked myself: "what is my added value as a producer?"

Two elements came to mind: Japanese content, as I am very knowledgeable in this field, and cross-media development of any kind, as that is what I had also been doing for quite a few years, even before it had become the new fad of the industry.

From there, it was simple for me to go speak to the people I had worked with. On the right-holders side, I met with a high degree of support because of the relationships I had built with them over the years.

On the team side, well, life just allows you to meet with passionate people you want to build things with.



What's it like working with independent developers in France? Is it difficult to find talent and funding?

Compared to the many countries I do business with, France oftentimes looks like a backwards country, at least in terms of its administration and mentality.

So when a sector is hit by both an economic crisis and a transition period for hardware and consoles, the effects are devastating to independent developers.

There is a lot of French talent, but most of them are rather keen to leave the country rather than face the current domestic system.

There has always been precious little funding for small companies in France, including game studios. Most of the financing now comes from wealthy people because of the very advantageous tax breaks that go along with it.

That funding and the subsidies system currently help studios survive, but not thrive.

How competitive is the mobile development and publishing scene in France? Are there any companies that Ynnis looks up to?

The biggest markets for Apps are not in continental Europe. Furthermore, the French have always been bent on their "cultural exception", which makes us culturally focused on ourselves - and, might I add, makes us poor English speakers compared to our neighbours.

For this reason, we are generally not that good at making international successes on the App store.

Sure there are exceptions, like Rayman Jungle Run from the awesome people at Pastagames, or Squids and Combo Crew from the Game Bakers, but those are just the trees that hide the forest.

That is a huge difference, for example, with the Scandinavian countries, where the mentality is much more open toward the outside world.

In the French indie industry, there is a very bad image of the freemium model, which is the most successful model currently in the app world. So most of the excellent studios we look up to, such as Pastagames or the Game Bakers, are actually working against the odds of the market.

Ynnis' first mobile game published was Mystérieuses Cités d'Or - Vol du Condor, which featured in-app purchases. What was the fan reaction to this monetisation strategy?

The game was published only in a few French-speaking countries.

Even in France where there was massive press coverage, it hardly reached the top of the charts. We were astonished at how little downloads were established for such a low-priced game from one of the strongest national entertainment universes of all time!



It confirmed to us that there commercial viability is hard to sustain, beyond that dominating freemium model which seems to be the only one really on the up and up right now.

At this stage, we can say this game was a bit of a failure, from a numbers standpoint. But we are looking into how we could make the game evolve to re-launch it in the future, this time internationally.

What role did Ynnis Interactive play in the Kickstarter-funded Strike Suit Zero?
Strike Suit Zero was an original idea by Born Ready Games. When they approached me with it, I immediately loved the concept, and started working with them around creating a Japanese-themed game built in Europe.

Considering my passion for anime and manga, it was all too predictable that we would become highly involved in the game, its positioning, its storyline, its look and feel.

We had considerable feedback and a wonderful relationship was built with the team of Born Ready.


Strike Suit Zero

At some stage, because of everyone's constant input and enthusiasm, we risked not to have enough funding to implement everything we wanted on the game.

A suggestion we made was to use Kickstarter to finance some more development that we judged essential to the game. That is how we launched a Kickstarter with lots of efforts made both from Born Ready and Ynnis.

We can now say that Strike Suit Zero was a success. Though it might not be famous everywhere, it has a strong community - partly thanks to Kickstarter - and we are committed to make the universe of Strike Suit Zero live through various means in the months and years to come.

Probably one of them will be on a mobile game platform.

The Kickstarter for the localisation of The Mysterious Cities of Gold: Secret Paths raised 80 percent of its goal funding in less than a week - did that surprise you?

Of course, we were happily surprised by the result.

In the beginning, there were different opinions about Kickstarter among us. Trying to reach to international audiences for a show that had hardly been seen for 30 years on international scenes sounded to some like a waste of time.

However, the idea that prevailed was that, though it was mainly popular in France, Mysterious Cities of Gold was one of the most outstanding show of its time, and that all people that had the chance to see in their youth would remember it, and rise to the opportunity of diving in this fabulous universe again. That was the bet.

Thankfully, we won that bet, and the success of the Kickstarter will allow us not only to make international versions, but to start uniting a community around a common passion for this show.

I certainly believe it's one of the few French tales that every kid should have the opportunity to see.



Android isn't listed as a platform for The Mysterious Cities of Gold: Secret Paths - do you have any plans to cross over to Google Play? Is Google Play seen as a viable market in France?

The experience we have with our previous games shows that a lower part of the revenue comes from Google Play.

This tendency is clearly not helped by the fact that a large portion of Android players use pirated versions of game, making Free-to-play even more indispensable on this platform.

Furthermore, Mysterious Cities of Gold is a high quality game for tablets, with a very family based audience, another factor pointing at the iPad. Of course, nothing would make us happier than to make an Android version too.

However, as we are developing this game on 3DS and Wii U, it is not programmed with an open tool such as Unity, and adapting it to Android at this stage would cost too much compared to the potential income.

And let's not kid ourselves, the fragmentation of the platform makes ports more expensive than on iOS.

We are considering the possibility of making it a stretch goal for our Kickstarter, but we have more demand for Linux or Mac at the time being.

Would you consider publishing games for dedicated gaming handhelds (Vita, 3DS) or will Ynnis stay focused on mobile?
MCOG:SP is already being developed on 3DS and Wii U, so clearly, we are not tied to a specific platform.

Also, Ynnis being a publisher and not a development studio, our focus is never technical but always product-oriented - we intend to make the games we want, and only when we have decided what those games are, we also decide for which platforms they represent a good fit.

Cross-media strategies must always think "universe" to be successful. Though many developers would disagree with us, we see platforms as a means to an end and not the other way around.

What’s next for Ynnis Interactive?

Making MCOG:SP successful will obviously be our first priority. The true test only starts when the game gets on the market, and selling it well will be a long and difficult feat.

Our current hope is to make it successful enough to develop a second game, this time based on the universe of the first series, set in Latin America. However, despite the current Kickstarter success, we are still quite far from that possibility in terms of audience size.

The future developments of Strike Suit Zero and its universe is also a priority. This is our first game, we are quite happy about it and we hope to make it run for many years. And we do see millions of ways to make it better.

Though we must remain focused on our current games, we are also currently thinking about a nice new project with another French cultural property which is even more internationally known than Mysterious Cities of Gold.

Therefore, we hope MCOG:SP will be successful quickly!
Thanks to Cédric for his time.

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