Quantic Dream

Certainly. I think the model that you are talking about, which seems to be, in effect, the new EA model, is something that I think is becoming more and more the norm. Most big publishers understood that you simply cannot put two thousand people into a giant hall and squeeze them to produce games, working 9-10 in the evening, and crunching for two years. And also I think most of the publishers now understand it makes more sense to work with independent entities, whether these are truly independent developers, not owned by the publisher or even internal studios that they've acquired or that they've structured. It makes sense, we're a creative industry, and so you need to... creativity obviously can't express itself if there are too many people involved.

You need independence, you need the liberty and freedom to be able to express yourself in the way that you want. So that's in essence the model and I think this is the future now - can independent developers get together in that same manner? Possibly, we'll have to see how they can share resources maybe at certain points, or maybe funding, so that's all possible. We have to see.

To a certain extent I very much still believe in the publisher/developer model. And this is one of the reason that we at Quantic stay also with this model, simply because development is a business on its own. Publishing is a business on its own. You need large funds to be able to publish a game globally, and I think it's still a little bit idealistic to think you can simply... you found the money to create your game, and you create the game and somehow through PR and showing it at shows you're going to sell the game. I think unfortunately it doesn't work like this. You need a lot of funds. What EA is doing, what to a certain extent Sony are doing, what Microsoft are doing, being a shelter for creative entities, and providing funds but also support, and the service of publishing, can certainly have a great future.

I think my position is well known. I was a strong advocate of obtaining tax breaks, of getting first the European Commission to accept videogames, to recognise videogames as a from of cultural expression, and through this recognition obtaining at least the possibility from Brussels to obtain tax breaks. And then I was able to work with the French government to obtain a tax break for videogame production in France, and that works very well.

The first country or the first region which implemented tax breaks was Montreal, Quebec, and we've seen how extraordinarily positive this has been for the industry out there. Montreal is probably still today the number one production region in the world. And if there wouldn't have been these tax breaks the wouldn't have an industry today. It's a very effective way to boost the development efforts in a county or a region. This has been demonstrated.

The question is how long does it take the industry to obtain this? I understand that frustration grows when you ask for something and it doesn't come, and it doesn't come and it doesn't come, on the other hand it took me three years, from the day when we finally got everyone, all the developers on board and everyone said "OK, this is the right thing to do, and now we all work in the same direction." We also worked with the publishers and together, as an industry went to the government and obtained this tax break. So I understand some people in the UK are starting to question the fact that this is the best use of the time, of TIGA in particular, but if at the end you obtain the tax break it's going to be extremely beneficial to the industry. And I think there's no better use of time than trying to get this tax break.