Globulos.com

Alexandre: I am Alexandre Houdent, general manager of GlobZ. We are a small team and everybody is deeply involved in Globulos.com. I am a producer, game tester, I answer emails, I throw some new game ideas etc...

Alexandre: I think entertainment is a very important thing in life. Most people are concerned mostly by very serious matters. Making games, especially on the web, is a way of offering some fun to everyone. The only problem when it becomes a job is that for us it is a very serious thing now to entertain people ;-)

Olivier Besson adds: at GlobZ we don't have uniform experiences and feelings about videogames. But it's the arrival of Fabien Riffaud and Laurent Fernandez, in 2001, which contributed the most to focusing on games, probably because they were already great game makers.

Alexandre: The taste of freedom. I have worked 3 months for a big company ten years ago. That's all. I started [GlobZ] with Olivier Besson, and it was the same for him. Since then, "indie" has been more a matter of remaining small, which is surprisingly one of our corporate goals!

Alexandre: I would say any team from 1 to 10 people working on any kind of game. Being small means short budgets but lots of freedom.

Alexandre: Competition is always good, even for us. The only issue might be the "quality standard" and game sessions that are evolving. Games are shorter, simpler, which is also a good thing.

Olivier Besson adds: with the arrival of Flash, we ourselves benefited from this bar lowering, therefore it would be strange to be negative about this ;-)

Alexandre: But more seriously, as the Flash scene shows (and perhaps like other tool-oriented communities like GameMaker), the more the game designer base grows, the more fresh original ideas can emerge. The more crap too, but that's logical and not specific to videogames.

For the designers, it's fun because they can experiment [with] their own ideas and - hopefully - create something innovative. In the 80's many games were one-man projects. For the players it's beneficial because they can play new good games (astutely selected by portals and reviewers).

Alexandre: The word "industry" always sounds strange to me. Cars are designed and built in an industrial way. Our games are more like craftsmanship and we publish on the internet, so there are no boxes etc.

We have a direct relationship with the players, which is very valuable. Most of the time it is difficult because for 1 person saying "this is great" you have 99 that say "it could be better" ;-) But still it is very exciting to have that direct relationship with the players.

Alexandre: Since we are working on a new major release of Globulos.com I was hoping the IGF dates would speed us up but in fact we got to be finalists with the current version of Globulos.com, which is a great accomplishment for us.

Alexandre: The first prototype was made by Olivier Besson. He had marbles in the sand in mind mixed with some biological cells. The first game was supposed to be a racing game. The racing was not [much] fun so the prototype was left as is. Then Fabien Riffaud added the "Arena" game, which was great. Then Olivier said "let's do a soccer game" and Fabien did a great soccer game with the funny rules. Then I said "let's do a croquet game". Fabien turned that idea in another great game. Then Laurent Fernandez added the graphics and animations and Globulos was born.

Alexandre: The most serious issue was the fact that the simulations are made on each computer (only the "orders" are exchanged). Between a PC and a Mac we had some differences due to some floating point calculations differences! The trickiest part was to find out the reason [why] we had some differences! And such a small difference could mess all the game. Like the "chaos theory"!!

Alexandre: Forgetting the audio. That's always our big problem. As we do everything in house and as we don't have a full time musician our games are really weak on the audio side. Jeremy Damon has joined the team after the launch of the first Globulos version. He is a graphic designer/animator/game designer and does some great music too.

Alexandre: Mmmm... nothing in particular... sometimes we spend the whole day just speaking about the game, going to the restaurant etc... ;-)

Alexandre: It is almost impossible to answer this question ;-) The very first version appeared on the internet in 2003. The next (huge) release is coming very soon in beta! To have a sneak peek:

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Alexandre: Everything is made with Flash. The graphics are made using FreeHand and then imported in Flash. For the server side we use the Flash Media Server. For the database we use php/MySql.

Alexandre: Never start working on a multiplayer game! It is a nightmare ;-)

Alexandre: The fact that there is consistency and variety at the same time. All the games share the same core gameplay mechanic, which is great for the user. Once you have played one game, you know how to play all the games. However, the games sessions and strategies are really different between the games.

Alexandre: The next version of Globulos.com is going to enter beta soon. We are also working on a Nintendo DS version of the game, as you can see in this video. Frédéric Nouel (Lead) and Cédric Bourse are working on the DS game development.