Going there I had this idea to do a video about the female Counter-Strike tournament entirely with my phone… I ran into a couple issues here and there but here it is now. The only part that’s not done with the phone is the intro.

If the video doesn’t display, try Vimeo.

I used an iPhone 4 and the iMovie app.

The intro was done on a Mac with pixel art software and After Effects. dotsMarc did the visual and my friend Koya animated it a bit.

This interview travelled some before it reached the shores of the Gamocracy blog. The idea for it was born last August at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. Questions from Gamocracy players then flew in to France from three quarters of the four corners of the world, namely: Denmark, Finland, Singapore and the UK. After that they made a short stop in the UK before they visited Washington State in the US for a while. In the end, they got back to France where they finally found their answers, provided as they were by a French man, Stéphane Lo Presti (in charge of community management for ArenaNet here), in English.

Only the most complicated roads lead to Gamocracy.

When is the game released? (by Predator_Kill_All_)

We’re still working on the game, so we haven’t yet given a release date. It’s important to us to provide our players with solid information, so we will only announce the Guild Wars 2 launch date when the game is ready!

How will the servers work? Will there be traditional MMO servers where you pick a server for your characters to live on, or will you continue what you did with GW1 and just have the servers region/district based so that you can play with people from other countries? (by Benki)

In Guild Wars 2, players will choose a “world” where their characters will live.  They can compete against players from other worlds in The Mists and engage in massive battles in our World vs. World mode!  We’ll talk about this in greater detail in the future.

What is the world map like? (by Eminence)

We’ve shown the map of GW2 Tyria in the first Guild Wars novel, Ghosts of Ascalon, and in the demo of the game that we showcased in Cologne, Seattle, New York City, and Paris. In Guild Wars 2, 250 years beyond the events in the Eye of the North, Tyria has dramatically changed due to the awakening of the ancient Elder Dragons, which are so massive and powerful that they have caused cataclysmic changes to the entire world, such as the rise of the sunken land of Orr. The Elder Dragons have displaced entire populations and created great hardship for others. For example, the asura were driven to the surface by minions of Primordus, the Fire Dragon, while the norn were driven from the Far Shiverpeaks by the awakening of Jormag.

Is there in-game trading where players can buy or sell items to each other? (by TheHullu)

You will definitely be able to trade in-game in Guild Wars 2. We are working on an element of the game called the Marketplace that has a variety of robust tools that will help players do their trading.

How many professions are there in total in GW2? (by TheHullu)

There are eight professions in Guild Wars 2.  So far, we’ve introduced the elementalist, who controls the four natural forces; the warrior, master of weaponry; the ranger, a jack-of-all-trades; and the necromancer, a disciple of dark power. We will announce the four other professions in the future.

Will there be a max level? (by Predator_Kill_All_)

The max level in Guild Wars 2 is 80. The levelling curve is pretty flat, so players can focus on playing the game and having fun.

Will there be expansion packs? (by Predator_Kill_All_)

Right now our focus is solely on making Guild Wars 2 the best MMO, and that’s where all of our energy and concentration is.

Will GW2 have micro-transactions of any kind?

Just as in Guild Wars, players will simply have to buy Guild Wars 2 in order to play and will not have to pay a monthly subscription fee. And, like in Guild Wars, players will also be able to purchase items via micro-transactions.

The devs mentioned the game would be different, without quest grinding. How different will it be? What quest elements and concepts are you coming up with? In other words, why GW2 and not WoW? (by Eminence)

In building Guild Wars 2, we questioned all the fundamental principles of MMO games, including quests.  In response to static, grind-heavy MMO quests, we designed dynamic events, which you experience simply by passing through an area where a particular activity is happening.  You can choose to take part in this activity or not.  For example, a village may be under attack by centaurs.  You and other players can choose to fight the centaurs or let them destroy the village.  Depending on the outcome, new events can branch off this centaur attack.  Maybe the centaurs will begin conquering more lands once they’ve captured the village. These dynamic events not only make Tyria a living world filled with activity, but they also encourage players to cooperate in an impromptu manner in order to achieve the event goal and have a real impact on what happens in the game world.

Will there be rare/end world bosses? (by Eminence)

Yes!  We’ve already shown one of these bosses in the hands-on GW2 demo: The Shatterer (Editor’s note: I think that’s him in the video below at around 5’30″), a dragon lieutenant that operates in the Brand, an area of the charr land transformed by the passing of an Elder Dragon. Players need to gather forces to be able to defeat The Shatterer, who adapts his tactics according to the threat the characters pose.  In fact, it’s a dynamic event that illustrates how our events scale: if more players show up, The Shatterer will spawn more minions and use different strategies to defeat them.

In the trailer it says that if you rescue a city, it will remember you, but what if it gets destroyed? How long will it be destroyed and if then how will it get rebuilt? (by Predator_Kill_All_)

If you rescued a city, the presence of grateful NPCs and the services they offer provide evidence of the effectiveness of your actions. If you fail to rescue the city, that will trigger other events, and among them may be an event to directly help rebuild the city. So it’s difficult to say exactly how long it will take, because it depends on player choices. It may stay demolished for only a short time or a very long time!

The new events system seems great and a good way to make the game world feel real. Do these events happen often and how much variety is there in them? (by TheHullu)

The frequency of events depends on factors such as if they belong to an event chain, how fast players complete them, their cycle duration, and a number of other factors. If you want to know more about dynamic events, Colin Johanson, our Lead Content Designer, gives a lot of details in this Q&A on the ArenaNet blog: http://www.arena.net/blog/colin-johanson-answers-your-dynamic-event-questions

How will the PvP ranking work? (by Eminence)
At this stage we’re still working on PvP, so I can’t provide you with any details.

Will there be housing/castles of any kind? (by Predator_Kill_All_)
In Guild Wars 2, players will have a “home instance” in the capital city of their race. Choices made by players in their personal story will affect what is found in the home instance. For example, one part of the human personal story puts the player in front of a moral dilemma, where he has to choose to save an orphanage or a hospital, but he can’t save both. These buildings are in the home instance and will either be destroyed or stay standing, depending on the player’s choice.

What new features for guilds will be available compared with GW1? (by Predator_Kill_All_)
Social features are an essential aspect of MMOs and we are still developing them. We will discuss them when they are fully ready on the Guild Wars 2 website.

Thank you Loic and Stéphane at NCSoft/ArenaNET.

Mad props go to Predator_Kill_All_, Eminence, TheHullu and Benki for the questions.

http://www.guildwars2.com

Now, what was that?! As far as I knew, #FNV was a first-person shooter in a post-apocalyptic world, not a walk in the park to feed Bambi.

I was curious. I felt like asking the man a few questions… and luckily my brother happens to be a long-time NEOGaf member, just like him. So he helped make the connection, water_wendi agreed to answer, all is well in the best of worlds and here are five questions to the Ghandiman…

What can you tell us about you? Where are you from?
Not a whole lot to say about myself.  I’m mainly an RPG gamer and am from Las Vegas.

What prompted you to play through the game like that?
The previous Fallouts had viable pacifist game paths (except for Fallout 2 at the very end). Games where you shoot, punch and stab your way to the end are very easy to find… Games which use diplomacy, science and bartering to complete, not so much. I mainly wanted to see if what Obsidian said in interviews was true. Often times developers exaggerate what can be accomplished. Not so in this case.

Was FNV built so that someone could finish the game without making a kill or did you have to trick it?
New Vegas was indeed built up to support that style of play. No tricks were involved in my pacifist run. I didnt have companions kill for me while I just soaked up the experience or anything like that. My strategy was built around Speech and Sneak. If I could not talk my way through problems I just sneaked by them instead. If I came under attack I would run away until the hostile creature/person lost interest or a friendly creature/person came to my aid (I was Idolized with most factions and I had both levels of the Animal Friend perk which had most animals come to my aid if I was under attack).

There’s this screenshot with some kind of “Messiah” status information. Is it a status you acquire by beating the game the way you did?
The Messiah status comes from the Karma system… Did I do more good than bad? In most games, supplies like ammo or stimpacks are hard to come by so people steal them. Stealing items even from hostile factions results in a gain of Negative Karma. Since I never got into a fight I had no need for ammunition or health items so I rarely stole. On top of that, because I talked my way through things I was kind of a “Wandering Arbitrator/Diplomat” where people had problems and this kindly woman showed up to get everyone to play nice. Lots of Positive Karma from doing that repeatedly.

Did you ever think about completing another game like that? or with any other kind of fake “constraints” for that matter?
Oh all the time.  Most RPG’s focus more on combat so it becomes a difficult challenge. Playing as a pacifist in New Vegas isn’t much of a challenge honestly. It’s pretty easy, imo.  There are so many options to resolve quests without killing. There are only three or four quests which require fighting, I think.
As for other “constraints” I am currently trying to do a run where I fight with everyone I meet. So no talking, no quests, no anything but straight-up killing. I’m wondering how far I will get before the game breaks. I can’t for the life of me figure out how I’ll be able to get to the endgame if I remove everyone I come across. Whether or not I’ll be able to complete this remains to be seen because it’s a) very boring and b) much more difficult.

Thank you water_wendi for taking the time and jujukun for making the connection.

But Serhan was talking me in, telling how much more precise it was, and all that stuff, you know. So I decided to give it a try with Sports Champions.

picture by Studiosushi

And he was right, it wasn’t that bad. The cursor is smooth on the screen and the ultimate little lag that’s killing the Wii-mote is gone. It reminded me of what I had hoped for the Wii-mote at some point: that it would be a 3-dimensional mouse. Nintendo’s peripheral is not that far from it but it just lacks what it takes for a true FPS player to adopt it as a controller of choice.

I was really interested in that at some point because I thought it would be much much more interesting to watch the top StarCraft or Counter-Strike players standing on a wide open stage making big moves in the air to play their high-stakes games, rather than sitting behind a table and a screen… Maybe PS Move could allow stuff like that.

The problem right now is that it has less games than Homer Simpson’s hands has fingers.

I’ll see if they’re growing new ones later today when I visit Paris Games Week, the latest gaming show in town.

Gabe Newell about the Xbox Live, June 2010

“We thought that there would be something that would emerge, because we figured it was a sort of untenable… Oh yeah, we understand that these are the rules now, but it’s such a train wreck that something will have to change.”

Which couldn’t fail to remind me of another quote by the man, found on Team Xbox.

Gabe Newell about the PlayStation 3, January 2007

“The PS3 is a total disaster on so many levels, I think It’s really clear that Sony lost track of what customers and what developers wanted,” Newell told Game Informer magazine. “I’d say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a ‘do over’. Just say, ‘This was a horrible disaster and we’re sorry and we’re going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it.’”

3 years? It’s been a loong tiiime.

Seriously, when is the last time one game announcement took a major site down? DotA 2 is something special. While I don’t need to be convinced – I’m in DotA rehab right now, getting my competitive fix out of the much healthier StarCraft 2 – here are a couple words in case you did.

The DotA phenomenon
Millions of gamers have been playing DotA for years. The way it grew is typical of the Internet way of making things (the extreme opposite, the TV way of making things, would be Modern Warfare 2). The game grew from 0 to millions of players over years, without ads or even a budget at all. If you’re not in it, you barely know or care about it. And if you’re in… you’re an addict.

Lonely Icefrog with 0 money = genius
While he didn’t invent DotA, Icefrog, one very discrete MIT student, has been the man behind the map since 2004, bringing dozens of updates almost singlehandedly. He’s done so much on his own and without money that I can’t help but wonder if putting him into an office with a team and some dough to spend on his game will help him do better or break some kind of fragile momentum. And how will Valve’s experience mix into all this?

Valve adventuring outside of FPS’
Do you realize that? From Half-Life to the Sacrifice, Valve has been all FPS since it started. The one small exception was Alien Swarm, but that was just for fun, right? Now they’re moving to another ground. And that’s where Blizzard should have been, isn’t it? I expect retaliation.

It’s a MOBA
It’s a new genre, it means Multiplayer Online Battle Arena and it didn’t exist before DotA. It’s also called “Dota-like” sometimes, but using this term will make you sound a lot less knowledgeable. Gamocracy has twelve games listed for it at the moment and most of them came out in the past 18 months. While I’m very happy with this genre, the problem, to me, is that its current leader in terms of number of players seems to be League of Legends and I can’t help but feel something is wrong when anything called “LoL” ends up on top of… anything.

Valve doing with DotA what it could have/should have with Counter-Strike
CS and DotA are a rare kind of games. Don’t know if that kind should be called new since CS was born in 1999… but it sure is still rare and its roots go deep into the Internet. They are games requiring that you perform at them and that are made to be played for years on end, multiplayer only. It’s all about the people playing them and their input over time is a major factor in their success and longevity. The only developer in the whole wide world, all platforms combined, who’s been creating such games on a regular basis is Blizzard. Valve started doing that with Team Fortress 2 and, while they did it with a lot of heart and creativity, it never got the appeal of Counter-Strike. I’ve always wondered why Valve didn’t turn the super successful mod into an even bigger phenomenon, why they didn’t even try. It seems to me they just  had to do with Counter-Strike exactly what they’re planning to do with DotA: leave gameplay untouched, bring in a new engine and some support to the community.

It’s about millions of players, an outstanding – to say the least – game designer, a new genre, Valve, Blizzard and a free game without a budget that got more success than most AAA’s will ever see, it’s DotA 2.

Loic is a the head of community at NCSoft Europe. As most of the people featured here, I got to know Loic when I was into pro gaming. He was then a gaming journalist and a regular at some of the nicest gaming centers in Paris.

The interview will cover the following topics:

• Guild Wars 2 in general
• Community in Guild Wars 2. Remember, this is Loic’s focus.
• Working in the gaming industry

If these topics got you inspired, you’re more than welcome to propose your questions in the comments below. Maybe they’ll end up in the interview!

I already got a bunch from Predator_Kill_All_, with whom I’ve been talking about this interview for months now. I’m also going to specifically email the authors of the top 5 Guild Wars opinions.

I’ll send the questions to Loic on Monday, make sure you come up with yours before that.

Up to you!

Today, dotsMarc was home and we tried the Medal of Honor beta on the super duper PC I was lent a couple weeks ago (soon I’ll say more about it, it’s kind of the fastest PC ever). Below, dotsMarc in action.

We played in 1920×1080 (but no AA or Anisotropic Filtering) for this video. And we had the 3D glasses on and all since the game actually supports stereo 3D (no way I could video capture it though).

I’m not that much of an FPS specialist. All I could say about this game is that it looks way too much like Modern Warfare 2 to me.

That’s why I went to R4VI4TOR who had much more interesting stuff on his mind:

“Well MoH meets todays standards, but it doesnt seem to go further. For me as Battlefield player, playing MoH is a step backwards. The maps are too small. The fast dieing, respawning and again dieing is nothing for me either. A game that doesnt have a medic or revive feature shouldn’t come without a spawn protection. At least the servers and the ping were totally stable. The game didn’t crash anymore today. Yesterday was hell. MoH MP is good for a quick session of non-minded shooting but I miss large areas like in BF, destructible environments, and real teamplay. Its only rush rush rush.”

Thanks R4V!

I was only proposing for an interview but I still found it to be quite a big deal.

Torchlight’s daddy is definitely someone I would have wanted to talk to: not that I had played his game (now I have) but I had heard and read so much about it all year. Not to mention it’s one of the best ranked games on Gamocracy.

Icing on the fiery cake, Max and his crew somehow managed to make us believe that their very nice inaugural game was only the first course in an XXL super sized gaming meal we didn’t even know we had ordered.

Not a specialist of Action RPG’s, I asked for some help from Gamocracy’s community to find the right questions. Acerayl from Tempe, Arizona, answered the call with an amazing set of his own. In the end there’s more of his stuff than mine below.

Many thanks Acerayl!

On to the interview…

# About Max Schaefer, gaming careers & Runic Games

Hello Max, you have come a long way from VP of Blizzard North, through your time at Flagship, and now at Runic Games. What advice can you give to those who are looking to start their own game studio?

Make the game that best suits the talents of the team. Do not try to hastily assemble a group to do a particular project. Your first projects should be small, efficient, and quick. Build your way up to bigger projects over time as your team gains experience.

How did you go from graduating with a BS in environmental design to becoming a CEO of your own game studio?

Back in the stone age when I started (the early ’90s), a “game company” consisted of a few guys in someone’s living room, so being CEO of a company didn’t exactly require Harvard training. I was lucky to have broken into the industry then – everything is bigger and more complicated now, but by the time projects became multi-million dollar behemoths, we were experienced developers.

Do you have any advice for game students looking to break into the industry? What kind of skills do you look for in a student entering in the industry?

Everything is so much more specialized now. We joke that there are positions available out there for “texture rotators” who just spin textures around for mapping, but it’s pretty close to the truth at the larger developers. But aside from developing a specialty, you have to show an employer that you have skills that are valuable to them, and that you are willing to work. The best way is to work on demo games with friends or fellow students. Show the initiative to make something that isn’t a class assignment. Show a passion for games.

Explain an average day at Runic Games. What kind of craziness can one expect if they walk through the doors of your studio?

Fire breathing clowns, and calliope music. Actually, like a lot of jobs, game-making is a lot of grinding, a lot of buckling down and working like crazy. So it’s pretty boring to see sometimes, though we have a small enough office that people gather around someone’s machine to see what new cool thing they are working on.

When you created Runic Games with Travis Baldree, Erich Schaefer, and Peter Hu, what did you envision the studio to become? Was torchlight the first game you decided as a studio to design?

We really wanted to return to a simpler approach to making games – to focus on what we do best, and not try to be something we’re not. The experience at Flagship Studios taught us a lot about business, and about the new economy, and it instilled in us a hyper-awareness of schedules, cash flow, and the need for efficient production processes.

Our thought with Torchlight was that we really liked where our previous project, Mythos, was going when we were shut down, and that we should work our way back to making something along those lines one step at a time.

# Crafting Torchlight

Each level has some sort of story to it, mostly in the visuals of the level. How important was story for this game? Did you have any problems trying to explain story for each level?

It’s important that the world feel genuine, and the goal in Torchlight was to highlight the idea that many cultures over centuries had succumbed to the corruption of the ember. This gave us the construct necessary to explain vastly different tile sets and architectural styles on each level type. The story basically works around the mechanic that you want the player to experience a variety of settings along their journey.

What made you decide to do a simple character selection over a complex character creation for the game? Will there be more than three player classes to choose from in Torchlight 2?

We decided to keep the character creation simple in Torchlight because it was a single player game. Character customization is primarily to distinguish you from other players in the game, and that’s not necessary in a single player game. Since we had such a strict budget and timeline, we sought to strip out anything that isn’t directly related to the goals and object of the game, and the character selection was one of them. For Torchlight 2, which is a multi-player game, we’ll have more customization. You’ll be able to pick from male or female, and customize the look to your liking.

source

The variations of weapons and armor, as well as the upgrades you can perform to them were extensive in the game. How many more weapons and armor types are we to expect in Torchlight 2?

There are more, as would be expected, but more importantly we have more time to balance them and make better use of the assets we have.

Even for a big established studio, making one successful game is very hard. You guys are a new born indie dev team and still you bet from the start you could make two successful games in less than three years. Can you talk about that leap of faith?

We took a leap of faith in thinking people would want to buy games that play well, look good, and run on your old computer, even if they don’t have the bleeding edge graphics technology, elaborate pre-rendered cinematics, or all the extras and bells and whistles that modern games tend to have. We think that PC game production has generally become too ponderous, too bloated, and too expensive, and that the old approach results in too few games and not enough risk-taking. So our goal was to strip down game development to the basics, make good tools right from the beginning so that our developers are at maximum efficiency, and focus like a laser on what our vision is for the game. All the while keeping things simple and low tech.

And how’s the bet looking? Torchlight seems like it’s met an audience but would you have numbers to share?

We have exceeded our expectations for Torchlight sales, particularly given we didn’t do almost any marketing, and that nobody had heard of it prior to release (thank you Steam!) More than that, though, our customers and community have let us know we made the right bet, and it’s an approach we’ll stick with.

Did you expect an Action-RPG title without a multiplayer mode to do that well in 2009/2010?

We had no idea, but we sure hoped so. We know that the action RPG market is under-served, and that there is pent up demand for some good old-fashioned hack and slash, but making it single-player and available only for digital download at first was a bit of a risk. We’re happy with the results for sure, but look forward to giving our players multi-player action in Torchlight 2.

# The Future of Torchlight

When you released Torchlight 1, you announced another Torchlight game that would have multiplayer in it coming in 2011. We called it “Torchlight MMO” on Gamocracy . But a few weeks ago, you announced Torchlight 2, which seems to be yet another game. So, what’s Torchlight 2 compared with the game that was initially announced?

Yes, it was our intent to roll right into making a full MMO right after Torchlight, but the demand for a simple co-op multi-player Torchlight was unanimous. There are great things you can do in MMOs, and we still look forward to making an MMO of Torchlight, but we have an opportunity to do a simple co-op game much more quickly. With a peer-to-peer co-op model, you don’t have to charge subscriptions or items sales, and you get to do things like releasing the modding tools again, so it’s something that we think the fans will appreciate and enjoy. In the meantime, we’ll get valuable experience with what works and what doesn’t in multi-player Torchlight, and that will make for a much better MMO.

Do you have a release date for the next Torchlight game? And the next?

We’re targeting April/May of 2011 for Torchlight 2, and then a couple years roughly for the MMO after that.

Thank you very much for your time, Max. Best of luck to you and everyone at Runic Games!

Thanks!

Totally unrelated of the day: I’m going to Amsterdam for a week today! I won’t be online much during that time. See you ~

A fighting games veteran from the Paris area, Kayane’s been going around like that for years to play her favorite titles: the Soul Caliburs, some DOA, and lately Super Street Fighter 4.

She’s won quite a lot, even against the boys, so much that Namco ended up creating an AI wearing her name and imitating her pitbullish style of play. What kind of achievement is that?

A few days after I read that interview, in French, I found the Team aAa member playing practice matches at the Festival du Jeu Vidéo in Paris. She agreed to do another interview, one for us, in English.

There it is!

Hello Kayane, where does the name come from?
My first tournaments were at Dead or Alive 2, they asked me for a nickname and I was surprised. Because I didn’t know that in this world we use a nickname! So I decided to mix the first names of my two favourite DOA2 characters: Kasumi and Ayane (my favourite). So the result is Kayane.

How old were you when you won your first gaming tournament?
I won my first tournament at 10 years old at Soul Calibur 1.

What got you into tournaments so early?
When Dead or Alive 2 came out, I was 9 years old. My brothers were more involved in Tekken Tag since there were top players at this game, but I asked them to play with me at DOA2 at least once. My brother Maxi (one of Ryan Hart’s rival at Tekken 3 at the time) said to me : “Oh, I don’t want to win too easily so train by yourself for the moment and I’ll see your level later, it would be a shame if I beat you without playing it!”. It made me upset and then I practiced alone and tried to understand by myself how to play since my brothers didn’t help. By analyzing the computer, I understood that in DOA2 we have to make damages by creating combos so it’s what I did especially in Tag mode by switching characters during combos to make big damage. So when I was ready I told Maxi to play with me. I beat him so easily that he said after “I have to bring you to a tournament in Paris!” I was very happy because I thought I would have many many friends! But I was a very naive child because I didn’t know that people could be machos.

In my first tournament at DOA2, I finished French Vice Champion while I was only 9 years old and nobody knew me. People were so machos and mean that I didn’t want to stop playing in tournaments, I realized there that I had something to prove in order to change mentality towards women and children capacity. Men usually don’t like losing to a woman, and also children…but I was both in same time so it made them more frustrated and mean to me.

My other brother Kero started to get involved in the Soul Calibur community, so did I. I was surprised at how kind and fun the SC community was. They welcomed me very well and I felt like I could make friends finally!  
Then I kept on taking part in tournaments with Soul Calibur, for two reasons : to prove that even if I’m a little girl I can win, and to have a lot of fun time with my new friends.

Kayane playing with Daigo “The Beast” Umehara

How old are you now? Could you name your biggest achievements so far?
I’m 19 years old now. In ten years of tournaments, I have achieved many things and I still want to keep going this way. I won many tournaments even very young. I succeeded to rank top 5 during 9 years of Soul Calibur tournaments in France, and top 10 in each international tournament : 4th at World Game Cup 2004 when I was 12, 9th at Evolution 2009 and 9th at World Game Cup 2010. I also beat the American and Japanese Champion when I was 10-11 years old.

Namco Bandai made an AI with my name, Kayane, and using Xianghua (my character) in Soul Calibur IV Broken Destiny imitating my style of playing. A lot of players that played against this Kayane in game said to me : “I really had the impression to play against you ! That’s crazy!” haha it made me very happy! Having my name in my favourite game is one of the greatest successes that could happen to me. I’m very grateful to the developers.

Now I hope to achieve big things at SSFIV. I recently won the SSFIV Women Invitation Tournament at EVO2010, but I have to say that for me it’s not a big achievement. A big achievement would be to rank top 8 at EVO in the mixed tournament (where girls AND boys can compete). So I’m working hard to get to that level even though I’m still a beginner at this game. SSFIV is my first 2D game and 2D games are so different from 3D games, so it’s quite difficult to adapt especially with the way I play Chun Li, that is the contrary of the way I play Xianghua. (I play Xiang very aggressively, so much people called me “the pitbull” haha!)

Could you tell us a bit about your winning trip at EVO 2010?
Well, my trip at EVO was sooo impulsive. Even one month before EVO I didn’t know if I would go. I wasn’t very motivated because no Frenchy could go in the end. Knowing that, I lost a lot of my motivation because I’m so new to this community and this game, I would have needed advice out there from frenchies because of my lack of experience. And going to a tournament like that without knowing anybody could be very annoying.
And I have never been to a foreign country by myself, I don’t have a sense of directions at all!!! My family was so scared about this trip haha!

But 2 weeks before EVO, I finally decided to take it. I was hesitating so much that I said to myself : “BUY THE PLANE TICKET NOW!” so that I couldn’t go back on my decision. I was thinking that this trip would be like a mental test for me to see if I can win an international tournament even if I’m alone to represent my country.

Once I was there, I only focused my mind on winning. I couldn’t imagine myself going back to France without the cup proving I won. Being alone made me stronger out there, even when I lost one match in the final because of a stupid mistake of mine when Burn your Bra (the finalist) did a wake up ultra. I know that a lot of people would have lost after because it can totally destroy you, especially in a final. I was thinking that I wanted a mental test in this tournament, so there I was…I had to take reponsibility for my mistake and win.

In the mixed tournament, I won two matches and then I lost. In the loser bracket, I won again two matches before losing against a Bison player. We can notice that I only lost to Bison players during this mixed tournament! I knew that I wasn’t trained enough against him before coming, and since I’m unlucky I had to be eliminated by two bisons! :p

But really, this trip was the best I ever had. I had so much fun, I met many really cool people and I could improve my game a lot because people share a lot! I really want to go back at EVO next year, and I wish I could go to the US more often!
I’m very grateful to all the people that cheered me there, especially the Guyanese players, people I just met there and also the French community who watched the stream!

Kayane & Yoshinori Ono, Street Fighter 4′s producer

Street Fighter or Soul Calibur?
Oh…such a cruel question!

Those games are so different. I always preferred 3D games but I discovered 2D games with SF and I have to admit I’m surprised that it’s so fun. It’s so interesting to play another kind of games after playing Soul Calibur for ten years. (with a bit of experiences at DOA)

I would rather choose Soul Calibur because I’m nostalgic. It’s the first fighting game I loved when it came out on Dreamcast, I was 7 years old! Xianghua made me love it, but more than that, the atmosphere was so special and unique in this game. My best memories in tournaments were also at Soul Calibur, especially the first and the second opus. So many gooood memories at this game, that Soul Calibur will always has a special place in my heart. Even if I stopped playing it since March to focus on SSFIV, I’m looking forward for the Soul Calibur 5th to play it again a lot. I really can’t wait to see the new Xianghua!

But without being nostalgic, I don’t know which one I would choose because I love both of them in a different way.

How much do you practice? let’s say per week
Hm, it really depends on my mood and my free time. I would say 14 hours per week, with an average of two hours per day knowing that I train more in the weekend than during the week.

What would life be like without fighting games?
For me, my life would have been totally different and impossible to imagine really. I guess I would have had a standard life with my other passions like piano, going out with my friends as I do and always seeing the same people with a few chances to meet different people. I would certainly be a model because last year a photographer really wanted me to become one of his model so I even didn’t have to participate in castings! I accepted, but I couldn’t guess it would take so much time to be a model. It was impossible for me to be a model, a top gamer, working for my mother’s shop and studying at school all at the same time. I had to choose between gaming and modeling then, so you know what I chose. So if there wasn’t gaming, I would certainly be involved a lot in modeling. Sometimes I feel a bit sad because I liked that too, but less than gaming.

Fighting games are more than just games for me. I feel very lucky of the chance I have thanks to that. I meet so many people and I live sooo many experiences thanks to them! I’m able to travel thanks to sponsors, meeting and playing against people from different countries and be able to know other cultures! It’s very interesting!
I met most of my best friends thanks to fighting games, because we have something we like a lot in common and that we can play together and have fun. It’s also like work, when I have to make exhibitions for my sponsors. It means that I have to play against the public all day and I’m paid for that. I do that often, and it allows me to meet different people from the ones I’m used to because they usually don’t play in tournaments and see the game in a different way. So it’s nice to be able to share with the public.

And also, I’m a competitive person and I express it in fighting games tournaments, as if it was a sport. But here it’s not physical so women have the same place as men, it’s more of a mental sport.
Going at tournaments, winning or losing, meeting people and sharing the same passion with other players, all of that makes me feel alive. Without that, I don’t know what kind of person I would have been and if I would have enjoyed my life that much. Certainly, I would have been a total different person because the passion you have, people you meet and experiences you live make your personality.

Do you play other games than the one you’re practicing for?
Not really right now, I only play fighting games except when a very famous game like Final Fantasy XIII (that i didnt have the courage to finish…I’m at the final chapter) comes out.

But when I was younger, I used to play many games. I played Starcraft Broodwar a lot when I was 8 until 10 years old! I loved this game more than SC2! My favourite race is Zerg. Why? Because my oldest brother taught me how to play with them and his way to teach me the game was funny. I was 8 years old, so to make me like the Zerg he used funny nicknames, zerglings were “gling glings” with cute intonation, and to make me produce units he said me “create your little babies” haha! So in my mind, the Zerg were very cute and I was surprised that people mostly think they are horrible creatures! I tried Starcraft II during the beta but I didn’t want to be involved in it, a game can last so long and I already have to train for SSFIV so I avoid playing that kind of games.

I also played RPG’s a lot, my favourite were Valkyrie Profile, Final Fantasy VI and VII, and Star Ocean 2. I used to play a MMORPG called Ragnarok Online too. I played as a Gypsy called “Unmei” and I had such a bad reputation in the server, I was considered a bitch because I had no pity in killing people in the PvP room and my character’s aspect didn’t help lol, gypsys were too sexy and used wipes :p. I mostly spent my time at this game waiting for people to enter the PvP room and killing them, yeah lol.

How good are you at poker?
Wow, I never tried it…but I already know I would be so bad!!!!!! I know myself, I’m already so noob when I play simple card games with my family during new year. Just because of my face! When I have good cards, I make such a big happy smile, and it looks so sincere that everybody knows that I’m not hiding bad cards. And they are right! And when I have bad cards, I make such a sad face! So I don’t think I would be good at Poker haha! But I should try someday, who knows maybe I would be able to hide my facial expressions as ElkY does!

Do you have a boyfriend?
Nope I don’t, I’m too busy and also I’m very difficult to please!

But I always said that if I would have a boyfriend as a gamer, he has to always destroy me first at SC4 or SSF4! haha :p

So, it’s official, I don’t stand a chance… Thank you Kayane, crossing my fingers for you.

Kayane has a blog where she writes about fighting games events and tells her own stories. It’s pretty good and she sometimes writes in English like here, where you’ll learn about “money matches” with the God of Street Fighter.

Most pictures are taken from there, by the way.