Twice a month, meet one on the talents of the Polycorne Team! We kept the best for the last, this week is: Jérémie
What’s your role at Polycorne?
I’m the art director. This means that I ensure art creations follow the guidelines we defined. Such as :
- Coherency between assets (menu item, models, textures, data viz, …)
- Provide input to the team regarding new graphics jobs
- Identifying potential partners that could help us
Moreover, as Polycorne is a small company, I also have in charge many other tasks such as:
Project management, HR, sales, marketing, … and contribute to development and 3D modelling!
I’m working on the multiplayer adaptation of the game. I recently improved the build distribution pipeline of the game thanks to an automated process with full cloud solutions. The article with all the details will be release soon.
Why do you want to make games?
At the beginning of my career, I worked for a game server hosting company. I had a lot of interaction with the gaming industry : marketers, publishers, developers, community managers, … It was very exciting and I missed this creative part at my previous job. I love the creation process, from the paper drawings to the line of code and the playtest (even if a lot of us hate this part).
Interacting with something you contributed to create is an amazing feeling. Seeing people interacting with it is an even more breathtaking feelings.
What is your favorite game of all time?
Definitely Battlefied 1942. For two main reasons. The first one is because it was the first game I played that allowed a big bunch of players to fight, drive, pilot and work together to reach victory. The skill was not the main quality to win but teamplay ! 8 average players working together were 10x more powerful than 8 progamers yelling at each other. And you guess that I was member of the first category.
The second reason is purely subjective : I was 16 at that time and I created a lot of memories with my friends and other people during LAN parties. This game provided sooooo many ways to have fun : from epic and well organized battle to totally crazy spontaneous hijacking non scripted event. Imagine one German and one US soldier driving full speed through the map in a jeep while their teammates throw grenades and land mines. Clearly not what the developers expected ^^
What is the game you played the most?
Except BF42 for the very reason explained above : Factorio. I think that I have more than 1000hours on this game. Building a fully automated industry taking in consideration energy, pollution, limited raw resources, room, … is SO orgasmic. Just walk through your creation and watch it runs… or burn ^^
And the very first one?
The first one I remember was Excelsior. A very old PC game. My parents did not want us to have a console at home. But my father bought a PC for my mother because of her accountant work. And guess what ? My little brother, my father and I used it almost for playing games.
Excelsior was a RPG game made with a kind of ASCII caracter style. I did not understood what I was doing but it was explicit enough for me to create my own story in my mind ^^ I think I did not manage to escape the first area (maybe because it was a Shareware).
How did you joined Polycorne, what’s your background story ?
I spent more than 10 years working for big IT department in international companies. I started as an engineer and then moved to international team management. These experiences were very useful for our current adventure : budget management, management and HR trainings, project management, translation vision into strategies… It was an another form of creation, less artistical but still. I use almost every of this competencies every day.
One last word?
