The Olivier Raffard Interview

[HalStep 855]

we have another great interview from Ross Sillifant a.k.a Chryssalid,so please enjoy:

 

  GOG Presents The Olivier Raffard Interview

 

It is with the utmost pleasure i'm able to put the following to Mr Olivier
Raffard,

Q) Olivier, would you please get us started by introducing yourself to our
readers:

A) Master in Business and IT Management.
I started my career in 1995 in Infogrames/Atari as Tester then QA
Manager to finish Producer mainly on Racing title such as V-Rally, Le
Mans, Test Drive Unlimited. I worked on most of the main title of
Atari.
Now still focus on innovation, in automotive, IoT and Robotics as
Development Director for xBrain, a Personal Assistant creator company
based in the SV and in France.

Ok, onto the main questions:

Q)I'd love to hear of any insights you might have regarding: 'Heart Of
Darkness'. A game with still so much of a myth surrounding it.Some 5
3/4 years in development, starting out as a CDi project for Phillips,
until Virgin cut the funding, sold to Sega for the Saturn, Atari
rumoured to of wanted it for the Jaguar CD, a GBA version announced but
never released etc etc, you can find claims about it where ever you
look.

It did of course finally arrive on PS1 and Windows PC to somewhat
'Marmite' reviews, people either seemed to love the game or feel it
simply hadn't been worth the wait.

So, could you talk us through at what stage you joined the project,
what your role was. which formats game was intended for and also if
you ever 'knew' of anything of the CDi version, if the Atari trying to
secure for Jaguar CD claims are true, the lost GBA version etc etc.

A) I joined the project in the latest 2 months before the launch to
finish the product, I never heard about a Jaguar CD, CDI versions
probably because these platforms were probably almost dead or at the
end of their life cycle when the game was released.

Moreover, the team (who was really expert, great and amazing) was
really tired at the launch of the game and I though it could be hard
for everybody to finalize another version on several other platforms.

Q)You were the producer i believe for V-Rally 2:Expert Edition on the
Dreamcast.

I'd like to ask if the fact you were now working on far more powerful
hardware than the PS1+N64 made life a lot easier, or because press and
public expected a certain standard from games on Sega's 128 Bit baby,
life was made a lot harder because you needed to put a lot more detail
into the game.

Also was it, in the strictest sense a 'port' or was so much re-done,
it was pretty much a new game?

A) Actually, we improved the graphics, added some features and
especially improved the car handling. Eden Games has never considered
a new platform as a simple port.

Q) The issue of the DC O/S often crops up so i wonder if  the team  used or
by-passed the Windows CE O/S on the DC ?
and if you went around it, could you explain why, as Sega were hyping
it as a key part of making conversions to DC easier.

A) I should mention that I don’t remember that… Sorry!

Q)Racing games so often back then at least, never seemed keen to show
car damage or crashes, in a manner that might of implied real life
versions of the cars were prone to it, car manufactures a very prickly
bunch in these matters, so how did you guys manage to get around this
issue and keep them 'sweet' i wonder in some games and was it an
annoyance when you weren't allowed to feature it and cars acted like
bumper cars, just bumping off each other (thinking of Le Mans 24
Hrs)?

A) At the beginning of the racing games, the car manufacturers were
not really happy to have theirs cars damaged, so to avoid any licensee
issues we submitted for approval the cars without damaged or scratches
and the same models with damaged and scratches at the maximum possible
by the players.

Q)You seem connected to a good few games with a degree of mystery
surrounding them :-), next up is Ocean's 'Impossible Mission'.

I believe the game started out on the 16 Bit consoles (
MegaDrive+SNES), but was moved to the N64 (Then Ultra 64) and the 1st
shots i recall Ocean showing looked gorgeous..very high resolution,
with rich detail, the actual N64 version looked a lot worse, very
blurry in terms of textures etc, so i'd assume the early screens were
running off high end PC's, not actual N64 hardware?.

A) It was maybe on PC, but the main problem was to keep an high
quality and a good frame rate and with a 3rd person view shooter, we
needed to optimize the graphics to keep a good frame rate to play.

Q) Also the PS1 version, had added voice acting, but rumour had it Sony
insisted the camera angles etc were changed, to distinguish it further
from the N64 title.

A) Yes, camera angles were changed but if I remember well it was
mainly a technical issue than a Sony request. The only main problem
for the submission and discussion with Sony were regarding the main
person which should looks like Tom Cruise but not too small and not
too similar

Q)Any other thoughts on the games traumatic development?

A) Each time if we faced off a technical challenge and an impossible
move of the launch date (due to license deal which were to
renegotiable), we finished the game with a crazy final development
time and a great development team. That was the key of the success of
these 10 years in Infogrames/Atari.

Q)As i've mentioned above, you've been involved with a few games that
received some rather mixed views at review and by the consumer.Did any
negative 'press' ever effect you i wonder?.I ask, as we the consumer,
let alone those who review the games, simply see what lands in our
laps, we aren't privy to what went on behind the scenes, limited
budgets, hardware issues, strict deadlines etc, so never see the big
picture.

A) It depends how the review of the game have been done. Sometimes it
was based on real facts and in that case I understood them. And
sometimes it was based just on player’s feedback and personal feeling
and in my opinion in that case it’s not journalism it’s just a
personal review

It was hard to communicate the big picture with the press, due to the
confidentiality clauses that we had.
But remember that each time you have a game released, it has been a
challenge for a dev team. Even if the result is not really good. I
think that sometimes journalists have forgot that.

Q)Whenever new hardware is announced (for example PS2 or Dreamcast),
there's always a lot of talk from the P.R departments about how
amazingly powerful the platforms are, what type of groundbreaking
games to expect etc, but does anyone ever spare a thought for the
producers of games for (then) new hardware i wonder?

A) Producers are here to meet challenges and they just make the
impossible with what they have

Q) As a producer you must have been juggling the very real issues of
deadlines, budgets, production issues, resources in terms of available
staff etc etc...so i wonder just how helpful the manufactures are in
order to get the very best from the newer systems, in the very early
days?

A) It really depends the relationship that you have in place with the
manufacturers. For the PS and the SNES, nothing was really in place
and we created the relationships for the next platforms. It was easier
with MS and Sony, Nintendo in Europe and US, Japan has been more
difficult mainly due to the distance  and the culture differences.

But all manufacturers have been business oriented and generally good partners.

Q) Le Mans 24 Hours was a flagship Dreamcast game, incredibly detailed
car models, superb draw distance, attention to detail just sublime
(brake disks glowing, vapour trails off rear spoilers, a stunning
transition from day to night etc, realistic weather effects) fluid
frame rate (30 fps even in 4 player mode) and still had a spot on
physics engine running.Plus,of course game was given 60 HZ and VGA
options.

A friend of mine actually sat and played through the entire 24 hr race
in 1 'sitting' that's how much of an impact the game had.

In terms of lavish attention to detail, you'd even included the
'flipping Mercedes' car which in real life suffered a back flip crash
at 220 MPH.....

So i'm wondering about the levels of research that went into this
game..i am of the understanding that the team attended the 1999 Le Mans
event and spoke at length to several of the racing teams, so did they
act as 'unofficial' consultants in any way?

A) I arrived at the end of this project so I don’t know what was the game
design research and job. But this game was developed by the Melbourne
House team and it was a really great time, car lovers and technically
experts in this platform.

I love this game and the team was amazing and really friendly.

Q) Sticking with DC Le Mans, would you say it 'maxed-out' the Dreamcast
hardware? or was there (no pun intended) more horsepower under the
bonnet yet to tap into?.I'm of the belief we never quite saw the DC
pushed as far as it could of been….

A) It’s probably true, I got this feedback from a lot of dev and R&D team.

Q)I've never played the PS2 version, but it's my understanding it
takes something of a 'hit' on textures etc in comparison, probably due
to PS2 having less Video Ram etc than the DC, so i wonder how you felt
the 2 hardware platforms compared, in terms of power and the
directions taken by Sega and Sony?

A) I don’t know exactly the difference between these 2 platforms but I
remember that the DC was really easy to develop instead of the PS2 was
hard and the developers has to manage each CPU uses to reach the
maximum power of this platform.

Q)Looking at another of the titles you were producer for (?) the
conversion of PS2 Stuntman to the GBA.Radically different hardware
platforms and indeed styles of play.It must of been a challenging
conversion to say the least and of all the PS2 titles and all the
platforms to convert it to...i wonder why the GBA was chosen along
with the game in question?.GBA market not short of racing games nor
conversions, but an interesting choice, but one which payed off
splendidly.

A) The conversion on other platforms were generally an editorial
decision because even if your conversion was not great or profitable,
it was important to ensure a brand exposure and awareness. But also to
propose a good variety of product for the distribution team.

Q)Looking at Eden Studios, the studio seemed to focus on attention to
detail with it's games. V-Rally 3 took criticisms of the earlier game
on-board, the tunnel-esq feel of the tracks of the 1st 2 V-Rally games
was gone, cars deformed after impact, you name it, it must of made you
proud to be associated with the studio and the titles?

A) I’ve been always proud to work with all development team.

My relationship with the founders of Eden Games and their teams is
really special because I started my career with them and they are
friends today.

Eden Games has always created high quality games for Infogrames, Atari
and EA. And they are still alive and focused on mobile games now. I
let you try the new beautiful game they have created called Gear Club.
http://gear.club

Q)It was with great sadness i learnt of the closure of Eden Studios
back in 2013 :-( i can never understand why studios of such talent are
'allowed' to close (Ensemble, Bizzare Creations, Zipper Interactive
etc etc), you'd somewhat hope with the vast resources companies
squander on crap like PS Home etc, they'd step in and secure a
studio, get them producing killer-apps for their current and future
platforms, but no…

what a cut throat industry, as someone who's moved around, is it hard
to re-establish yourself from project to project?.

A) Actually it’s hard to finish a project and manage the transition to
another project and be profitable. And our industry is moving fastly
and the size of the team is today under 20-30 for mobile games or over
100 people for PC and console games. But a mid-size studio is to hard
to handle today.

Talent is important but a good relationship with the editor and a good
vision of where the market is going is also very crucial.

Q)Time for the more standard questions....

1)Did you ever 'work' on any of the more obscure formats?
(Atari:7800/Lynx/Panther/Jaguar? or Konix Multi-System)

A) No sorry

2) Are there any 'Lost Games' (that i've not already mentioned) you
were involved in (any formats) you can tell us about?

A)We did not talked about TestDrive Unlimited 2 on PC and console, the
latest game produced by Atari before the bankrupt.

Q)what are you up to these days and any messages for your fans (or
indeed critics :-) ) out there?

A) I’m still working on innovation and I’m very interested to see
where the video games industry is going, especially with the VR!

The latest E3 was great. Video games is still passion with passionate
people. That’s a really great industry! Come in!!!

I'd very much like to thank Olivier Raffard for his time and kindness
in taking part in this interview.