| Dofus Interview |
| KeyWord: Dofus |
Date: 2006-06-19 |
Summary: Here comes the interview with Anthony Roux, one of the three founders of Ankama Studio.Let him take us into the world of Dofus
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DOFUS is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. As a mixture of video game and interactive animated cartoon, DOFUS brings a new concept within online games.
With its graphics inspired by mangas, its tactical gameplay and its scathing humour, this game is in a class of its own among other MMORPG. Experienced players are appealed by its unique fighting system which is based on strategy - quite rare in MMORPG -. Casual players also like it for being easily accessible.
Here comes the interview with Anthony Roux, one of the three founders of Ankama Studio.Let him take us into the world of Dofus.
MMOsite.com: Can you basically introduce yourself and your company to our audience?
Anthony Roux: My name is Anthony Roux (aka Tot). I¡¯m one of the three founders of Ankama Studio and the director of creation within this very same Studio. I¡¯m also the game designer of DOFUS and Dofus-Arena. Ankama is a studio ¨C which mainly makes videogames, that I created 5 years ago with my friends and partners Camille Chafer (Lead Programmer) and Emmanuel Darras (CEO). Our first videogame is DOFUS, a tactical MMORPG. And I¡¯m glad to say that it¡¯s also our first success.
 MMOsite.com: The number of Dofus users is growing stably due to its top quality. But we all know that promotion also contributes to its success. Can you tell us a little about how you promoted the game?
Anthony Roux: We are an independent studio and we want to make videogames that everyone can afford. Obviously, at the beginning we couldn¡¯t afford to set up big advertising campaigns. Fortunately for us, as soon as the DOFUS beta tests began, there had been a great by word of mouth. As it is a special MMORPG in terms of gameplay and graphics, it aroused curiosity among players. We also caught the attention of specialised journalists who were attracted by our will to create unusual videogames. And I must admit that the free version really helped as well.
MMOsite.com: Dofus is featured with cartoon-style graphical effect. When I first played Dofus, it stood out like a Japanese game. Why did you decide to choose such a style?
Anthony Roux: It¡¯s quite simple¡ We are all big fans of Japanimation, mangas, films and, of course, videogames coming from Japan or Korea. We are quite open-minded and also like things coming from the US or Europe. Yet we share a unanimous preference for Asian products. Each of us has a favorite Marvel hero while we are all fans of One Piece, Naruto or other creations of the Ghilbli Studio. Finally, should be kept in mind the fact that Flash imposed us a style with simple form easy to animate which is typically Asian.
MMOsite.com: If not reminded by the right-click menu, I won? t believe that Dofus client is entirely coded in Flash. Why did you decide to use Flash?
Anthony Roux: There are many reasons. First of all, we had a good experience of this format since we had used it to make web-based videogames. Plus, at the very begin we were only about 10 people in the studio when we started the adventure DOFUS and we didn¡¯t have much choice to make such a large scale videogame. At the time, Flash had all the qualities we were looking for: cartoon-like graphic rendering, a cross-platform access and with a final data file size small enough to be diffused. We didn¡¯t quite choose Flash; it just appeared to be the best format for us.
MMOsite.com: Dofus is a finalist in the Game category of 2006 Seattle Flashforward Film Festival. How do you feel about that?
Anthony Roux: We are delighted. To win the Best Game Prize and the Audience Prize at the Flash Forward 2006 in Seattle, and just after that the Audience Prize at the Independent Games Festival 2006 in San Jos¨¦, really comforted us in the idea that most players don¡¯t really care if the game is in 2 or 3 dimensions, whether it uses Flash or some brand new state-of-the-art game engine.
Some so called experts had told us that we¡¯d never succeed to break into the market. Those prizes just prove them wrong and this is like the icing on the cake of success.
MMOsite.com: Why did you decide to run Dofus in a free-to-play mode?
Anthony Roux: Naturally, there is a promotional goal. We aren¡¯t Blizzard and we must show people our game is worth a try and therefore it must be easy to access. I can tell you our game¡¯s great. You might believe me but you¡¯ll be completely convinced only once you¡¯ve tried DOFUS for yourself.
This is how we see things as well¡ we are gamers and even if DOFUS, Dofus-Arena and our other projects take us a lot of time, we always try new titles. As a gamer, I appreciate testing a game before buying it. How many bad games have been sold on their packaging only? With DOFUS there¡¯s no bad surprise. You like it, you subscribe. You don¡¯t like it, you move on to something else. That¡¯s it!
MMOsite.com: Will there be any new elements in Riders of the Dragoturkey, the upcoming expansion for Dofus?
Anthony Roux: There will be a great deal of novelties but the most important one will be the apparition of mounts in the game. It doesn¡¯t seem much just saying it, but we¡¯ve been working like a dog on this new functionality for months. We had a real hard time, but we succeeded. Besides the difficulties, we wanted the mounts to be more than another thing with no further interest. Mounts are an opportunity to create new professions like breeders, new related quests and to think about new fighting possibilities¡ The Dragoturkeys won¡¯t be the only mounts. We will keep on adding some in the future. Besides the mounts we will also add new maps and work on the Castle of Amakna that we had to leave aside for a while. We are also adding new functionalities on the craft professions like the signature of the items created.
MMOsite.com: Dofus-Arena is a100% PvP tactic game; what have you done to enable the gamers to enjoy combat wholeheartedly?
Anthony Roux: The original idea of Dofus-Arena was to allow players, who particularly loved the tactical fights in DOFUS but not the MMORPG aspect of the game, to happily kill each other in arenas. We could have simply cut and paste the DOFUS fighting system, put it into a nice game box and stuck a price on it. But that¡¯s just not how we work.
So, the main DOFUS principles can be found in this new game but they¡¯ve been completed with novelties. First, you can control more than one character at once therefore increasing the fight possibilities. Then, we intensified the tactical aspect adding in a whole lot of new functionalities such as the integration of a cards system, events launched at random in the game or that can be launched by the team leader. We also increased the level of details of the characters and meticulously worked on the game maps design with traps and obstacles that will have an influence on the strategy. There will also be a ranking of the best players according to different criteria, plus the possibility to record your own fights and share the videos with other players. We want to organize online tournaments, and why not IRL tournaments in the future.
There will be more surprises but it¡¯s too soon to talk about all of them now as some of them will only be added after the release of the game this summer.
MMOsite.com: Players are highly anticipating your new title Wakfu. With the precious experience in developing Dofus, we believe, you will make Wakfu another hit game. Would you mind revealing a little more about it to our readers?
Anthony Roux: DOFUS is our first game. It will always be our favorite, no matter what happens. That¡¯s why it will always be updated and active even after the release of Wakfu. However, Wakfu symbolises a new step for us. Now that we have experience, the appropriate team and enough funds, we want our next MMORPG to be even more impressive. If you could hardly believe DOFUS was exclusively made with Flash, then Wakfu is going to come as a big surprise. We¡¯re going to integrate into Wakfu everything we couldn¡¯t do with DOFUS and always put off the limits of the creation with Flash. It might sound a bit presumptuous but that¡¯s how we see it and want it to be. In the Wakfu storyline, the Universe is a vast virgin land, with no civilization. Players will have to build, to maintain or to destroy houses, villages, marketplaces etc. They will have to consider the fauna and flora and respect the environment to preserve the ecosystem. Seasons will also have an influence on the characteristics of the characters and their environment. On the gameplay level, we want to keep the principle of tactical turn-based fights integrating real time, which is actually a good compromise. It will also be possible to join in an already-started fight. Plus, fights will no longer take place in a parallel world but directly onto the map where it started. Players arriving on a map will be able to see the fight live, either take part in it or ignore it. There will be larger scrolls on maps. This will make it possible to play on atmosphere establishment and will multiply the script possibilities to surprise the player.
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