AT: For a long time I used to wake up to the smell of the café machine, light a cigarette, grab a pain au chocolat at the corner bakery and ride the metro to work thinking about how videogames would be the future of all entertainment. That was before I moved to the U.S.-Manhattan- (after an 18-month stop in Montreal), married a girl from Chicago, had a daughter and got my green card. Now I wake up in Los Gatos, CA- the Internet is always on via DSL, I have a cell phone with SMS capabilities and a Blackberry next to my bed- early in the morning and within 30 minutes I am able to go through the headers of the emails from Europe and Asia, the main global news and, of course, the "essential" look at the opening of the NASDAQ. As head of the product development department, I am in charge of a team of producers living in the U.S. and Europe and of all Q&A, testing and submission as well our internal studio. Based on an original game idea or a license, a marketing vision or a manager’s whim, from the earliest stage to the final submission, my group is in charge of making it happen, finding developers, working on the creative side of the design, checking milestones, and managing relationships with Marketing and Sales to "sell" the products internally and externally. I have to be able to adapt very quickly and very often in order to understand the different inputs from all these different people who are coming with different agendas. Every day is different but I deal with most of these things on a very regular basis. I also have to travel about 30% of my time to visit our various development partners.

MC: Ours is an industry that grew from the efforts of the self-taught operating on shoestring budgets to the corporate structure with colossal funds. Recently, you and I discussed the importance you place on higher education in creating a dream management team. Would you please share your thoughts on education as it relates to business management in the game industry?

AT: It is a touchy subject but the facts are there. Our industry is maturing at the speed of light, the game budgets are rising by the quarter and within five years it will be common to see an average budget around $10M. That means that an executive producer in charge of around three to five titles will be managing a very important financial risk. If we compare our business to the movie business, TV or even advertising businesses, a lot of the key management people have very impressive academic backgrounds. Of course some doors will still be open to those who want to start from the ground up: i.e., Test, Associate Producer, Producer, etc., because at the end only the talent counts. Still, someone with a very solid business or industry management education background who understands the creative process is more prepared to oversee important projects and hundreds of people and will have a faster path to the top of the organization.

MC: Having worked in Paris, Montreal, New York and now San Jose, you seem well qualified to comment on the differences in the game development business environment in different regions of the world. Other than the obvious variations in language and croissants, what are the noticeable differences in the game industry from region to region?

AT: The most important thing is the differences in the definition of the concept "fun" and "entertainment". I discovered, for instance, that if you talk to a Chinese game designer or a French one and start using these terms without understanding their culture you won’t be able to get the results you want. Just take a look at a chart from Famitsu and you’ll see that half of the products in the Japanese Top 10 will not even make it to the states. Americans are very big on sports and big licenses, Germans love RTS and car simulation, people in the UK are sensitive to beautiful graphics and the Japanese are still fans of Square-like RPG games.

I personally believe that the majority of the worldwide successes are going to come more and more from the U.S. because entertainment is part of this country and no other places in the world have a passion for entertainment like the U.S. Gamywood is made in USA.

MC: What distinguishes business management in the game industry from business management in other industries? How much does the creative side of this industry impact corporate philosophy?

MC: What goes into your decision process when deciding whether or not a movie would be a good title to license for a game? And at one point do you enter the process? For example, as I recall, the Ecks vs. Sever game BAM! released for GBA came out far in advance of the film on which the game is based.

MC: In her review of the movie, the film critic for the Toronto Star said "Some movies were made for the big screen, some for the small screen, and some, like Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, were made for the palm screen." Can a good game thrive even when the associated movie falls flat?

AT: I’ve heard this question several times and it always infuriates me. I created the Ubi Soft licensing group and a lot of my fellow producers were giving me a hard time for the same reason.

When you think of Stanley Kubrick, Riddley Scott, Spielberg, etc. does anybody blame these guys for using successful novels to make their movies? Does it lower their level of creativity? Our expertise is interactivity and we can always use a license and create very original gameplay. How many original high-quality stories do you have in original games (I mean novel material)? This is a wrong debate. It is how you do it that makes the difference. That being said, I understand the frustration when you have to work on something that doesn’t inspire you or when you feel that the only reason is marketing. A real good licensed game is when the game extends the experience of the license and gives you the opportunity to create your own version of the movie/book/etc. or to continue the fantasy with your own personal input.

MC: Are there any stories or ideas that you’ve ever contemplated for a game, but decided it just couldn’t work from a marketing perspective?

AT: 2002/2003 is the transition from the "Wild, Wild West" stage to the maturity stage of our business. Big guys are getting bigger, small companies are getting smaller and the ones in between are having a very hard time. This applies to both publishers and developers. The Japanese Crash (in terms of videogames) is also warning us that our business has to be innovative and always bring new experiences to the audience in order to stay successful. We have some serious creative challenges in front of us. For the moment, videogames are so empowering that it is difficult to play with the spectrum of emotions you can feel with other types of media. In the movies "you care", in games "you are" and while you might care about the life crisis of an old painter in the 50’s (if the story telling is well done), you wouldn’t be very excited to play him. Most of the time you want to have the thrill of doing things that you want to do in your fantasies like being a spy, a knight, a city mayor or simply God. Sometimes you just want to do things that you wouldn’t be able to do in real life, like slashing people in two, wrecking 20 cars a minute, jumping 30 feet in the air, spinning three times and landing gracefully on top of a building while aiming with your massive gun at the head of a nasty alien monster who came to invade your backyard and steal your collector Atari games…You get my point.

AT: The first element would be all the people who have worked with me over the years (minus two). The second element is the fairness of my judgment because fairness brings respect and trust, especially when you are giving feedback to a specialist like an engineer or a graphic artist. The third and most important one would be an incredible amount of luck.

AT: I miss the fresh and wonderful bread and croissants that you can find at any boulangerie. I miss the cafes with rude waiters where you can see people hanging out for hours, at anytime of the day. I miss the 350 movie theaters where you can always find the latest movies--even that Japanese movie with Hungarian subtitles. Most of all I miss hearing the French people always complaining about American culture while they are waiting on line to see the next Hollywood blockbuster, eating at McDonalds and listening to Britney Spears and Eminem.