Memoirs of the head of the developers of The Division and Far Cry 3 will be released in Russia in October. We publish an excerpt

“The Universe of Video Games” is essentially Polfeldt’s memoir. Together with the author, readers can visit the cramped basement in Stockholm, where the developer’s career was born, and walk to his office in Hollywood. And in parallel, to see how the gaming industry was changing at the same time.

The publishing house “Peter” is engaged in publishing the book in Russian. You can place a pre-order on the company’s website.

Below is an excerpt from the “Video Game Universe”.

***

One day, at the very beginning of our acquaintance, Tommy Francois from Ubisoft headquarters asked me if Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft and one of the founding brothers of the company, knew who I was. This happened just a few months after Massive was acquired by a French publisher, so it wasn’t entirely clear what Tommy was trying to tell me.

— Well, yes, probably… Depends on what you mean,” I replied. “He knows I exist.

— Hmm, good. I wanted to say that you don’t have to worry if you’re not on his radar. It usually takes him about five years to notice someone,” Tommy said and blew some smoke out of a cigarette that he had just rolled by hand without looking.

Five years?! I pondered what I had heard. Probably, it was logical in the world of the major league. Most likely, a considerable stream of people passes through a person like him, each of whom makes serious promises, has charm and has some great ideas that can change the industry. Yves knew that the essence of the gaming industry is not to make promises, see opportunities or generate new ideas, but to bring them to life, and, unfortunately, most people are simply not capable of this. It seemed to me that being able to just walk into his office should mean that you’re damn good at doing something. Five years. No problem.

But in the end I was noticed a little faster. In 2012, just three years and nine months after acquiring Massive, I received my first personal email from Yves. “David,” he wrote, “I don’t have your phone number. Send him, please. I need to call you.” I obediently answered by sending my phone number, and began to wait. At the time, I didn’t think much about what all this might mean, but in my experience, bad news usually came through the HR department or the legal department, so I wasn’t too worried.

A few days have passed. I was at a Rogue design review meeting when the phone rang. The call came from a French number.

And let it be vain, but I couldn’t help but amuse my ego by showing everyone the phone screen before leaving the room and walking briskly to the elevator, making it clear with my whole appearance that I was busy with an important matter. This phone call was actually from Yves, and I didn’t want to keep him waiting.

— You’re going to E3, right? Yves asked me.

— Yes, and I am very glad about it.

I’ve always liked E3, and I wanted him to know that I appreciate Ubisoft sending me there. I stormed through the Massive Studio cafeteria and headed to my office, which was packed with memorabilia and high-end merchandise, both our own and from companies I admired.

— What are you doing next Wednesday? the boss asked.

“To be honest, I don’t know yet,” I replied. — The schedule is constantly changing, but I can free up Wednesday. What are you planning?

“I want you to go to a meeting,— Yves said.

I haven’t even reached my office yet, and we’ve already moved on to the important part of the call.

— Of course, no problem. What kind of meeting is this? — I was intrigued.

— I can’t say yet. Just make time for her. I’ll fill you in later. I have to go.

He hung up. Leaving me completely in the dark. For a while I couldn’t think of anything else and frantically tried to figure out how to get more information. Meeting with Mr. or Mrs. X?

But I didn’t manage to find out anything new about the mysterious meeting. And, finally sitting on a plane ready to fly to Los Angeles, I wasn’t even sure that it would take place at all. However, before I set foot on American soil, I developed a theory about who X could be, and if I turned out to be right, my career should have reached a whole new level. We tirelessly continued to work on Rogue and Far Cry 3, but I had a feeling that this meeting could lead to something fundamentally different. It could be a defining moment for Massive.

I don’t believe in luck. Of course, in elite sports there are moments when the ball bounces off the post or the defender’s leg straight into the goal, but nevertheless luck is not something supernatural. Luck begins many, many years before a football player scores a goal that ricochets off his foot. Luck began when the player was seven or eight years old and he started playing football several times a week, luck accumulated over ten years of practice and intense dedication before the player got the chance to play with the best. I am convinced that in order to be in the right place at the right time and experience a few seconds of luck, you need to devote a huge part of your life to this and make a fantastically long chain of decisions.

Unfortunately, I must note that, in my opinion, bad luck is arranged differently. Bad luck seems terribly illogical and happens spontaneously, falling on you like snow on your head. At E3 in 2012, we showed the Far Cry 3 cooperative game mode at a Sony press conference. Everything went well enough, but still we were on the verge of failure and we knew it perfectly well.

Tuesday passed, and just when I started to think that the meeting would not take place, I received a message from Yves telling me when and where to meet him the next day. To my surprise, it turned out that Serge was coming with us. Everything always got better with Serge, he brought a pleasant creative component to any meeting, even when no one was expecting it and there was no need for it. As if he could not allow himself to be deprived of pleasure and was very good at seeing fragile beauty in everything.

We were driving a shiny black car with darkened windows towards Manhattan Beach.

— You know we’ve done a couple of games with Hollywood, right? Yves asked.

— Yes, of course, — I replied and thought about the elegant King Kong game that Ubisoft had developed together with Peter Jackson a few years earlier.

Embarrassed, I couldn’t help but compare it to the game that Kim and I once created for The Third Wave and which was infinitely far from big budgets, fame and international success.

“Usually we don’t like to invest in intellectual property that we don’t own, but if the opportunity is very good, then sometimes we participate in such a partnership,” he continued.

— It makes sense. Is this one of those possibilities?

—Yes, that’s right,” Yves said with a restrained smile, as if he was going to make a gift that he had chosen for me with special insight, and was proud of it. — Do you know who is the most successful film director of all time?

“I know,” I said, but in the middle of a word I realized that I had mistakenly thought about George Lucas and Star Wars. I stopped myself before saying anything else. The most successful filmmaker of all time? Wait a minute, this must be James Cameron, the writer and director of Titanic and Avatar.

“Well, then you’ve already guessed who we’re going to meet now: James Cameron,” Eve said, as if it was something completely ordinary, and busied himself with something important on his mobile.

I haven’t heard anything more amazing in a long time. We were still driving through the endless highways of Los Angeles, and I took advantage of the rest of the way to quickly read about Cameron and just as quickly watch his interview on YouTube. Cameron talked about the workflow and ethics. I needed to understand his train of thought as soon as possible.

Cameron this, Cameron that. Intensive on Cameron in express mode. I really liked everything I read and heard, especially I was impressed by his uncompromising attention to quality. He promoted the idea of quality almost aggressively, certainly much more aggressively than anyone I knew, and this certainly struck fear into his subordinates. In one of the interviews I watched in the backseat of a limo, Cameron incidentally said that he would not work with someone who is not a world-class specialist. It sounded arrogant, but his reasoning made sense and echoed my own: we already know that making the world’s best games and the world’s best movies is difficult. This realization wakes up in my head every day even before I get out of bed and drink my morning coffee. So why do I need colleagues who will tell me about what I already know? Is it difficult? I already know this, I don’t need to report it. I live with this knowledge. The only people I really want to work with are those who offer solutions, especially for the most difficult tasks.

In an interview, Cameron stated that he could not work with people who said the obvious. I quietly admired his ability to be himself and speak bluntly. He didn’t ask his team, “How are you feeling?” or “How can I help you?”. He just looked people straight in the eye and asked: “What will you bring to the project?” And of course, he apparently asked the same question to himself, constantly whipping himself up to give a better result than expected, even now that he has already written and directed two of the most successful films in the history of mankind. Such a person is not easy to please.

We left the car in a three-story parking lot next to the Lightstorm office. A stern guard measured us with a glance and let us into the building after careful questioning. The elevator doors opened on the floor we needed, and we were immediately led into the conference room past Cameron’s curious personal souvenirs. There were original props from “Aliens”, “Terminator”, “Avatar”, “Abyss”… I saw the original Conan the Barbarian sword that Arnold Schwarzenegger once gave to Cameron. It was impossible not to feel elated, and I tried to absorb all this into my memory. It flashed through my head that I might never be closer to Hollywood in my life than I am now. It was an invaluable experience for a fan. But, of course, we didn’t come there as fans.

In a typical American conference room with air conditioning at the Arctic mark and a thick blue carpet muffling the sound of our footsteps, we were greeted by John Landau, producer of Titanic and Avatar. As usual in Hollywood, as I now know, there were several other nameless people hanging around here. It seems that famous people in the USA like a magnet attract whole retinues that follow them everywhere. Is it because celebrities want it? Or is there any need for this? I do not know, and I do not have an entourage either, so I cannot answer these questions.

Landau seemed incredibly nice, but I felt a strange tension. The famous director was late, and the small talk stuttered and creaked like an old truck on a bumpy road.

— How is E3 going?

— good.

[PAUSE]

— Yes, that’s good.

— good. Yes, good.

[PAUSE]
[PAUSE]
[PAUSE]

— How is Avatar-2?

[AWKWARD PAUSE]
[PAUSE]

— Let’s wait for Jim, okay?

[PAUSE]
[AWKWARD PAUSE]
[CLOCK TICKING]

Normally I would have been happy to join in the conversation and help break the ice, but I was new to this company and I thought my role was to sit quietly until everything was properly sorted out. As a Swede, I have very little interest in etiquette, but even I was clear that in this case it was better to shut up.

An awkward silence was broken by a baritone.

— Sorry I’m late. Is there coffee here?

Cameron arrived and immediately took the initiative. In 2009, when the movie “Avatar” premiered, Ubisoft released a game based on Cameron’s space saga. Today, with hindsight and after much discussion, it’s easy to understand why the first Avatar game was a complex project that could be interpreted in different ways. And Lightstorm then made some conclusions, while Ubisoft came to others. But regardless of who and what thought about the Avatar game: The Game, the contract between the companies contained a clause that gave Ubisoft the right to make a second game based on the sequel to the film, if it comes out. According to Yves and Serge, the right moment has come to introduce the new Ubisoft studio (Massive!) the Lightstorm company hoped that this would open a new page in the history of cooperation, which by that time was somewhat overshadowed and at the same time still had huge potential.

This clause of the contract had an end date that was slowly approaching. And so the question of when Avatar-2 is expected to be released was crucial. If the release of the Avatar sequel was delayed, it would mean that the contract with Ubisoft would no longer cover digital rights. No direct answers were given to our questions, and it seemed to me that the representatives of Lightstorm met with us just out of politeness. It seemed that they themselves had not yet decided on the dates of the sequel, and in this case they could not help but realize that the contract was expiring, freeing them from any obligations to create another game with Ubisoft. Or, I suggested, after some thought, they plan to start looking for new partners as soon as they are released from the existing contract, having studied all available options for studios, technologies, publishers and budget. If I was right, then this put us in direct competition with almost all good developers in the world. Not the brightest prospect.

Yves and Serge did a great job of presenting Massive to Cameron, highlighting the many advantages of our engineering skills, which was the only argument that led Lightstorm to barely noticeable excitement. But the famous director and the famous producer were restrained and did not show their emotions. Nothing could be read on their faces. The director energetically directed, led the meeting to where he needed, practically directing all of us as actors. The producer was cheerful and friendly. He took on the role of a good-natured partner, while carefully choosing every word and every gesture. I was beginning to understand how they managed to make such great films together. I looked at all this, feeling like a voiceless bride who is persistently wooed by a skeptical prince.

And just when we were about to leave, Cameron suddenly looked me straight in the eye and asked the first question, which was not related to technology.

— Here you are. What do you think “Avatar” is about? – he asked.

“Hooray,” I thought. I’ve been preparing for this moment ever since I realized who we were going to meet. James Cameron is a man who cares about quality, ethics and the creative process, not money and business. The question he asked me was a signal for action. Sitting in the back seat of a limo on the way here, I spent a few minutes coming up with clever and unexpected answers, even if not specifically to this one, but to a million different questions about “Avatar”. With great self-confidence and pride, I prepared to answer. I expected that I would say something philosophical and thoughtful elegantly now. My inner copywriter just had to find the right words, but he seems to have had a lunch break…

— “Avatar”… — I said and made a dramatic pause to gain time, and also to make sure that everyone’s attention was focused on me. — …”Avatar” is a film about the world.

Cameron looked me in the eye for a second, and then (when I was starting to panic) shrugged his shoulders in disappointment. He wasn’t impressed.

“No,” he said, “not about the world. Avatar is a film about the struggle for what you believe in.

Damn, damn, damn, I thought. “You have to be such an idiot!”

Mentally, I have already begun a long emotional fall from the stratosphere of my imaginary Hollywood career straight to the editing room floor, like a cut piece of a bad video.

Before I knew it, we were back in the parking lot and in the limo. I blamed myself for failing the most important audition I’ve ever been to. To my surprise, Yves didn’t look worried or disappointed at all. He was busy looking at emails on his phone, having already moved on to some other business.

“It looks like their trust has yet to be won,” he said absently.

And I couldn’t disagree with him.