so if Japan’s the best why did you go to Korea yes legally speaking I had zero

protection and for me and my family how do you enable the experts take charge of

I guess their department and I think also it depend on very excited for this conversation

cuz there’s so many ways we could take it and I want to start with reading your LinkedIn because it’s the craziest

LinkedIn I’ve seen in games so we have managing director vice president at

Gameloft Japan managing director of Blizzard Korea consultant to Bethesda

managing director of huge games a mobile gaming company then pivot to head of

international operations at storytale an audiobook company and now you’re the founder of Ace Consulting Group where

you coach gaming businesses and businesses in general an incredible rap sheet so my

question is when you’re out a party what do you introduce yourself as

um just as myself you know just as just as Alexi I think that at the end of the

day what you can see with uh with my profile and on on my LinkedIn is someone

who had very large experience but that was building years after years and it

was not coming like just in one or two years it it’s basically it’s 25 years

that you just sum up in in few in few bullet points so this is something that

we can go through but it takes some time basically for sure like there’s so many

things you can do so I think Alexis I’m Alexis is the only way we can actually make it consistent you need to be also

humble you know because it’s basically you are what you are and what is the most important is your personality and

what you have accomplished is important but maybe the most important is what you will accomplish in the

future very good point so there’s a lot of places we could take this so with this conversation because there’s so

many things we can get into I thought it’d be useful for everyone listening at home we would kind of dive in to the

different chapters of your career so when you first started the first couple years kind of the two to 10 years of

your career like the more mid-level and then when you went to super senior and now you’ve become ultimately like a

consultant so I would like to get advice for every type of person in the games industry today so let’s start at the

beginning so the role had before Game Loft got you the role at Game Loft so

could you tell us how the market researcher role kind of shaped your career Yeah so basically as you can hear

I’m French so we had we had a system before in France is that when you finish

your studies you have to do a military service and there was one part of it where you can do your military service

working for a French company abroad and this is how I ended up in in the France

Telecom Group and my myself I was I was I had a very big passion for Japan I

wanted to live there I wanted to walk there since I was a child so basically I

was selecting some company over there so I went to France Telecom Group and then

from there because I was so passionated about all the game industry and it was

uh at that time it was the arrival of the Dreamcast of the PlayStation

2 I became kind of very popular internally because each time someone had

a question about a console gaming or whatever all the heads were turning to

me so if you remember uh Dreamcast was the first connected console that was the

first one and then after there was the PlayStation with the with the PlayStation modem and at that time in

France Telecom everyone was searching the kind of smartbox device something to

enter you know the the room and these devices became extremely interesting for

the R&D and for the business center of France Telecom Group so they needed to have someone to talk to these people and

at a very young age I had the chance basically um to to negotiate and to meet

with um very high level people either in

Sega or in PlayStation especially and uh I was very

lucky when I was 23 years old I was basically almost every day in the

basically in the in the Office of the President of Sega so I was very blessed

in that and uh I met also very high level people of Sony and Sony

PlayStation and from that basically I was ented by one of the subsidiary of

France Telecom and they were they were doing basically a development and

Publishing and they wanted to have someone acting as a country manager over there to do some Licensing in and out

and basically uh this is what I did so I jumped in I said wow I can I can buy and

I can sell games this is everything I like I need to visit the studios I need to visit the different Publishers so I

jump into the into the Bagon on this one and um we didn’t have triaa titles so

basically we had like AA titles but um I became kind of legendary because it was

very French oriented content but sold everything in Japan everything so all

the titles more than 50 titles and I was buying also few PS2 title especially the

Techo titles I was buying like project zero like rigar all these kind of games

on PS2 I was buying for the European market especially and uh basically this

is I was connecting with everyone at that time I was negotiating with Capcom

I bought Street Fighter the first version for the mobile uh at that time it was still WAP and this is basically

because I was in a carer because I was so much into game because I had so many

connection that uh one day I was contacted by the managing director of

Ubisoft it was the the parent company of Gameloft at that time and basically they

asked me are you interested in working in Gameloft I say w it beginning of the

big vure yeah massive Adventure so a couple things I want to touch on there you mentioned being in the office almost

every day with the president of Sega right yes for a project like for more than six months yes it was a very big

project yes tell me about that what is it like to be in the room with someone

like that especially at a young age yes so uh of course at the beginning you know it’s you are in between like you

are super excited every day and uh it was for me it was like a dream come true

I mean I was so well known in Sega at that time I was even not entering like

the visitors I was just entering like the employees like from the back you know of of the building uh but you are

every day excited in fact I I didn’t want to go to my desk anymore I just

wanted to to find a way a good reason to go to Sega to visit them they had a fantastic building at that time and um

what was I learned a lot I was very lucky to meet many many um good people

around me and uh they were acting as a kind of a mentor but I will say that

what really impressed me with at that time the president of Sega is how much

humble he was that was extremely impressive to me he was the guy that

basically he was the he was the the creator of the Sega Master System he

created the Mega Drive uh the Mega Drive CD he created the Saturn so basically he

was responsible of all the different piece of Hardware that I loved when I was a kid everything so for me it it was

like meeting a legend but basically he was so humble and he was saying

something also strike me he told me I never planned to become basically the CEO of Sega it’s basically I inherited

because at that time SE was acquired by a bigger company called CSK and the the

chairman of CSK was a very very very old guy I could meet him also very

impressive guy he created an Empire of30 billion doar and this guy said for Sega

what we need as a CEO is the guy who loves the most Sega and it was this guy

and his name was um I mean he’s probably is still alive his name is hiis

and he was a fantastic person so of course after you know there was all the problem because of the Dreamcast failure

but I can tell you as a human being as a manager as someone who love and respect

video game I couldn’t start higher than that in my in my career I was so

lucky what did you learn from him when it came to like managing

people I think that uh basically you should always

you should always work with passion it’s like if there is something that you can learn from it is if you have a real

passion basically it will bring you very very far from where you are today it can

lead you very quickly to anywhere worldwide uh you know there is like a

the six different degrees that you can meet someone who know someone Etc so that’s exactly the way and yes you need

to have a little bit of but also to jump on the on the right project the second

thing is to be very humble and third thing is that even if you are I would

say in a very high status position you should not disiz the other people that

you are meeting you should always take very seriously everyone whatever is

their age and whatever is their role because they can have something very interesting to say and of course the the

fact that the guy was humble probably it’s coming from the fact the wot that is Japanese and japanes in general are

very humble people so he not the only one but for me that was striking because

I could see the difference from the culture I was coming from and basically the people I was meeting in Japan at

that time and you would be surprised in fact you in my career I have found more

people at uh I would say lower stage in their career being arrogant than very

important people it’s most of the time the very important people are very humble because they know how they went

from the beginning of their career to their end of their career and basically

they do not take it for granted and they are very respectful of other because they know it’s not easy so you always

you know when you are at a later stage in your career what you find in I would

say younger people is yourself when you were young and this is what you like and

that’s why myself I always like to see people who are passionated people who really enjoy what they are doing and

people who are ambitious and people who want to succeed I really enjoy myself working with this kind of personality

trait because that was always the way I was yeah yeah when I’m reflecting on my

time in agency recruitment I always noticed the people that ended up getting the jobs or were

always booked as a contractor that is one thing they always had was passion and to be fair I say very close second

is that humility you could be the best developer in the world but if you’re not passionate or you’re not humble or you

don’t come across as someone who’s willing to learn even if you’ve kind of done it all I think that is such a big

mistake so to speak like if you aren’t humbling yourself with your results like I have this one example where the

candidate didn’t have the best experience it wasn’t practical in a gaming studio but they had so many side

projects and the passion was you could feel it on the video call they ended up getting the job and they did incredible

he wouldn’t have got that job without the passion and they could have hired someone with more experience this was at

a mobile gaming studio but they didn’t and it’s because the passion came through so I just really want to Second the passion part it’s so important and

it it also um makes you understand that you need to know your place is whatever

is your position in life wherever you are whatever the stage you never know

what will happen you never know what you will experience so this is you meet humble people because it was

it has been a humbling experience for themselves and basically you will go and you will go through exactly the same

experience in your life you know at that time this guy was the CEO of Sega but

few years after he was not anymore you know after the the the Dreamcast stopped and they they stopped doing Hardware so

basically this is just some kind of phase but basically he will never lose my respect this is what he has won and

this is something very important and the second thing is that whatever is your position even if you are managing

director founder super success uccessful is like everything is a kind of

subjective you can be someone very important in the gaming industry but gaming industry is not everything

worldwide I mean how do you compare the best CEO in the gaming industry compared to El for example are you going to space

or what are you doing exactly what are you contributing so you know you need to put yourself into perspective that’s

extremely important I felt like you used the word luck a lot but

there was probably a reason you were in the role where you were working with

these kind of high Influence People I’m guessing likeability is a big part of

this so I I was just wondering like I have a question here so when you’re

hiring is likeability I feel like is a big factor but how do we break that down like why do you think there are people

who are just more likable than not H good point um um I think

that it’s not just you are likable because you are likable is because

basically uh you are showing the sign that makes you likeable like for example

if you can create a trust a kind of bond and that’s kind of important if you are

also showing some sign that you are definitely interested in what you are doing when I was talking about the

passion I wanted to say also at that time that when people are passionated

about what they are doing they will see that their eyes they are just shining you know it’s completely it’s completely

different you know there is a kind of spark in their eyes that they love what

they are doing and they are so passionated you cannot stop them to talk about it and what they are saying and

that that creates a kind of connection and also what is very important is to

see what people are inter interested in so I think that when you are meeting someone who really much into something

you should try also to try to dig as what the person knows about it what why

they are telling you something and what they are trying to show for me at the

end of the day you know you have always the hard skill and the soft skill right

and basically the art skill let’s say you receive 500 rume basically you can

make like okay with the filters you can get or you you just BR by yourself you will get all the guys okay I need this

kind of level of Education this kind of training or whatever is like experience

in I don’t know marketing coding and etc etc but at the end of the day what will make the difference is the personality

does this person will fit the company the company culture the company

objectives will this person do you think this person will work well with the rest of the group and of course it really

depends so I will say that since the covid things have changed

a little bit because basically uh the mechanics and the Dynamics of the team

group has changed a little bit because there are much more people working either hybrid either remote but

basically this is what is important myself I always like to meet people face to face because you can really much much

better connect with with the person even if you are just like if you are just having a drink with

someone you can know so much more about the person than just the resume it’s just like and and to make people talk

about what they like what is their hobbies and why they applied and Etc

this is what is important because you can connect the dot you can see if people are very smart you can see also

if people are passionated you can see if if people are kind of logical and also

if their personality will fit what you need flipping it to the candidate now

would you argue that if you put yourself in a situation where you can meet the

studio in person would you argue that is a really key part of like I guess the

job seeking process because right now people may be focusing on the remote side I’m wondering because you mentioned

being in person is so important to you is is it also important for the person looking for the job no I don’t think so

I think that uh since the covid things have changed basically the the the way

of working has changed I think it’s still important basically to meet people face to face but you do not need to do

it at the interview stage or at the beginning you can meet people after you

know when there is a big event of the company and uh I think also it has to

work with trust I think that everyone worldwide took a lesson with the covid

you know there was like there was like can we work remotely can the world work

remotely and basically we prove it’s possible because it’s based on trust and

I think that of course there are so many I will say many minor things during

the covid but also some very good points is that basically especially for the manager they understood that they can

trust their team to work remotely they also also for many managers learned that basically they do not need to do

micromanagement it’s basically you can let the people work Some people prefer to work super early morning I have met

many people like that some people prefer to work late at night as long as the job is done it’s good so I think it was not

so much learning for the I would say for the employees but that was definitely

much more learning for the managers

if that’s the case I wonder why do you see the big push now of people bringing people back to the office you think

especially from the big p companies well because there is uh right

now I mean if we are talking about the gaming industry it’s a there is a kind of um there is a little bit of kind of

Crisis economic crisis that all the studios are facing and of course when

there is more pressure especially this is a financial pressure right now there is always like more pressure to deliver

result equals that you want to create the pressure on the people so basically

telling them we are all in the same room and we are all fighting for it and we need to deliver and we need to have the

deadline and we need to meet them and uh that’s it and there is some Milestone

and it’s very very important and I think it’s in a way it can be a good thing to

meet and then to be in the the office but at the same time I think that again the companies are not very

logical I think during the covid they were saying okay everyone is working remotely it was more or less working

well I would say of course it was complicated at the beginning especially for the big studios when you when you

need to manage all the different tools and everything but it was done but then

after saying everyone needs to come back otherwise you would be fired that I think that’s completely wrong

it’s going into exactly the opposite so I think that one extreme or the other extreme are never good yeah seems to me

like a bit shortsighted potentially or potentially like a reason to like reduce

headcount wonder if that’s a reason sometimes but like you said it’s different for different Studios like I

think if you’re a very very large studio it is hard to manage remotely but from what I understand it’s not

impossible you know it’s uh probably this is something that we will uh we will discuss more later into the podcast

but uh for me that I would say this is one of the issues in the gaming industry

is that this industry was always lacking some kind of sense of maturity and this is something that you

could say let’s say like 20 or 30 years ago because it was still young but now

we have an industry that is like more or less let’s say 50 years old and it’s

it’s not like it’s gaining some maturity it’s like it’s rebooting itself you know

like every few years it’s coming back so you have the the Publishers and the

studios they are recruiting by hundreds or thousands of people and then they fire everyone you need to work remotely

but then after you have to come back and that’s one of the reason in fact of why

I was creating a Consulting to to try to help Publishers and developers basically

to raise their awareness about the decision making is basically to get some

guidance into what is the good decision for the company and not to be so much a

shortsighted shortterm short-term view in your decision I think this it has been always

this problem in the industry and it was okay before it was smaller

but now we have a $200 billion industry we have more people than ever we have

seen since the beginning of the year tremendous number of people that have been laid off and this is something that

could have been prevented so I think this is a big problem of the industry

and one day or I don’t know when exactly we will need to to move from that stage

to to have the right management the right skill the right decision making we

cannot continue that way that’s not that’s not fair for the people that’s

not basically fair for all the families around the people and it’s definitely

not good business practice it’s not good management either I will

say could agree more and it sounds like there’s a solution like the Consulting

Group from my understanding you’re helping those people like hopefully get that matur Prett up and I want to dig

deep on the reasons but before I do that I want to ask for Game Loft so that was

your first kind of massive company where you were like managing over 100 people

so I wanted to ask you what did you learn from managing over a hundred people that you wish you knew when you

first started I would say that there every day is different every day there are some

problems that needs to be fixed and that

probably um you should take it like let’s say less by hearts and uh

basically you can sometime you can feel with the stress a little bit burnout so

you need to I think that you need to relax and basically to understand that

there is the long term and myself especially because I was I was young at

that time every day was like the new fight you know there is always something

new and you are trying your best but um I think that in respect

retrospectively with uh my close to 14 years in game left there are many things

that I would have done differently and uh at the same time you know it’s I

would say this is Growing Pains you know when uh when people ask me how do you become managing

director in fact it’s not like just I applied to the position it was not like

that I was I was recruited to manage the business for Game Loft at that time we

didn’t know if we will do basically licensing licensing out of game LOF IPS

or games or basically if we will become a publisher in Japan and I was alone I

started aone so it’s not like suddenly you arrive there is 100 people that came

later on I was growing one and then after 6 months we became two 6 months

again we were five and then suddenly we became 25 then 50 then 100 then 150

until we be we became the the largest foreign game developer and publisher in

Japan but it took like three to four years to arrive at that State and it was

also due to the the way that the mobile industry was organized or how it was

different in Japan compared to to Western countries and uh there are many different reason but myself when people

ask me for example how do you define yourself I always say I am a business

development manager by heart I was doing licensing many many times I was doing

business in in many different ways and at the same time I became managing director and this is a position that I

love as a general manager because I like to have holistic view of what’s

happening in a company and I like to to try to help the different department and

division to improve themsel I can see the big picture and this is something

that I really I think that I’m very good at uh sorry this is not so humble but I

have done it for 20 years this is something I feel very very confident so

it’s the position of managing director is something that is growing on you but there is also growing pains and The

Growing Pains there you will make multiple mistakes that you will learn

from your mistake little by little you’re not trained on how to

manage 50 100 150 people I feel like you learn that on the job so you mentioned

mistakes there I was wondering if someone’s going through that themselves like what’s the difference of managing

20 people versus 150 people and how

like when did you feel like you got the skills like what was the kind of was there like a turning point is there like

a a moment where you realized whoa these I need to change the way I’m managing I think that when uh basically when you

are in a very flat organization again that was a different time but when you are in a very flat organization you are

the best and you have 20 people basically you have to manage everyone one by one almost and this is much more

demanding and basically you feel more the pressure I think that when you have a company that is uh starting to to be

organized growing and especially I would say in my case when we reached 50 people

in Japan it became easier in the sense that we were organizing ourself so I had

someone to help me for the admin someone for legal someone for uh the production

and after you recruit some producer so you get more organized so you are working with your lead this is what is

important and I will say that what is very important when you are

managing a company is that you your leads are extremely important people

people you surround yourself with I would say you need to consider them as

of course they are your colleagues but collaborators Partners it’s always good to consider them as partner they are the

one that will make the company run you are here to guide the company to give a

kind of vision and to structure the company and to take the right decision but eventually you will have some people

who will do I will say the the the job by themselves so you you get you recruit

people who are experts in their field it’s changing the dynamic a little bit and I prefer when the company are very

well organized it’s much easier to work I think and also myself I’m a generalist

so when you are working with experts as a generalist you learn so much from

them how do you enable the experts to get on with it and like really like take

charge of I guess their Department like how do you give them that flexibility so they don’t feel like they have to come

to you all the time because you mentioned well organized is that what you mean yes so different practices and

I think also it depend on the companies uh company culture um when you have the

the food freedom for example myself what I was doing is that at the beginning of the week we were doing the weekly

meeting and you know on the on the Monday and basically is we are reviewing

what everyone will need to do and basically we are constantly meeting on

the Monday so then after I give the freedom to people they know what they have to do in the short term midterm

long term myself I have always worked in layers so I think this is important

whatever is your project it can be your company or your personal project in life

I think it’s important to have the view of what I’m doing this week what I’m doing in this quarter what I’m doing in

this year and the Very long-term Vision in the game industry is three years time but basically you need to you need to

build basically your work by layer years and then after you give the freedom

myself I don’t want to be on the back of people and checking everything they are doing but basically I will ask usually

on the on the Friday some reporting and they can deliver their reporting and so

there is no except the EOD you know and mention there is no particular stress

for them you know especially when when it is on a Friday if they want to complete it by 300 p.m. or 5:00 p.m. or

7 p.m. that’s all good for me because then after the next Monday we can discuss what what has been done the past

week what was done correctly not correctly what needs to be improved what were the blockers and what

needs to be done for this week but at the same time very important for me is

that especially in Japan I was not in um in a in a closed office myself you know

I was very in a Japanese way with everyone else you know it was like an

open office and I was with everyone else so basically when there is a question people can just come and ask me directly

and for me this is something that was very important because you do not want to cut yourself from your team it’s

extremely important also to know for the people that if there is an issue they do not have to wait for one week to come

back at you and they can just come to you and discuss openly you know and very

important that it’s not rigid so I do not want to say okay you want to talk to me you book a time we go to a meeting

room and this is very formal for me that’s exactly the opposite it should be informal so there will be more openness

and we can really understand as a manager what is the issue and how to fix it at least how to help the

people the point you made about being kind of available the

time do you how do you recreate that in a remote context I find that difficult

how would you recreate that try to keep it as low friction as

possible I will say that fortunately there were some very good tools that

were invented and one of them I don’t know if we can give name uh yeah no

problem to uh to name some some some tools but I think that for example slack

is a very very useful tool extremely useful when you are working in teams and when you are working remotely because

basically you know you have a hudle you can basically you can connect to people right away make a short video audios and

uh you can just ping people very very quickly it’s very well made you have the difference rate the different group you

have the the formal the informal so I think you can keep this kind of dynamic

of a company with specific tools yeah one thing I’d say on the

slack because I get some complaints sometimes from like Studio leaders who say oh we don’t like slack because they

tend to Silo conversation sometimes people start having conversations like in private that they would usually do in

an open setting and I wonder like having those open communication channels to be

public rather than just one to one especially when like people are asking each other help so in a remote setting

do you advise this communication to be like public so everyone can kind of see what everyone is talking

about well I you know that’s that’s your choice you you decide if the channel is

locked or it’s not locked and uh if it is formal or informal so I think that

they are providing everything I think that some people uh you know in a group

in a team there are always some chat Chatters there is always some people who have like very good uh very good ear

they like to listen what’s happening on the on the background but I will say that not all the discussion not all the

conversation needs to be shared or needs to be known to everyone so that’s the

decision of the people if they want to share or not to share I think the fact that there is a little bit you know in

all the different companies I have worked and there was a like there is always a room about like cat lovers dog

lovers and Etc and kind of a party that we can do on the Friday between

colleagues I think that for me this is the way in a very remote situation to

keep a little bit the the coffee machine talk you know like people are meeting you know in the in the for example at

lunch in the contina or or anything like that and it’s it’s a good way to keep it but I mean there is no there is no

perfect situation and what you are seeing right now is coming back to why

some of the manager prefer to ask people to come back to the office and most of

the the manager or the let’s say the CEOs asking people to come back they

know that from the covid era there is no turning back so usually they are trying

to make it like halfway like you can come you have to come back but at least two days a week

out of the five days and if people were relocating that’s a big issue definitely

but if you were in the same city I think that’s okay and I think also it can be fair to to keep this Dynamic to to have

people meet face to face and to exchange basically I think for me the the the

biggest problem of I would say of a slack or remote work is that there is a tendency for everyone to fill out

basically their their schedule with meeting meeting meeting meeting like that and basically everyone is jumping

from one meeting to another so basically sometime the conversation is kind of the

talk is too long and sometime it’s too short to what we would like to discuss sorry I have to jump into another call

and that’s another problem like that and it will not Happ if it was a face to face it’s it’s there will be more

flexibility around it especially if it is very important project I want to take a pivot now so at

Game Loft you negotiated a lot of licenses you negotiated with Nintendo

Sony what did you learn about negotiating while doing that at Game Loft yes so I was doing um the the first

game that I was licensing out for Game Loft was uh it was before we became

became a publisher was to a company that was called kco and basically I licensed

out Prince of Persia the original one and the sense of time and after that we

had a we had a very very famous IP in Gameloft called asphalt and basically I

was uh I was selling the the right to Konami for the DS uh DS3

DS p P SP PS v version and basically it takes a lot of discussion

this is what I would say and I think that the most important is that when you

are negotiating you are always trying to create a win-win situation is like as

long as you understand that both side needs to win something it

should go well there will be a lot of back and forth because there is always you need to report your to your boss

basically can I sign this deal is this amount is okay you need to check the legal side of it but except from that I

think you need to keep the dynamic of the negotiation with your counterpart

and to always be open you never say I disagree with you I think this is what

is important you can say that I do not see things the same way as you I’m not

sure that basically my company will approve or my boss will will approve but

basically you do not shut the door never is basically there is always room for

negotiation and you always leave the door open there is no reason to uh to

close the door never can I ask how long do those negotiations

take usually it goes depending on the size of the project if it is for example

a mobile game can be done in basically in one month usually

and uh if it is a little bit more complicated like what I was doing for

example with with Konami it was

basically I think around three months to get it right but basically it

was the first contract that was done on DS or 3DS because after that the other contract

are almost like Amendment so when you are adding the PS P or the PS VA version

you already know your counterpart you know what are the expectation how we deal together we have already done the

legal side of it so it goes much faster afterwards and there is a trust a

connection that has been created I think for me the most complicated one that I

had was the one I did just before the end of Game Loft we had a game that was

I think it’s still uh on the on the App Store on the Google Play Store it’s called Disney Magic Kingdom and Disney

Magic Kingdom was very difficult because I wanted to do it with a partner in Japan because such a big brand and uh I

went basically directly to the number one in Japan and it’s Gung o so they are

very famous because they were doing a puzzle and dragon and they were the number one mobile developer and

publisher in Japan at that time and basically this one was complicated why

because there was Gango in Japan there was game love Japan but there was also

Disney in us their HQ because it was a deal between Disney us and gamelof HQ in

Paris but on top of it there was also Disney in Japan because Disney Japan is

saying whatever happened with the Disney characters the Disney licenses and IPS

in Japan it’s our territory we control one 100% we have more to say than the HQ

on this Disney Japan is extremely powerful company extremely extremely powerful

company so basically they control everything so it was a deal that need to be a win

for five parts five different companies and that was so complicated and I

remember that I think it was the time of close to Christmas or the New Year and

we are saying oh my God it’s 11 p.m. and we are discussing about if we are respecting Mickey ears and the

characters like that and sometime you just say like we will never go to the

end of this contract it’s so complicated so how do you stick through it like having to have five different

parties like the reason I asked that question is when it’s a short period a month I feel like because you know the

lights at the end of the tunnel you can keep fighting but when it’s a complicated one like that could that could last 3 months plus it feels like

don’t you just feel like you’re having the same conversation over and over again like how do you make sure you’re

actually fighting for you know the pen to paper so you are in fact yes sometime

you have the feeling that you are just banging your head against a wall and uh you have to repeat and you you also you

need to to try to put people who are extremely different in the same room I

remember we had once very tense meeting between we went to visit Disney Japan

and with a gang o and uh myself you know I was the I was the Foreigner I was the

guyene and uh basically everyone liked me I was trying to make the deal but

there was real tension between the two Japanese counterparts because Gango says

I’m acquiring this license I want to control it and Disney Japan was like you can control it as much as we

want you to control it so it’s becoming a little bit a war of ego and who owns

basically the the IP and the franchise especially for this game but except from

that you have some people that are there to help you and myself I had I had my

boss who was in charge of SVP of publishing we had our CFO was looking at

the deal also we had our legal concern

extremely helpful so there are different people who are here for you you are the one you want basically to nail it

because this is my responsibility but I think this is coming back to the passion

if you are a kind of a business development guy by heart and if you are

a kind of sales guy if you like to to succeed and to sign the deal in that

case this is what will make go through it and you will say yeah but you are

losing the person perspective but don’t forget that basically I was signing uh

the prince of pressure deal that much that was easier and then after I was

signing the the asphal franchise in Japan a little bit more complicated I

had also negotiation with Nintendo to get the def kit for example of I think

it was the the Wii at that time I’m not sure anymore but basically that the negotiation of the def kit were very

complic at and basically this is all together so you are

also becoming more resilient in a way to negotiate and to make a contract this is

not something that you are starting right away you are gaining some trust and basically you are building your

confidence and I I think that you can understand if you like it or not for me

since I was a kid I always love Monopoly so it was like I always love this game

so for for me doing business is a little bit like a monopoly is like it’s a kind

of fun to negotiate I always liked it so I really like to to discuss with people

and especially if you know when you enter the room what you want when you leave the world that’s extremely

accepting yeah uh one last thing on the negotiation piece because I also enjoy it but when it comes to price how do you

keep the conversation around price fun because I feel like when price enters the room it’s like there a new level of

tension potentially because we might have agreed everything else then when it comes to price how do you keep that playful should you keep it

playful I think that one way is to try to if possible to remove the emotion by

bringing some some relevant points why the cost

is what it is is I think that what is important for the counterparts for the

company you are dealing with is to understand that you are not trying to to Rob them you

are not you what you are trying is to get a fair price for everyone they need

to understand that you need to make your deal they need to make their deal but at

the end is this is for example the price of the IP in case of recruitment for

example when when a company wants to recruit someone let’s say through a head

hunter the price is the price in the sense that well you cannot have someone

that is let’s say 20 years of experience like if he was like three years experience and vice versa it will not

work so if you know your number if you know the market if you know the the

value of your product the value of the franchise how much how much it sold Etc

then basically uh it should be kind of okay and again always leave the door

open you should not say like this is deep price this is this or there is no

negotiation it should not be that way this is what you are bringing and

from there you are going into the into the negotiations yeah that’s been a recent

lesson for me where the price for that version of the product could be fixed

but that doesn’t mean the price is fixed for the partnership because you could always change the terms to match the

budget always move things around I think that’s been an important lesson and I like the point of having all the

evidence because it’s a different story if you just pull a number out it’s like well that’s the number you have all the

evidence you can point to it’s a different conversation a bit more maturity right and yeah and there is

also the the result the past result you know if you are if basically if you are

proving yourself that you are providing a good product or that basically the sales were in line or basically the

person that you were offering as a head hunter was doing a good job then basic Bally you are building the trust and I

think this is all based on the past experience negotiating together if it is

the same person or based on the past result of the product you know that’s something that um because I I like all

the kind of entertainment and I really like the movie industry also the music industry when you look for example at

the movie Industries and you look at the beginning of the career of actors like

DiCaprio or Tom Cruz and basically you can see that they were paid like maybe

$10,000 like $100,000 Max something like that but most of the time it was not the case so

basically their value was building up through time based on their past result

and that’s what is bringing the value I think that everyone is starting at a point what can be a mistake is to be or

to become too greedy like uh you know if you are if you are B becoming a little

bit arrogant and you believe that you can really extract Too Much from the

counterpart basically you will fail in that case so as a kind of a of a beon you need to

keep in mind that you want to to create and to keep a long-term relationship

with your counterpart with your client with your customers that’s extremely important

because it put everything into perspective having a quick win it’s if it ATS the expense of your your

counterpart of your partner it’s the recipe for disaster in the future so it

should not be done that way I feel like the long-term vision is

the only Vision that matters right it’s the long-term relationship is the only thing that matters the short term yeah

it’s never worth it never worth it that but that’s that’s my way of doing but myself I always you know I was in a way

I would say businesslike professionally I was raised in Japan you know I I’m I’m

French but I never worked in France so basically um I had always as a kind of

beon like the fact that Japanese are very humble the fact that they are very hardworking people the fact that they

are always looking at the long term and it’s true that there are many for example many Western companies

especially coming from us they come and they just want to do a quick box and

Japanese Japanese company listen to them and they know that in one or two years

time they will just leave and that was a very very big Ur for a while because

basically Japanese companies were reluctant for example to give their own franchise to foreign companies let’s say

for example one piece Dragon Ball I mean you are very very

through the gaming game gaming industry story very few cases that it was not

Japanese company taking care of this franchise why because the relationship

and the trust that has been created Through The Years with the Japanese companies is so strong they will never

never break it for you and for quick bucks never and myself I I have met them all

these people so basically the said that when you come and you say oh I would

like to get Dragon Ball you go to toy and they say I’m sorry but basically we

have a very we have a 50 years old relationship with Bandai not starting

from Dragon Ball of course but far before and why because Bai is the

sponsor of the anime and Bai is the sponsor of the anime but they’re also doing toys are

you doing toys are you are you sponsoring the anime so you it’s like a Consortium and basically you cannot

break it so that’s why quick Buck cannot enter Japan and very few foreign

companies or Western companies understand that I will say that there are two in the I would say in the two

companies two US companies that have extremely well succeeded in Japan I will say are Disney and

Coca-Cola why because they understood their Market they respected the market and they had such a long-term plan

long-term vision of what to achieve in Japan and that’s why they I think what

they are doing as a foreign companies I don’t know of course all the industries insurance and everything but I will say

for these two it’s the the best in term of management and the way to do business

on the long term so if Japan’s the best why did you

go to Korea yes very thank thank you very good

question um well basically um what was happening is um in

2016 there was a hostile takeover on game LOF made by one of the French

investors called Von Bol and this person owns a

lot of companies in France including uh also v um un Universal Music he owns

vivd and Viv andd was doing hostile takeover on both Game Loft and Ubisoft

and basically it was very difficult to protect boss and Game Loft was acquired

myself it has been more than 10 years I was in game love so I was not learning

so much anymore I was in a kind of a routine and I consider that my time was done I was also the president of the

company so that mean that legally speaking I had zero protection and for me and my family so all this together it

was preferable for me to leave at that time I have done my time it was the time

to turn the page and this is what I decided legally speaking you had no

protection is that because like if something happened it would have been your fault is that what you meant no no

yeah because uh when you are most of the time so there are different wordings depending the depending basically

the the language but in Japan when you are managing director you have you are

seen as the president of the company the president of the entity and for many

countries it’s not specific to Japan but I know the case of Japan is basically

you you do not have real contract you have a mandate and your mandate is as

valid as the company wants it to be valid so this is something that is

important and and basically when you are in this kind of position you need to

understand it’s like having your own company you will not get unemployment

benefits so you know the these kind of things like that so uh when there was

the reshuffle of the company the management team and everything I just consider myself I have done my time

there was nothing more if there was a new project coming in but it was very blurry at that time so it was definitely

the the right time to to be fair enough so you moved to Korea and an annual

operating budget of over $100 million so from my understanding that was a big

increase from Game Loft in fact more than that you know it was like the pnl

was basically closer to $200 million and uh so it was it was very big and uh on

top of it I will say it’s not so much I I don’t know why but myself I never had any problem

with managing big budget you know for me I will say that I’m less stressed by big

budget than small budget uh it looks a little bit counterintuitive and the main reason is

that you are managing 10 million or 100 million you just add basically a zero

that’s it so basically uh it’s not changing that much usually you are more

organized you are more well surrounded by other people and when I was in

blizzard I had a reporting line of 11 directors that’s a lot but basically

that mean that I was very well protected I I had a very very strong team so

that’s something that is very important you are more structur the second thing

is that you are playing with in a way with more money the budget is more but

also you are managing bigger budget because you have bigger IPS

so I love for example the big IPS of a game love like Disney Magic Kingdom or

asphal but you cannot compare with Starcraft World of Warcraft OverWatch

and you know or Diablo it’s not comparable so that mean these IPS are

generating much more money and basically that mean that you need in term of

marketing in term of PR you need to invest much more money also yes I have quite a few questions

about your blizzard experience because you’ve done the live events which I want to dive into but also what you just said

like 11 directors coming into you like that’s a lot of directors and then those

directors have teams below them who probably have teams below them so this feels like The Game Loft management

experience but the next level so how how was the first few days at blizzard how

did it change like I what was it like having 11 directors in uh it was not instant you

know you did not start day one like this so basically at the beginning I had my

boss who was coming was visiting to Korea he was still handling basically

the the situation and uh and progressively it came to me so I had a

bigger project and uh little by little they were giving more power to exercise

until they decided okay now you are full MD and basically we open everything to

you I would say especially the approval of the budgets and the spending and uh

that was more like that it’s not instant but I would say it’s uh it’s a much much

much more demanding yes it’s the the

amount I would say the amount of work especially because uh blizzard is uh is

based a lot on Esports activities uh there is no comparison as

soon as you are of course there was there is always the difference between mobile to PC because Korea is

mainly a PC business but there is also the I would say the the activities the

events I had I had multiple ones so one of them was over watch first year

anniversary big event with 10,000 people and the biggest one that I had the

responsibility was the release of Starcraft remastered so it was Starcraft

redone in 4k and Starcraft is something that is very unique in Korea so they

they consider it as a God game is the perfect game there is no better game

than this one even if visually I prefer myself Starcraft 2

obviously but for Korean people what is important is the strategy and is how how

the game plays this is the most important so when we had a Starcraft

remaster we made a very very big event in puan beach and basically there were

more than 30,000 people so it was like a concert it was broadcasted on TV there

are still some few pictures on my LinkedIn that that you can check but that was like wow I have no words I have

no words I I’m not sure one day in my life I would leave that again it was

like I will say probably that was kind of a peak of my career at that time yes

definitely you never know what will happen but that was so intense so incredible um extraordinary

extraordinary it Chang everything I can imagine I got loads of

question questions so on the event day is there like an after party where everyone goes and parties together like

you do that massive event but surely you’re like well we done it and then does everyone go party after like what happens of course but this is this is of

course there is always a party but I would say this is a Asian party so this

is not like uh what’s an Asian party what’s the difference yeah it’s what’s the difference is I would say that uh

well if one day you come to Berlin you come to Berlin is basically if you do a party you never know how it will end

yeah well what day people will smash themsel Etc you never know so that’s the

beauty I would say of for example of Western World of Berlin for example um

in case of Japan or Korea you party but you have kind of limits it’s like we do

a party for two hours or three hours there is a limit we drink we have fun we

sing we do karok we basically we uh we we drink a lot of beer Etc and Etc and

Shu in in in Korea but uh but basically you have a limit at that time we end up

and usually you have second informal party third informal party this this

this is different it’s usually smaller group it’s not official anymore so it’s

a little bit different in that sense but yes there there are some uh there are some parties and myself it was not like

the ultimate fun because for example when we did that I was representing the

company so for example at the end of the for example of the of the Esports event

I had to give you know the big check and to the winners with the pictures and

there was the all the TVs so you have to be careful about what you are doing about yourself

very important before doing the event in Busan we had to go there to go there to

meet the mayor he wanted to meet us because this is very important for them also as it’s

driving uh I will say some uh some uh shining element to the city so very

important and uh yes for uh for OverWatch this is the same so you are

kind of more careful about what you are doing I will say as a managing director

you you need to you need to have fun but reasonable fun that’s it and I had also you know in

in some events in in Korea we had the founder of blizzard coming mik Moran so

he’s he’s the boss he’s the guy so basically I was usually sitting close to

him and basically you will not get drunk close to the CEO and the founder of Blizzard no never no you don’t try to

slip him a beer try to network a bit more build that relationship you don’t you don’t I I had some I had some very

good memory when we were visiting together I mean with a group PC Cafe and

we were playing OverWatch together in the same group so with the guy who funded blizzard say w that’s fantastic

but U again about Mike morine the founder of

theard extremely humble guy he has created at that time I think it was like

2.5 billion dollar company even before Activision it was a giant extremely

humble person extremely super nice person unfortunately he has left Blizzard after with everything that was

uh that was happening with Activision and Etc and then after Microsoft but

such a humble guy so you will be surprised each time that you believe like someone important is difficult to

get in fact someone important is usually they are super nice I wonder if that’s the great filter

if you want to become that level you need to be humble so you only

see like it might be like an over representation of humble leaders for that reason uh let’s put it that way

either you are humble or life will humble you I like it I like it I have a

couple questions there so this is a selfish question so you were a business development manager and you mentioned

the parties then The Unofficial After parties and the parties after that I found a lot of networking happens at

these parties even at the gaming conventions so this is one for people

look into Network let say you’re trying to get a job you’re a business development manager trying to build relationships how do you go about that

well cuz you can do that in a lot of ways and I’m sure one is better than the other so how do you network well in

those parties you have to come back to the passion you

need to talk about what you are doing it’s it’s again it’s like you are going to a party first you will have the

personality and you have some people who are more extrovert and more some people

who are more introvert but then after your personality will kick in and especially if you are talking about your

project I think that when you are talking about parties for example recently there was the GDC and then

after there would be the games come Etc when you meet the people we say hey let’s hang up together or please come

with us or something like that if you know someone we know someone and it it should be something that is coming

natural and I think that you should not try to make it a win constantly I think

that if people can feel that there is an

agenda that’s basically that will not be good you can talk about your project

because it’s just flowing into the conversation it’s mixing it’s merging into the conversation but basically it

should not be forced because at the end you know what we say is you work hard

and you play hard is basically you need when you enjoy you enjoy this is a party

this is there to to basically to party but when you are in the game industry

and you know it and and basically the people from the gaming industry are are

always always talking about games always there is it’s 24 hours a day right so

basically there is no ending if you are working let’s say I don’t know if you are working for Coca-Cola I’m not sure

that Coca-Cola people are talking about oh you know the new butle and you know like I’m not sure when they are partying

probably the last thing they want to talk about right at the party exactly but in the case of game because we love

it that much and this is what is always bringing people back to the game industry is the Love of the Game it’s uh

it’s literal and it’s uh basically we we just love the video games and basically

that’s it this is like uh the this is what we enjoy this is the industry we

enjoy so it’s it’s a very tough but at the end of the day we cannot fight ourself we always come back to it for

sure and building that relationship and the playfulness and the fun first before

the agenda of the win that seems like the key takeaway there is like you don’t

want to be optimizing every conversation and trying to do that like you want to build that relationship first yeah I

mean yeah at the end you know everyone is different so you see how the personality are going on so it’s

difficult to judge but let’s say for example that you have a game it’s basically if you are going to

a to a a party and you are you are trying to raise money and you say oh I

have this game I’m trying to raise I have this game I’m trying to raise it will not work well it’s basically if you

are saying I’m developing this game if the other person in front of you is saying oh really what kind of game are

you building it’s like oh you are creating your own company so this is something that should be very natural

and you do not need to have the interest of everyone it will depend but most of the time people want to know more about

you because it’s coming back to the beginning of the discussion about how do you become likable is it’s like I think

one way is to show the the the bright side of you is what

makes you interesting what is your passion what is your personality is like if people see that there is a spark in

your eye when you are talking about this game or this game then basically I think it will go very well perfect so before

we move on to your pivot to Bethesda where you became a consultant you

mentioned the Live Events there you did that first anniversary of OverWatch that was a massive event uh I’m wondering any

lessons there on just putting on a spectacle arranging that many people

like especially I’m just thinking in the example of people putting on events for their games or even like online events

because you said this was streaming like is there any big takeaway or big lesson learned there hm yeah so uh I’m not sure

if it is based on the event or the the ATM or the offline activities

but in the case for example of Blizzard but I think it would be exactly the same

for all the AAA or it can be let’s say uh Call of Duty or it could be a league

of legend Etc I think that these companies are extremely careful about

their branding the brand is everything and to to protect the brand is basically

to respect uh the players so basically the

community is the thing that is the most important the community around the game

is everything for blizzard it’s absolutely everything so when and I’m

talking here only for blizzard so I don’t know how the other companies are managing when Blizzard at that time was

managing its own IP basically the idea was like we we are ready to do everything for the players

it doesn’t have to be um how would say profitable there is no point of being

profitable that was a celebration day when we were doing

basically the Starcraft remaster event it’s a celebration that we are doing in

Korea for OverWatch for Starcraft that’s the way that we are doing it we are

doing also big events for World of Warcraft you need to consider that much more

like a gigantic Community Management or basically the most fantastic PR in the

world so that’s the way that you can look at it and I think that when you reach a certain status certain

level this is basically what you should end for especially to protect your IP

and you know that everyone is saying in the industry when you want to work with Disney there

are pain in the ass and Etc but there is a reason for that is because their IPs

if we take the the the iconic IPS like the Disney characters like Mickey Mouse

is basically 100 years old so of course they want to protect it and of course

you should be extremely careful the way that you display the character the way way that you show the brand that you

communicate on it of course so that’s kind of reasonable from them to to

basically to act that way and I think that for blizzard there is a incredible

love of the employees for blizzard that’s really something that I immensely

respect and there is an immense respect of Blizzard towards their players and

their community and uh this is something that when you are part of Blizzard you

are so proud it sounded like the I guess the

definition of success wasn’t profit when it was those events it was more you was you’re doing the event to celebrate

obviously you going to get PR but it doesn’t sound like it like internally

they wasn’t going okay we’re going to spend x amount to make this amount of Impressions so it sounds like this was

more like let’s make this the best event possible mhm yeah of course after you want to have as many people as possible

to talk about the event and Etc but there there is also the way that you know there is especially in Korea there

is always the competition between blizzard and Riot G and between League

of Legend and and basically at that time it was OverWatch but each market is

different in the case of in the case of Korea it’s it’s a market that is driven

by the PC Cafe so basically when you are playing on the PC Cafe you need to pay

and basically the ratio the money that you are making depends basically on the

Playtime of the people so at the time I was MD we had basically

37% market share in Korea so that was huge so I

would say that two companies were owning like two3 of the market wow that’s a

completely different business model that’s so cool completely different yeah because then you’re not optimizing for

copies you’re optimizing for playtime so doing that event making such a cultural

moment changes everything we were sing also of course we were doing when we did a Starcraft remaster as compared to uh

we were sending some uh hard copies some physical copies of the game and

basically compared to the objective that that I had uh we sold triple

so fantastic but basically uh I would say that for blizzard this is not what

is the most important what is the most important is the play time and how much

of the market share you own of the Playtime of the users this is uh this is

the way that you are looking at it yeah which I think comes back to the the long-term strategy of things because for

quick buck that might not be the best strategy for but for longterm you you need people playing your game so you

know blizzard is was was already so much successful so it’s it’s very difficult

because what you can apply to a to a big company cannot basically cannot be

applied to any other company you cannot consider like what for example what

Blizzard or Riot games are doing with their event other companies cannot do that and each company is extremely

different in term of culture I’m not sure that there is right or wrong if you

remember when there was the eory I think that basically Rockstar was never there

so it’s like and most of the time blizzard was not there either so Riot game was not part of History so it’s

everyone is communicating differently uh to its fan base and to its community so

you need to find your way and basically what is the best way to communicate and especially

now with the OTE and the end of history and everything these kind of big events

things have changed also so you need to to be flexible in the way you

communicate fair so you left blizzard to and then

became a consultant could you tell us about that like why the pivots a consultant what happened there no it was

more like at that time I was um I was headed by by BDA but I was acting as

basically the uh the advisor of the SVP over there and that’s why I was

mentioning it as as a consultant basically because that was a good entry to explain what I was

doing basda is a completely different animal company compared to Blizzard it’s

it’s a it was at least at that time before Microsoft was acquiring them it was a private company private owned

company and uh with a very unque characteristic but I will say this

is the center the the core of their business is PC even if they are

releasing Elder Scroll they are releasing Fallout on Console the heart of the people is always PC they are like

it’s it’s game made for the MERS basically this is what they are building their kind of huge Universe they they

will take their time and uh when I joined BDA it was just after they had a

massive success with fallout shelter so fallout shelter was the mobile version

of as a Fallout but when you know the story it’s super interesting is fallout

shelter was just a marketing tool to promote uh Fallout 4 no way yeah

basically it was asked it was it was even not done internally it was done with Outsourcing company and u and

basically this game became number one in us on the app store right away the first

day fallout shelter was a was a massive was a massive success and it was not

planned that way I I remember that after a while they were saying that it was generating more than $100 million for a

marketing tool that was not supposed to make money you know that it happens that

way so what happened exactly is that BDA uh they said wow it seemed that

there is a market that no one ever told us before it’s called the mobile market

maybe we should do something with that and uh they decided to to do mobile

business and they needed to find people and everyone is PC oriented or console

oriented within the company there was no mobile uh Department division or anything like that so they needed to

bring people and this is where they thought about me okay we need someone who knows about the mobile game industry

especially in Japan in Asia and that’s why there was the position to basically

to to develop and to advise how to develop the strategy and the business

around the mobile starting from Asia uh there was some few projects that were

made in us but basically they were made by bgs so BDA game Studio but it was for

them always something I would say on the side of the big one the big title you

know there was there was already so many games that were developed you know there

was all the Elder Scroll and it it was already a they have bigger things to take care

of basically so that was a change for you in the

sense of were you so was was it a consultant in just the name or were you

in more of a consultant position it was more like um advisor position how did

you find the change like being an adviser because that for my understanding was the first time so so for for me it was uh for me um inside

the company it was extremely difficult and this is also I think Growing Pains it’s like you have a little bit the

feeling that you are starting from the beginning and I love to build business

myself I love to create companies I love to to leverage business it’s completely

different it’s a it’s a different Spirit um but the problem is that I didn’t have

any counterpart within the company at that time and uh everyone was taking

care of PC and everyone was taking care of console business so they have Doom

they have maybe 10 or 15 Studios worldwide and uh myself I was in fact

it’s I’m seeing this is that so everyone can understand but on my contract legally speaking it was zenimax in Japan

zenimax was the holding company of BDA and BDA is the name that everyone is

using because if I say zenx you say what is thex the company who is doing all the game that you like but you don’t know it

and uh this is more holding so that’s why I say bista and uh but I was based

in Tokyo with the tongo Game Works Shinji mikami studio so we are all

together but unfortunately it was not that long because um because they were

running some issues with Fallout 76 at that time so they were just releasing

the game and it was full of bugs the Community Management it was not doing

well it was going on the D side they couldn’t fix it and the the launch

campaign was a little bit horri so basically they they took the decision to stop everything that was mobile is

they just wanted to kind of simplify their operation they say like we understand that mobile is important but

we have bigger things to manage right now so we prefer to stop this business

and in fact this is what they have done and it’s always a little bit sorry for

them because they have such fantastic IPS and you you are just wondering why

why they are not doing more so there was one project at that time that that was

like based on the Elder Scroll license that was called blade it was uh it was a

kind of elder scroll on mobile the difference is that

it was made by bgs and bgs is a very unique Studio within Z neat is the

basically too wordss can do whatever he wants uh so it’s it’s a completely

different story but uh they stop it but I think that one day I think that bases

that should come back to the mobile game and they should go full speed and maybe

it will happen you know now it’s Microsoft and they have this holistic vision and you know it’s at the end

there was activ Vision acquiring blizzard Activision acquiring King

Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard King and now it’s everything is under

Microsoft so Microsoft know what they want to do they they want to sell

subscription to the Game Pass they want to keep the people engaged so probably

mobile will be a very very big piece probably so we will see what will happen

in the future yeah loads of different change especially after that $100 million do on The Fallout Shelter as an

accident like the most sitting might be sitting on a gold mine there I want to just touch on this uh one more time the

advising part like because you’ve moved into that consultant role I know it was a short period of time but what did you

learn becoming an adviser if someone else was advising other Studios like what does a good adviser do I think that

what is important is to keep um a very good connection with the person you are

working with you need to have a constant contact and you need to feed information

constantly and basically you need also to get information so myself I was in

Japan but with more time I think that what is important let’s say that you are not in the same country is that you are

visiting people frequently so you can engage the conversation you can discuss

also with the different studios in what they want to do like you know you

everyone remembers Doom so why there is no doom on mobile right it’s a little bit too bad so you know the these kind

of things there are so many ideas and the ideas can come only through discussion through conversation so you

need to engage with that and basically you need to make yourself relevant and

visible internally especially bigger is the group it’s becoming more difficult

when you have thousand of people so I think this is something very very important good communication make you

visible uh and show so that you have a lot of IDs love it being visible increasing

that the conversations like more contact not less yeah yeah and also that you

need also to you need to to make uh when you are

an advisor you need to to make the companies understand that advisor is not

like someone you can just ask oh I have a question what is the solution it’s

much more an advisor is someone that is giving you guidance based on its own experience and its skills and background

but this is also someone that is here to challenge you it’s like the mentor for

the business if you want and this is the the value that you are bringing but if

you believe that oh I had like three problems today I call my advisor if fix

like two of them that’s good I can stop no every day there are new issues new

problem new discussion new new topics and new challenges and basically it

should be an ongoing and long-term relationship and discussion I recommend companies to use advisor to have

different point of view to be challenged in what they think because especially in

the big companies there is a lot of politics and not everyone can say whatever they want so when you bring

someone externally in that case I think that’s very good point because this

person person can bring you its expertise but there is no Bas there is no politics it’s someone from outside so

you can listen or not listen but at least you will have a very objective opinion about the situation of your

company or what you should do then after you decide how you want to manage it but

I think that one of the problem of today’s company is the politics that’s one two is a kind of the management that

is a little bit tricky because people people are trying some of them because

of the politics to influence their career to be more short-term oriented

and the company is long-term oriented so companies need to see the advisor as a

as a long-term partner to benefit them and to protect the interest of the company I think that’s the best way to

show it yeah Evolution this was a very common thing because we only did contract

recruitment and especially when it was like an executive producer role it felt more of

like the adviser cuz they would come in like well this is broken we’re missing a few people here and that conversation

wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t bring in the outside help and this is someone you’re paying for outside

experience and that dynamic because they’re not an employee and they’re not worried about quote unquote being fired

because this is why you brought me here if you haven’t had that for like 3 five years it’s a massive change and I think

what you said especially when you’re very big and the politics kind of pile up so to speak it’s nice to have someone

jump in like whoa what about this this and this you’re like oh haven’t thought about that before like yeah but like you said people aren’t bringing it up

because it whatever reason they might not have that um they don’t might not

feel the support to bring up issues all the time or what have you like having that outside help it makes a massive

difference yeah it’s uh having a fresh eyes basically but um you know also that

uh um you know when I was uh telling you before that there is a kind of lack of

maturity of the gaming industry this is something that you can see here is the

companies just believe in themselves in what they are doing and each company believe that what they are doing is

right so I would like to know how is that possible that the big ones the

gigantic ones like the the biggest brand like Disney like Coca-Cola whoever you

want Exon how is that possible that all these comp companies are using like um

Consulting companies like mckin anong etc etc how they are asking for some

help with dozen of thousand of people internally of managers but they are

still asking some a different opinion or their their boards are always made of

people coming from different industry but in the gaming industry it works like a kind of very small vacuum of people

are just staying together in a room and discussing and they basically they agree

to agree with each other there is no one agreeing to disagree and I think it’s

it’s a kind of a tendency right now and that’s why it’s creating multiple issues

right now in the gaming industry one of them being the lack of risk that the big

Publishers are taking and the second one is the wrong management of the people bringing so many layoff recently

like there’s a recent example in my world of like LinkedIn and content marketing like Microsoft themselves pay

for LinkedIn coaches and support on how to use LinkedIn better for their sales team even though Microsoft owns LinkedIn

so if they’re paying for outside help for help of one of their products then kind of if you’re a smaller

company having outside help is never a bad idea like having that extra third

eye or just an extra pair of eyes I think it can’t be overstated how much of an impact it makes because if Microsoft

is doing it when they own the product then you can only imagine the things that you’re potentially missing by like

you said just staying in your garden and not kind of seeing what’s out there what’s happening at other Studios oh one

thing I forgot to ask you you changed it at Blizzard from a function focused to a

franchise Focus structure could you quickly elaborate on that please yeah so

uh basically you know um when you arrive in a company you know you always believe that things will be like just like a

routine management but there is always something boiling I would say on the background and um here it was basically

the change of organization of blizard so the company was function based and that

mean that basically there was the marketing the pr the communication the

operation Operation being the PC Cafe the Esports the online etc etc um and

then basically there was the the decision uh there was at that time there was the OverWatch League there was the

decision that it would be much more better if the company internally was

organized around franchise and that each franchise is becoming in a way its own

uh mini company it’s like each franchise

needs to be responsible of its own pnl uh need also to do what is correct for

them and not basically to be mixed with other because there is no point of

communication so of course it’s just a different way to look at things but um

the process was pretty long with my boss we took more than six months to to do it because blizzard

always want to do things the most correct way as possible especially due

to uh in respect to their employees it’s very very important so they they want to

be very very careful so it took six months and it was a very big organization because some people like

for example PR and communication was a big group I think there was like 30 people and if you break that basically

into small pieces well basically there is the feeling that the the person who

was in charge of the division didn’t have like 30 person under their

responsibility anymore it was like PR one PR one Community manager going to

OverWatch when PR when Community manager going to World of Warcraft etc etc etc

so it’s it’s changing a lot I would say especially for the reporting and for the

managers this is where it can create a lot of conflicts depending of course who

wants to have OverWatch who wants to have who wants so you know it’s more like it’s becoming a okay you need to be

professional in the way that you are handling that but you know also that there have some people who have a kind of affect for certain IPS certain

franchise yeah sounds like a lot of change but on paper so that was a good

idea on paper but after everything has happened was it a good decision like should other Studios look to do that as

well um I I will say I don’t think so I don’t

think so interesting it can be done um you C you can if you want you

can break out the main IP that you have if you have a very like an IP that is

over shining the rest and you can pull it apart I think this is completely fair

I will say like the case of League of Legend for Riot games and I will say the

basically that let’s say Call of Duty for Activision but for Activision the

spiral or you know crash bondu is not the same size of Call of Duty right so

basically when you are starting to say okay we create a franchise based Department organization

but then you have a franchise that is doing let’s say $2 billion and another one that is doing $100 million do you

want to keep exactly the same organization it makes sense in that case maybe it’s better to have

different I would say different groups like the main one is a part and the rest

you put it on the side uh I think it would be easier to manage the case of

Blizzard that was complicated because they had six franchises and all of them

were super relevant they were built in a 30 years time history but you know that

at that time there was over Overwatch league but then after it was abund

because it was not successful and you know that today OverWatch is not as successful as it was before they were

announcing OverWatch 2 and it has been very very complicated since the

beginning so not everything is on par so function focused if you get a

very big success where it’s kind of overshadowing things then try to separate it but you want to treat that

with respect when it comes to separating from function to franchise because it’s not um I guess efficient is that what

I’m getting at yeah and uh and it’s it’s not efficient and it’s not really relevant but let’s say for example in

the in the case of for example Activision so right now it’s Microsoft

owning everything okay they they own everything but if you want

basically uh to treat all the IEPs exactly the same way when you will have

a lot of problem internally to manage that because there would be some people telling you how is it possible that

basically we are treated the same way considering we are doing 10 times or 100

times more money recently in the game pass the first game coming from blizzard

was basically Diablo right it was a Diablo 4 okay how the decision was taken

who was in charge of taking this decision why that blow why not OverWatch how how was it made that’s internally

it’s more complicated is either like is it the beginning or is like why Diablo

was chosen is it relevant for Diablo you know it’s it’s a little bit complicated to to know about that um but you want to

be of course you want to offer the best to the players but you should be always

extremely respectful to the developers to the development team that is super

important and I will say for the best of the best you have to be even more

careful than careful it’s like you know in in in in blizzard that was always

like the respect for the developers was always so high I really hope that Microsoft will be able to to keep that

and uh to to Really nurture and to protect that because they are gigantic project so you

you just cannot kill the games like that and you know it’s not a good way to

manage things I couldn’t agree more I love OverWatch and yeah OverWatch 2 was quite

sad when they canceled it kind of felt unceremoniously as well like they could

have done it with a bit more the main reason is because um the the way that

OverWatch was created was never like to I put that into a big brackets okay to

uh to mil the players it was always like based on on a lot of basically lot of

respect for the players and they didn’t want to to make it a kind

of mobile type of game where you need to constantly buy uh the new characters

like everything was for free but basically you can buy

some uh some I don’t know SK of the characters these kind of things and the

skins of the characters are extremely important in Korea because they like to show themselves again it depends on the

culture but I think that the way that uh when the game was Sting so well at the

beginning of OverWatch everyone was super happy and that was fantastic but then after it reached a peck so you know

in the business it’s always like what about next year what about next year and what about next year and the business

model was never a free toplay game it was not like that if you compare with

League of Legend you can play for free you just buy the Cosmetics because you love the game and in that way it was

very well made so because you needed to pay for OverWatch that was a very very

big blocker I never consider it was a blocker myself but once I was visiting

my family and there was there was the son of someone in the family the guy was

14 years old and I said that I was working working in bz and blah blah blah OverWatch and he I I told him are you

playing it I said no I said how is that possible he said basically I’m playing

League of Legend and I said why said because it’s free so there is also a

generation thing that uh New Generation they prefer to

play for free and to enjoy game for free they want something very easy to enter

you need to remove all the different constraint and Bar to enter the game that’s something that

is very important right now that’s why the mobile industry is going so fast and

that’s why there is so many the freet topl is the leading uh business model

right now yeah think especially for the long term cuz OverWatch is free now you can play it but that person didn’t start

playing OverWatch because it wasn’t free when he tried to play it so he probably started on League of Legends then I have

that like I played HearthStone for free but now that I’m an adult they’re milking me dry but I played it for like

for free for like eight years but now I’m like just take my money cuz I’ve built the eight years of history and

collection and I can imagine it’s the same thing with League of Legends right like you build that but he get he didn’t

get to have that experience with OverWatch because it wasn’t free at the start so yeah it’s an interesting point exactly and I think that’s that was the

point of OverWatch too it was to to remove all the constraint for the players at the beginning all righty so

on the final stage of this podcast I’d love to dive straight in cuz you have your experience at huge games and

storytale so that is again massive changes like I had a question here I

wonder if we can do these rapid fire Alexis so from huge games you put on

your LinkedIn that you changed the production cycle from two years to four months

how huge game is is basically a very different companies to uh to proceed

it’s uh it’s very iterative process and doing a lot of basically prototyping and

uh that was extremely important and then after there is the way to work with the risking so I had two projects when I was

in in lugge and one was working on a game called troll that was a universal

license based game on on mobile and the

other one we were just rking this game but creating 3D but basically working

super fast and I think in that one in a nutshell is because we had more limited

team and basically everyone knew exactly what they had to accomplish and they had a lot of flexibility and one thing that

I was not telling you is in fact when I moved to um when I moved to Germany basically I was uh I was recruited by a

mobile startup that was called treasure hunt and uh I simplify a little bit my

ltin as I was telling you my last life is very complicated um very long very

complicated and basically as soon as I arrive uh the company was acquired by

huge gaps and uh that’s why I say I simplified it so this company was

working on the troll uh trolls game for years and basically um when I arrive I

ared as a CEO then after the acquisition of uge I became the general manager of the Berlin studio so basically the first

thing that was very important for me and especially when you are in charge of the studio is to put some deadline some hard

deadline it’s like you need to release this game there was the movie That was

supposed to be released in April at the end of the day it was releas but on VOD

because of the covid you know all the theater were closed and everything so that was the first movie uh worldwide to

be released during the covid like that in in VOD um but it was was very very uh

complicated there was other issues but basically having some hard deadline

having some very clear Milestone even if you are agile environment you need to work fast I think also that when you are

working in a in a smaller uh company in smaller

startup what I have seen before uh I’m not saying this is not correct but I’m

saying this is dangerous for the startups and for the the smaller developers and Publishers there is in a

way the love of the Perfection they small companies always want to do

something that will be outstanding on on the market but they do not understand

again this is where they would need to get some strategic advisor some some

guidance they do not understand that they are not blizzard and they are not Riot games they are not making billions

of dollar so basically there is a see that when they are funded and when they

are raising money whatever it is 10 million 5 million 10 million 20 millions

they will recruit massively and basically they will increase their run rate like crazy and they will always try

to make it look better and better and better and better and I have seen so

many uh people in the startups that are never releasing their project never it’s

like a it’s it’s always ongoing it’s never to be released like they are afraid to disappoint or whatever I think

that on contrary is basically you should release your product it should be in an

iterative way and you should be after improving based on the kpis based on

your data analytics based on the Community Management you should improve your game and your experience

progressively like that and you can build of course there will be some some company we say the kpis are not good

enough we just remove the game it can happen but if it is your own company you manage your own destiny and you should

not be afraid of releasing your game on contrary on contrary you should release

it even if it’s not per so this is a good segue to your

Consulting so could you tell me what led to the setting up of Ace Consulting

Group and what is it that you do there yes and um so so basically after um

after huge I was uh I was recruited by a

Storyteller and story was absolutely not based on the game industry it’s an

audiobook company based in Stockholm it’s a Swedish company and myself I said okay I always consider that my skills is

yes I love games I have worked in game industry forever but basically my skills is management team leadership and this

is and I’m very I have a very International profile so basically that was fitting and I said if I can work in

the game industry I can work in it and this is what I was doing there it was working very well eventually there was a

change of management and with this change of management there was a change of Team

the the new CEO arrived with its own team and basically we decided to part away from that myself I say okay now

that I’m basically kind of free I can do whatever I want in my life what should I

what do I want to do what should I do and basically it was like okay I miss

the the game industry I want to go back in it but I want to go back in it in a

different way I will never basically reject working for a company because I

think it’s I love to work with teams I love to work with people but I think that what happened to me is that it

opened the full perspective that yeah you can create your own business and

basically you can you can come back to the industry in a different way and how

could I benefit the most companies as possible

with my knowledge my expertise my background and basically I think that at that time treating Ace Consulting Group

was basically a good way of uh of doing that and uh it was like okay now I can

offer my services is to everyone it’s never the question of big versus small

publisher versus developers it’s basically helping the companies we need to get some guidance and to help the

individuals we need some coaching and again the coaching is coming from the

experience um there are many many uh coach right now you can see on LinkedIn

since you are the the pro of it but many many young people and who are lacking experience so for me it was really like

how can I help the companies and help the people the most to basically become

good managers and manage their company properly so that’s why I have different

vertical one is basically advisory and uh so this is strategic advisor for the

developer for the Publishers but I want also to be a strategic advisor for the

board of directors for the top management team for the executive we need some guidance a different point of

view wants to be challenged and we are blocked in a situation uh the coaching is a little bit the the same way but

much more personal I was you know many companies are offering some benefit for example to to their employees and I

think that what they should what they should invest is not only on the coffee machine or on the

ping pong table or something like that what is the most relevant for the people is themselves you you should capitalize

on the people and you know I remember what I learned when I was in blizzard is

that blizzard was investing so much into training into coaching myself I was

managing director I had my personal coach and basically also we were

receiving coaches constantly either from

Outsource either from the HQ and basically we were constantly trained and

I think this is extremely important especially because you can fix so many issues that way you can make overall the

industry more mature you can help people to fix their let’s say their

professional issues that they are facing with the other department the other division you can give a different

opinion and then also there is for people for example so many people today

have been have been laid off and it would be good for them to to use some

some coach basically for I would say the the career management you know that’s

extremely important I think that generally speaking people are not

investing enough on themel everyone is spending money on everything so let’s go

on vacation let’s go on the whatever let’s buy a lot of and everywhere

but basically people don’t invest in themselves so they should be very careful about

that and very aware is like you want to take care of your health you you need to

eat healthy basically you should sleep well you should find a way to sleep well

you should do some sports activity for the long term but then after is also

what are you doing for your carer you are working eight hour at minimum eight hours a day so what are you doing for

yourself yourself there is the personal and there is the professional if you are not taking yourself seriously why do you

think other people will take you seriously and for me the point is always to help everyone and that’s why um I

wanted to do two things uh mainly with um with the a Consulting Group one I

wanted to be sure that there is people do not feel that there is a trap or whatever so I put all the prices

on the website there is nothing that is hidden so they cannot say well there is

a it will make me click on it and then after I will have to pay no you don’t

it’s basically everything is Crystal Clear you know where you stand what you will be interested in or not the second

thing is that I’m always offering like one hour free consultancy either it can

be for the companies to understand their project what they are trying to do in term of

advisory in term of decision making or for the personal for the individuals

basically if you have an issue you can come at me and basically you will have a voice that you can talk to then there is

there is no string attached there is nothing like that so it’s really about how can you contribute and uh probably

this is exactly the same for your business har is how can you contribute

to the industry how can you help the other people and I just think that right now we are

in interesting stage where people I see more and more for example on LinkedIn

people who are a little bit lost right now in this career transition is like what should I do I lost my job I cannot

find a new job what are my different option and and people don’t know what to

do basically so you will see of course and this is always very nice people

saying this company is recruiting this compan is recruiting but it’s not really

it’s not really solving the issue it’s just pointing someone to apply somewhere

else and maybe the problem will repeat itself in six months time people should

open their perspective and should be should become more confident and this is

basically the job of a coach to do that as for the companies I think that so many companies

and especially the Developers they they do not know how to structure thems they do not know how to organize

especially when when this is a startup they do not know um how they should manage the people how they should

recruit they do not know how they should manage their Finance or basically how

they should make a deal with a publisher so they need to have many guidance what kind of game and how do you how do you

work with the best and to reply to all these questions instead of trying by

yourself people should should take

basically the use of always ringing the bell to ask someone an expert to help

them because if they do that they will see that suddenly things will improve and either people are afraid either it’s

it’s a kind of lack of awareness about their own situation they believe they

will extract themselves uh from their own situation just as it was before but it will never

be like that and that’s why you have so many so many studios that are laying of

people right now because there is a kind of credit Crunch and everyone is suffering from it so that’s the problem

or it was too much too too big high run rate and they don’t know how to deal

with that so that that’s kind of the problem that they are facing many

companies interested in my uh advisory service they are coming when there is a

big crisis well it would have been great for the company to use strategic advisor

when everything was going well so basically they could really take the right decision at the right time and now

it’s much more like like trying to save the company or what should we do or we have this kind of Cris this kind of

crisis or this kind of problem to solve how do we deal with that of course

advisor is here to help you but the adviser doesn’t have the old situation

it we we cannot deal with everything we we do the most that we can faster we

enter and more we are working in a long-term relationship easier it will be

to manage and to take the right decision day after day and I think this is what is

important and I want to double click on the coaching before you need it I took on coaching cuz I went from a

360 recruiter only doing Unity development and I was kind of doing that

for a good two years and then I pivoted to doing just business development using LinkedIn and I took coaching then on

kind of how to get better at LinkedIn and as I did the coaching it just started to open my eyes on like my

personal career as well like I started getting skills and it was a matter of I

didn’t know what I didn’t know so once I started building those skills you start to see different opportunities and then

I started um speaking to more and more people they’re saying no you should potentially charge for this I was like I

never would have thought about doing that and it was the this wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t start the coaching

and I think this example works really well with the gaming Studios or the the

person like who’s been laid off potentially like having that person to talk to you might it just unlocks A

Whole New World I feel because you have that person with the perspective and also if you can meet with potentially

people in your similar situation and just have those conversations more frequently especially in a remote world I always advocate for networking on

LinkedIn that’s what it’s for and the more conversations you have it’s just really hammering home like you don’t

know what you don’t know so you need to have those conversations to fill in those gaps cuz like you said when that

person was doing the that studio had that crisis if they had that chat six

months ago they probably could have saved months of time and probably even more benefit than when the

benefit they got when they got the crisis so definitely doing it sooner rather than later um I’m curious Alexis

when you have the people coming to you for help what do they usually come for what’s the most

common thing I will reply to you but just before because there are so many things

to to what you just said and first thing is that isn’t it funny that usually we

are not aware about ourselves we do not know what we don’t what we don’t know

and basically we have this tendency to believe that we know very well ourselves

but we cannot see ourself so the external eyes someone that you are

asking for some help can see things in you that you can never see and basically

you will discover so many things about you and uh this is something that is

very true then it’s not only for let’s say because you are 20 or 25 this is

true in all the different stage in life and of course this is something that should be repeated the second thing

again is that people are afraid in investing in themselves and this attitude needs to be change because I

remember um I think it was like cl to 10 years ago basically I decided to uh to

take a training a class of meditation and it was It was kind of expensive but

I will say that it’s for life and it completely changed my life completely

changed my life my perspective in life and I could say probably that it has saved me from you know when you have

always the stress that is filing and these kind of things so I it was one of the first time I was

investing in myself I could really see the benefit of course there are different ways because I was always kind

of doing some sports and there this kind of things but basically if you are doing with sports why you are not doing for

here for the mental why you are you I think that I would recommend to everyone

if you are afraid to uh to use cach start with meditation start with

something that is a little bit on the side you you can add myself you know I I

know that personality wise people are complicated and many of the things can

be a mix in my services I have professional coaching which is much more for business

issues that people are facing within their company within their Studio but

then after I have career coaching which is especially important when you are doing a transition and then after there

is personal coaching and sometime the things can mix to together there is someone in a bad position who like to

change his life and it’s becoming personal so yes there is a distinction

but basically people are more complicated it’s not just like one thing

so I really recommend everyone to try to invest more and more into themsel and

they will really see the benefit

1,000% sure it is better to invest

in a coach or to invest in a meditation program in a training program to invest

in yourself than to invest in I don’t know stuff it’s basically like buying

some stuff it will not you will not keep it with you it will not make you grow

and that that would be a that would be a mistake so yeah sorry what was what was your

question no it’s all good I think that covers it that’s good what I would love to end on Alexis

I think would be really cool is you did a post today on LinkedIn and I really

like the fact that it’s basically a list of a lot of things people should do to

build a stellar team so I would love to Rapid Fire read the headlines and you

just explain these key aspects that okay would that be okay yeah sure sure so key

aspects to consider for a stellar team skill fit what do you mean by that quickly well basically there is the the

culture of the company and there is uh basically what you are doing it’s always the hard skill and soft skill and the

the skill uh the skill are always very important but you need to be sure that

they can be reused in the in the team so basically you need to be sure that what

you are recruiting the person is what you will ask there are so many cases where basically people are recruit and

when they arrive someone is asking them to do something completely different from what they were recruited so there

is like you need to have the culture fit of course but you need to of course in term of skills you need to have a very

good fit depending on what you want for your company this is what I would mean

yeah and if IID add a personal thing I’ve found it many times when the agency

is trying to recruit for a role and there’s Sometimes some hesitation from the hiring manager or the studio to hop

on a call to give a full specification when that doesn’t happen this risk goes

up through the rof This was um because if if you wanted a Unity developer sure

but what problem is the person going to be solving oh okay well there’s a fraction of unity developers who can

actually do that you don’t want a Unity developer you need someone who’s worked on this at this type of Studio which is

a lot more specific and I think that’s a very big thing that people should

remember when it comes to hiring it’s just really doubling down on the problem rather than the skills that they need

yeah and and that’s why I think it’s always very important for um for the

recruiter basically to work with the team with the highering team to understand exactly what is their need so

basically they will be able to create the the strong job description and

basically there would be less problem afterward it’s like that’s something very important but also you need to be

clear with the candidates is basically where the company is at you know if you

know that a project will be can and basically it would be a new project you would be more careful in the way to to

explain the situation so people do not feel when they arrive in a company that they are like oh I was working I was

doing this job and now I have to do something completely different that’s not why I was recruited so I think that

if the companies are not sure they should pause for a while it will be better very good point attitude and work

ethic quickly on that why is attitude and work ethic so

important well because the um I will say that we are leing I mean at least that’s my opinion we are living by our values

and our moral and basically I think that many people are of course will will go

around and will say yes but maybe my values and my moral are not the same as you Etc but we need to find a common

ground and you know like when I was in blizzard there was eight values eight

core values and basically I think it’s very good for the company to have values so

basically people want the company will understand exactly what is the vision what is the values of the company and

then to understand also the manager that there are some things that are acceptable and something that are not

acceptable the attitude is kind of everything you can not you cannot act

the way that you want you need to act professionally and basically there is a kind

of it it should be the same for everyone because we are working as a team and we

should all respect each other so the attitude is something that is extremely

important you know usually what we are saying is that for the art skill if someone doesn’t have the art skill you

can train the person to get the art skill but the attitude is based on the education and the way they were raised

so if they do not have a good attitude you cannot keep them that’s I think that

would be the problem so priority number one attitude and then only then you kind

of start evaluating everything else you need to you need to understand

if the if people are for example genuinely interested in the project if

they are genuinely interested in the in succeeding or to make the company a

success or to make the project s successful that’s I think that’s the basic let’s say that you have some

candidates who do not know about your company they are not doing their own homework they do not know about your

product so that mean they have no interest already that’s kind of problem of attitude because it’s showing that

they are taking everything for granted and you should never take everything for granted basically you should understand

again that what is your position that’s your World basically if you are not

interested don’t show yourself and if you are showing yourself show that you are really committed to this company to

the project and you want to make it successful and then after yes likeability is like yeah you do not have

to to smile but life is so much better if you smile right so exactly so that

that’s kind of things that are important I think all righty number three growth

potential what does that mean growth potential is basically you do not want

to have someone either for the person or for the company that will just stay

where they are you want to have someone again for the long term and someone that

you can grow internally into the role into the position I think that as a

myself as as a manager as a general manager managing director one of the thing that I like the most is when I’m

giving new responsibil to people when you are basically promoting someone this

is so so great because it’s there is the satisfaction of course of the person

receiving but also you you are very proud that the person was moving step by

step and moving forward and that’s very good and the fact also that you want

people to especially the good people you want them to stick with you you want you want to be a a very good hum and I think

that’s extremely important couldn’t agree more diversity

of thought this is a kind of a trendy topic

right now but very very important yes is basically one of the thing is that if

you are just agreeing with yourself that’s not that very complicated and it’s much more

like a kind of dictatorship and basically if you want to create something new well you you should have

people coming from different background right now there is a many

discussion about different gender Etc and that’s extremely important to have

diversity you know that’s not for nothing that we are seeing diversity and inclusion it’s basically to enrich the

game to enrich the game play to have new ideas because people are coming from

different backgrounds as think this is what make life very very rich myself I I

never had this I never had this uh this problem because I was always very International I basically I was born in

France I made when I was a kid I stayed four years in Africa and uh then after I

came back to France and then after I went to Japan to Korea to Japan to Germany Etc so I have uh I have moved a

lot I was also in charge of international so I always work with people with different culture different

languages different background and basically that was one of the thing that

I am the proudest and also this is something that I enjoy the most is for

me just being with the same people is not that interesting but if you can

interact with people from different Origins from different cultur from

different languages nationalities gender Etc this is so great this is so great

because it’s enriching you and basically it would make better product at

theend everybody wins I feel everybody wins that’s that should be the that should be the motto but it’s also you

know even if you want to rationalize it for people who do not want to understand

that’s very simple today the world we are living in is completely International you know like 25 years ago

internet was just starting like if you remember iPhone was arriv in 2009 it’s

not that long ago so basically the world has so much changed since the internet

beginning of the 2000 end of the 90s since the the the mobile arrived

especially the iPhone that change everything because it’s basically a computer in the palm of your hand

everything has changed so now it’s everything is international so that’s it’s it’s not the same world we were

living in and basically we need to to to be aware of it and basically to work that way

that just that’s just the way it is and it’s better perfect alignment with vision can

you explain alignment with vision I was touching it a little bit before you know

when I was telling you about the fact that blizard had some some core values

but basically there is always for the company or there should be always a visual it’s like what do you want to

achieve as a company what is the vision and it can be it can be of course the

vision of the company like making the greatest game in the world this is kind of the easy one that everyone will do

but at the end of the day is that this is also the role of the different executive of the top management to

convey the vision and basically you need to get everyone on board you know that’s

one of the one of the most complicated job from the the team leaders from for

the from the managers is to on board everyone into the vision and to say okay

we were telling you that we were doing this product and now with this business model and now we are shifting the

business model so there is a lot of education and basically you need to bring people to the New

Vision coming back to uh the discussion we were having moving Blizzard from the

function type organization to the franchise organization this is basically

a different Vision in term of management of the company so you need basically to onboard people and that’s why it was

taking six months because we needed to build and to consider all the different elements so we were sure that we were

treating everyone with respect that was something very very important so the point is not

to force the vision of the company the point is to ex explain to educate people

so basically they will accept they will approve and they will be align with you

and when people are aligned with your vision they will work by themselves there is no fight and that’s the point

to be align I’ve see this a lot when I was

doing recruitment for gaming Studios this misalignment of vision was the main reason seniors quit the internal Vision

like they weren’t learning anymore they didn’t see the growth they either didn’t believe in the company that was the

thing that led them to quit it wasn’t necessarily the money and when I speak

to the people it feels like it was an avoidable thing so having that onetoone

attention with the manager and aligning the vision with the employees consciously having that as a constant

kind of battle because it’s not going to happen by accident you need to keep working on it so I think that’s a big

place where gaming Studios can really kind of hone in on like a lining division yeah and you said it is

basically it it it’s kind of a problem of for me of management I think that

today many companies are basically are failing because of bad management it’s

basically not everyone will agree with what the company is doing with the decision making but the problem is not

agreeing on not agreeing is basically if people do not agree is that most of the

time either you are not making the right decision so you should you should have maybe some advisors to help you to guide

you second one is basically you are not explaining well enough to your team so

you need to take time and you need to show that what you are doing for the company is for the good of the company

and the good of the company will bring the good for the employees this is something that you need to take time

it’s you need to be very diligent in your work and do it not like

so much like how to say brutal you know

what was what’s happening since the beginning of the year with basically 10,000 people that have been fired has

been extremely brutal that’s not normal this is bad management it it could have

been prevented if they were not recruiting the way they were doing and they were not reacting if they were

proactive in the way that they are building their company it will never happen

just preach just yes all righty um we’ll leave that there

um Alexis thank you so much thank you very much thank you take care