New climbing video game

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0:30Find out more at polandyourplacetogrow.com. America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London. And this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:06This is the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service. I'm Jordan Erika Webber. I've spent my whole life playing video games and my whole career on radio and television explaining why. The brand new game I want to tell you about today asks a similar question of another popular pastime, climbing. We read all the books, we watched all the movies and the TV shows related to mountain climbing. To try to answer that question of why are people doing it? The game was sort of being made as we were recording it. And I'd voice it to video sometimes and then sometimes it would just be completely blind.

1:49so today is the first time i've seen you know bits of actual footage voiced with my voice it's looking really cool

2:01my interest in video games stems from how their creators tell stories and evoke emotions not just through how they look and sound but also what the player does whether that's furiously tapping buttons to defeat an enemy and save a loved one, or blinking into a webcam to jump cut through the memories of a life cut short while on a ferry to the afterlife. In the game Cairn, the buttons you press control the arms and legs of a climber on her ascent up a fictional mountain that has never been conquered. The skill needed for a player to get her to the top is designed to reflect the challenge on which real-world mountaineers thrive.

2:44The game is made by The Gamebakers, an independent studio based in the southern French city of Montpellier, but with workers contributing remotely from across the globe. They are known for their previous releases, Fury and Haven, one a fast-paced sword-duelling action game, the other a gentler one about two lovers trying to survive on a lost planet. They try to keep things fresh with each new title. Audrey Leprance is one of their co-founders and executive producer. We knew we wanted to do something that was going to be gameplay first. With Heaven, our previous game, we went into a lot of storytelling, romance.

3:23It was fantastic. But for this one, we wanted to go back to pure gameplay. So that was one of the criteria. And the other thing is we don't want to do the same games we've been doing before. So that already excludes a lot of things we've done. Well, your studio always does that. You always try and do something different, don't you? Yes, we try. We think it's more interesting for us. And also we think it's our best strategy to be noticed in this market where, you know, there's so many fantastic games and half of them are for free. And there's like hundreds game available for players every day. And they also have Netflix and everything else.

3:57So, yeah, we wanted to try to find something that would capture a fantasy for players that was maybe not so captured before. And then we also wanted a game that was going to talk about themes we're interested about. Freedom is a theme that we've been working on. And it felt also really nicely because we saw all those people who are going on the mountain and risk their lives. And they tell us how it makes them feel to go up there. And they do it again. And it's like we're talking to, it's wild, right? Alpinists, we talked to an alpinist, a French alpinist who's done a lot of 8 ,000 meters. She'd lost her partner on the last mountain.

4:33And she was going to go again. So there is something really magical about what it gives them to be there. And we relate that to freedom, to the things you feel when you push yourself beyond your limits, right? So it was all fitting together. And then, of course, my dad's story. He was a climber. He was an alpinist. It was not his main job, but it was like his passion. He was always out. I spent my childhood in Fontainebleau, which is like known by everyone for being the forest in France where you have all the blocks to practice. So everybody who was a climber is going to know what I'm talking about.

5:06I spent all my Sundays there watching him climb. Then he went on a big expedition when I was a teenager in the Himalayas. And half of his team didn't come back. And he's 82 now. And he's still climbing, free solo, on the cliffs of Marseille. And I'm like, Dad. So, yeah, it kind of felt right. And then we're like, OK, it's cool. It's a great idea. But can you really do a game about climbing? What is it going to look like? Nobody's really done it the way we want it. So we started prototyping this unique climbing mechanism that we have in the game. You move the limbs very freely, very naturally, and then you climb.

5:41And we were like, is it going to be deep enough to make a whole game about it? And it was, but it took us a long time to figure it out and come to the recipe we have in the game now. Yeah, so how long have you been working on the game at this point? At this point, because we're finishing, it feels like forever, but it's more like four years. Is that pretty consistent across your past games as well? Yes. Unfortunately, we don't get faster at making them because they are bigger and more complex. The previous one also took us four years and the Fury before was a bit faster, but it was also smaller and we were really rushing all the time.

6:15So over the course of that kind of four years of development, what happens at the different stages? For this one, we had to prove that the concept that we had, that climbing and just moving limbs on a rock was going to be fun enough to make a 15 hours game. and also to make sure it was working, which was very hard because we used physics and the natural strengths and pressure of the body of a human being on a cliff. So we even had to hire some engineers who were doctors in physics to make our team stronger in all the math calculations and the things we had to do to make this work. So it took us a long time to come to what we call a first playable that was convincing.

6:53And then we have this pre-production period where we're just trying to put all the systems in place, these systems of gameplay, but also what is it going to look like? What is it going to sound like? So all of the pieces together, the art style, the audio, the story. At the end of the reproduction period, you have hopefully a vertical slice, a piece of the game that looks like it's going to be. You can start to explain what it's about. And then you have production, which is where you go, OK, so we have decided to make this game and And also to tell the story of Ava. And we are working with a fantastic comic book artist and writer, Mathieu Bablet, the French comic book artist.

7:29And he came up with this fantastic story. And we were like, OK, we're just going to do it. But then you have to fit all of that story also in our production schedule, all of the moments that are going to happen on our way to the summit. We are currently at Side UK. We've been invited here to listen to the actress Sofia Elani record some of the voice for Ava, the main character of the game, Ken. She's in the booth right now, so we're going to join her. And it has to be like a confession. Cool, shall we go for one? All I ever wanted was to touch eternity for an instant, to reach one of those rare moments of bliss where everything seems in its place.

8:14Do you know what I mean? Great. I think we should keep that. That's creative director Emmerich Toa, putting Sophia through her paces as she scales the lower slopes of the mountain. Some of her scenes are already animated, but it's definitely not finished. So Sophia has to imagine what's going on, with guidance from Emmerich and Audrey. It requires a lot of focus, for sure. Yeah. Especially since we are far away. So where are you calling in from? I'm in Montpellier, south of France. Could be anywhere. And Audrey's with you as well? She's in Sweden. Oh, Audrey's in Sweden. Oh my goodness. So this is a really remote operation here.

8:50Does that make things more difficult or is it easier because you can have people from all over the place? For us, it brings a lot of value. We can work with lots of talent. We don't have to make them move to our little studio. It allows us to take a lot of risks as well because if we fail, people will not have moved their lives to come with us. so it allows us to be brave I think. So working remotely allows you to make better art. Exactly it's been 15 years that we're working like that so we're also used to that now. And you're also making the game in multiple languages as a French studio and a kind of global studio.

9:28Is the French version the true one or will the English language one be the main one? It depends the game actually because I think for Avon the main version was really the French one because the dialogue writer was writing in French. But here, even though we write in French, we quickly go to English. There is no real true version. Many countries around the world have a long history of producing popular video games. Historically, the US, Japan and the UK. But different regions are now becoming associated with different kinds of games. Free to play mobile games and competitive online esports are particularly popular in China and South Korea.

10:08There's a community of independent creators in Australia making smaller, quirky works. And France is home to some of the biggest game development studios in the world behind serialised blockbuster hits, but has also recently produced several unique standalone titles, like one of my favourites, Chance of Cenar, in which you ascend a Tower of Babel by deciphering invented languages. And now, this game, about one woman's quest to reach the top, no matter what. Okay, so she's quite breathy, she's in pain. Yeah, okay. Are we going to watch the video for this bit? I can't see a video. No, you have a video.

10:48I think you have the video, yeah. Should be in the dropbox somewhere. So yeah, this one.

11:01What the hell am I doing here? It's quite noisy. Is there a wind? Yeah. Damas, Damas, did you follow me here? So you see this is good. Yeah. But it's like she's in too good shape. She has to be more exhausted and hurt. Yeah, reflect that a bit more. You're speaking to yourself, so you don't have to really raise your voice so much. I just do it all in one, I think. What the hell am I doing here? Did you pull me into the tent? Hello? Anyone? Wow, you've had a rough time. You're going to be okay. good just one quick note when she says wow you've got a rough time she's taking a electricity from the robot so she's a bit like electric shock yeah electric shock cool maybe we can try with a little less panic more what like she doesn't get it okay and i just have a comment because you are you're breathing all along the scene and if we need to cut we might have uh problems and maybe we should do the line independently so we don't have to cut in the breathing yeah that's right okay so do you want me to do a version this time where it's just single track sentences or if you don't then you have to do it to the video so the video is going to be very hard.

12:31I would prefer to do the former. You can do it in one go, but still try to have blanks between lines. Cool. Okay. What the hell am I doing here? Did you pull me into the tent? Hello? Damasz, did you follow me here? Marco? This advertisement feature is paid and presented by Poland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Looking for the perfect place to grow your business? For over 30 years, Poland has been a launchpad for innovation at the heart of Europe, powered by world-class research and ambitious young talent. From bold startups to established powerhouses, Poland offers the momentum, resources and reliability you need to take your business further.

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15:21you're listening to the documentary in the studio from the bbc world service i'm jordan erica webber leading you up a mountain created by video game makers audrey and emmerich actor sophia is back in the studio re-recording some of the script now that the game is closer to completion and the team has a better idea of how all its different aspects tie together the sounds animation, the characters, and that gives Sophia a clearer image of what Arva goes through on her hazardous ascent. It's a very physical job and I think a lot of people don't realise that unless they actually see the work happening, particularly with this game.

15:59You know, she's climbing up a mountain, so you as an actor have to physically think about your breath and how, you know, the effort sounds would sound. Yeah, you've been doing a lot of breathing into the microphone. Oh yes, yes. Is that something you've got a lot of experience with? Not especially, to be honest with you, I wouldn't say I'm a particularly sort of sporty person, which is the ironic thing about this game, but you can fake it. Over a microphone, you can fake it. We've seen some images actually of the French actor for this role doing kind of handstands and things while she's recording.

16:34Have you done any of that for this? Thankfully, no. I was not gifted in gymnastics or anything like that. A lot of the work I've been doing on this game has been all the heavy dialogue and there's a lot of screaming as well going on. I get the sense that, especially for female voice actors, there's a lot of screaming involved with video game voice acting. Is that something you've got experience with on other games? Yes. You learn along the way how to protect your voice and I really feel like I've found my niche doing voiceover in video games. You can use your imagination a lot more. You're not limited to how you look.

17:08oftentimes you think thank goodness no one's you know watching me because you often end up looking I would say quite ugly you know to achieve a certain sound with your voice you know you might have to sort of pull a certain expression to achieve the desired sound you just have to sort of let go of your inhibitions a lot in the booth. Watching Sophia work I can only imagine that letting go of those inhibitions is easier if there are fewer people around to watch. I have not met any of the other actors I think they actually recorded all the other characters first a year ago so I didn't even exist at this point and then I think I came in yeah October November last year I think we were recording for about a month and a half but I completely on my own you know this was a solo recording thankfully I had the other actors to refer to in my in my headphones so I could hear their voices and their lines but a lot of the dialogue in this arva she's a bit of a sort of loner a bit of an outsider i can relate to this woman very much i i've never been the person to follow the crowd because she's so alone with her thoughts a lot of the time you sort of have to tap into that so it kind of worked actually not having anyone else to work off and arva goes to some kind of quite dark places in this game you know she hallucinates and things like that how did you get yourself into that place mentally to record those kinds of lines as an actor I think a lot of it is about instinct and drawing things from your own life perhaps and because this is we're talking about the voice right so you're tapping into things like your breathing your breath can affect how you feel you know if she's hallucinating you know if you might be a bit panicky so your breathing starts to become a bit more shallow and it kind of has an almost you know physical effect on you as a performer you know and you actually start to physically feel those symptoms it's very intimate like like radio you know you can hear every nuance everything in the voice it's all about yeah vulnerability and being brave enough to show that have you played a lot of games like can or is this kind of new to you it's funny so i to be honest with you i'm not actually much of a gamer but my husband is i'm a sort of cheerleader on the side i like to watch him play horror games and survival games i'm too scared to play them myself and i'm probably technically not very good but it's almost good research as well just to watch and listen in a more literal sense have you ever climbed have you got that experience my feet are firmly on the ground um And no, I haven't.

19:56I've watched a few documentaries about climbing and I think it's an endurance test mentally and physically. Is she going to do it? Who knows? You'll have to play the game. Game makers and players are sensitive to plot spoilers and the story of Ava's climb is central. But that's not the only reason people play these games. When I went indoor climbing at university, I was struck by the similarities with playing video games. the puzzle of which holds to use to get up the wall, the skill required to move your body in the right way, and the satisfaction of completing one level and moving on to the next.

20:35Now the importance of making those crucial quick decisions floods back. As I play the game I'm directly behind Ava. I'm with her analysing the rock surface, directing her limbs. It's a very physical experience. some games are just enough with just a cool mechanic that you just want to play again and again because it's so fun this one has the cool mechanic this gameplay that is so simple and so intuitive and at the same time challenging of climbing but on top it's got interesting characters you have to put them in situations where they have to take decisions and it matters to you because you are controlling them at the same time and so naturally you're going to feel the same thing she feels.

21:17You're going to feel the tension. I have to be clever. I have to manage my resources. I have to look at the world. So you are exactly living what she's living. Which obviously differs a lot from passive media, like kind of film and television, right? It's a different experience from just watching someone climb a mountain. Absolutely. I mean, maybe you have that on TV shows, but you're going to spend 15 hours with Ava. Imagine how much you're going to care about her at the end. So what helps you to really feel like you're in Ava's shoes then? What aspects of the game help you to really inhabit her character?

21:47The first thing is that you are doing what she does so you're climbing with her and then the art direction, the style of the character, what she carries, the way she moves, the animation, the poses she takes and of course the things she says while she's climbing or when she sees something that makes her really feel alive. She's constantly telling you how she feels just by listening to her breathing. She's also swearing a lot on the walls. And just to help us picture it, the kind of view that you have, do you see through her eyes or is the camera kind of behind her head? Yeah, you're behind her and you see her whole body.

22:23You need to see where you're going to put your hands and your feet, right? This is the key of the gameplay because you place your hands and your feet on the wall. So you have to see that. And then you walk behind her. So you have a third person camera. And then on top of that, You have a whole mountain to explore. There's no route. You make your own route. You choose where you go. Perhaps more so than any other medium, video games bring together creatives from many different disciplines to realise their characters and tell their stories. When we created the studio, we already knew there was going to have to be a studio in the clouds, as we call it.

22:56We never had an office where everybody was going. And then we just kept adding people from here and there. And then we realised we had gold in our hands because we wanted to work with one of the best Japanese character designers. And we couldn't have done it if we had to ask Takashi Okazaki to come and live in Montpellier, right? He would have never done it. But because we were from distance, we could work with him. The different disciplines that you have within the team, how do they all interact with each other? We are usually 15 people, 17 people full time. And then when we're in the middle of the heat of production and we have to really build that whole mountain, we bring extra artists, extra level designers, extra audio people.

23:37Let's say we are working on making the bivouac, which is the tent where Ava is resting, where we put the cooking, where we put the finger taping when she heals her little fingers. Then they just work with the people that they relate to. So they're working with an animator, they're working with an artist who is doing a full view of her fingers and her hands and the tape. They're working with the artist who's making the tent behind and they're working with the audio guys who are like, you know, the sound of the tape and the feeling when our fingers are all bleeding and hurt. And they all work together and they iterate on the feature until it reaches a level where it's good to go in the game.

24:16And then we play test it. What kind of changes have you had to make as a result of feedback from those play tests? One example is we are very happy with the system we have to control Ava while she climbs. We designed a system that automatically selects the limb to move. So you don't have to worry. You just push up and you can climb. It's working super well. And we think it's one of the breakthrough, actually, of our design that lets everybody climb so easily. But then we found out that some people really want to be super precise in the way they place their feet and hands and stuff. So they've asked for control over that.

24:51So they could actually decide which limb to move and do that more precisely with different sets of controls. so we have implemented that in the game and are now very happy. How about the look of the game? Is that a collaborative process? Does everyone kind of come together and decide the look or is it purely the art team who decides? Yeah, no, the look of the game. I would say we don't like to collaborate on very important aspects because we think at a stage if you collaborate too much you kind of water it down a little bit. You want to keep very strong intentions and they are going to be polarising and some people are not going to like it And we think that's still stronger than doing something that everybody would like.

25:30Yeah, it's OK. So can you give us an example of that kind of thing? So, yeah, for instance, the art direction is from the art director. It's from Mathieu Bablet. We chose him for that. We loved what he did. We wanted him to do it in the game. And then we are lucky that we have the most amazing art technical director who could translate his vision in the game and do all the shaders, you know, all the textures, all the lightings, all the systems. to make it look like his 2D hand-drawn art in the game. So we don't ask him to change. Mathieu Babelet's artwork is lush, vibrant and detailed, often combining the familiar with sci-fi and fantastical worlds.

26:10His style is clearly reflected in the game with its use of colour, whether that's the icy blue-grey of the rock face or the shifting orange-red sunlight as Ava climbs day and night. You announced the release date yesterday. So how close is the game to being done? Not enough compared to the release date. Yeah, basically it's that part on every game project where it's close to being done, but there is still tons of work. The last bits of every project are the hardest to get done. So at the moment, we can play the game from start to the end, but nothing is really finished. And we have to wrap it up at least three months before it actually releases.