THE GAME BAKERS

From triple-A to fierce independence: the 'chefs' on a mission to be memorable

- JON BAILES

You could say it's a familiar tale: triple-A developers leave the embrace of the corporation to start their own venture, chasing creative freedom. The difference that comes through as we speak to Audrey Leprince and Emeric Thoa about their studio, however, is how protective of their independence they remain. Any suggestion of having to work as part of a team of hundreds again would most likely bring them out in a cold sweat.

Not that they had a terrible time in the early part of their development careers in the 2000s. Leprince started at Quantic Dream, working on Omikron: The Nomad Soul, before shifting to Ubisoft and relocating to the French company's studio in Shanghai. There she overlapped with Thoa, who was doing production work on Splinter Cell after a stint in Ubisoft's playtest lab. It wasn't until Thoa had finished on Splinter Cell, gone back to France and then returned to Shanghai, however, that the two converged on the same project - Tom Clancy's EndWar. And only after that did they consider pastures new.

With EndWar done, Thoa moved to Montpellier in France, rejecting an opportunity to "work on one of the biggest franchises" in Montreal, Canada, to get involved in a new project instead. But the move collided with the reality of the 2008 credit crisis. "A lot of new IPs in Ubisoft were killed at this time," he says, "and eventually the game I spent two years working on was killed." By this point he wanted to stay in Montpellier - "I love the place" - but was equally keen to work with smaller teams. He asked around to see which of his colleagues shared this vision and found Leprince felt similarly. "I had been working for Ubisoft for eight years," she says. "There was something like 300 people on one project, and also a lot of decisions that I could not really get behind, so I was very motivated by the idea of working with a small team that would be completely empowered."