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PLAY ALL: Five studios in the Greater Paris Region (Ile-de-France) have united to develop a common production chain for PCs, home game consoles and portable devices. After more than a year of preparation, PLAY ALL is ready to launch in September, in an R&D center specially created to host the project and its team of over 40 engineers for two years.
The goal is to generate cooperation and mutual assistance among French studios in order to overcome future market-wide technology disruptions.
A major technology project led by five studios in the Greater Paris Region (Ile-de-France)
As an initiative of Darkworks, Kylotonn, Load Inc., White Birds Productions et Wizarbox, five leading game studios in the Greater Paris Region, PLAY ALL received its official project label from the Cap Digital competitiveness cluster and the French Ministry of Economy, Finance and Employment. PLAY ALL seeks to pool the R&D efforts of video game companies, developers, middleware specialists and engineering schools in order to produce a unified, 100% multiplatform development platform for PCs, home game consoles and portable consoles.
Following a specification phase carried out from January to July, PLAY ALL is scheduled to launch in September 2007, recruiting 30 engineers and opening a common R&D center in Paris.
Pragmatic: concrete actions for content creation
How many times has an “R&D” department provided you with modules that were not well adapted to your practical needs for producing games?
We have all experienced this frustrating situation, due to work carried out by R&D departments operating in isolation, detached from the real world.
The people at PLAY ALL are fully aware that game content is really the only thing that drives technology development. For that reason, the PLAY ALL project intends to create several game prototypes, to be developed in parallel with new technology.
Quality: Team Expérience
Beware of technology solutions provided by companies that have never produced any titles.
The best tools, concepts and technology solutions can only show their true value when confronted with reality, when they are tested by deployment in a real game production context. That is the first time you can actually perceive their efficiency and relevance.
Only experienced developers are able to anticipate the true constraints and priorities of going into production. Their experience is what ensures the overall quality of the technologies and tools used in the production chain.
PLAY ALL emerged from strategic thinking by experienced video game development studios. This thinking was assisted and supported by each partner’s technical teams, particular those of the project’s five founding studios: Darkworks, Kylotonn, WhiteBirds, Wizarbox and Load Inc.
PLAY ALL’s experience and foundation are based on more than a dozen game productions on various platforms.
| FPS (First Person Shooter) | for PC |
| Action | for PC, PS2, XBOX and PS3 |
| Graphical Aventure | for PC and NDS |
| Online Sports | for PC, XBOX360 and Live arcade |
| Kids and Casual games | for PC, PS2 and NDS |
PLAY ALL’s goal is to leverage this experience and make an easily accessible production chain available to all development teams who want it.
Longevity: Working on a project made to last
How come you’ve never been able to re-use the last production chain you worked with?
Sure, you can be proud of the complete production chain that you successfully fine-tuned for your last production. Clearly it would be nice if you could continue to improve it and leverage the work for future productions. Unfortunately, this does not always work out as planned. Maybe the company no longer exists, or new game types are nothing like the previous ones, or maybe your editor is asking you to change technologies for your next game. There are a million reasons for things to change.
The result, however, is the same. At best, your effort will be archived on a backup tape that gathers dust over the coming years.
By its collaborative nature and its desire to become an open standard, PLAY ALL is immune to these problems. PLAY ALL is destined to continue, grow, and evolve even if one of the partners chooses to leave the project. By uniting a vast user community, PLAY ALL’s goal is simple. To become immortal.
Your code will be as useful to us as it will be to you, for a long time.
Efficiency: Leveraging and improving existing work
How many times have you had to develop modules without being able (or knowing how) to re-use the same development carried out for a previous project?
The reality of game production is that you rarely have time to step back and objectively examine what you are doing. Communication and interaction with neighboring projects are extremely limited in most cases. Much of the time, developers work on identical tasks without knowing it, and therefore without being able to collaborate effectively with other colleagues and co-workers.
Collaborative work is one of PLAY ALL’s central concepts. It is also out of the question to neglect or leave out the significant results and resources of every contributor. Whenever possible PLAY ALL considers everything brought to the table by its partners as contributing added value to the project as a whole.
Examples of this include the 3-D engine, which is not being rewritten from scratch. A 3-D engine for PC serves as the starting point for a multiplatform next-generation (Shaders 3.0) 3-D engine. In fact we will only develop 3-D engines for new platforms, such as PC, Xbox360 and PS3). We will re-use existing code provided by our partners for other supported platforms, such as PS2, PSP, Wii and DS).
Serenity: Finally, long-term funding for technology
When is the last time you developed technology for a video game?
The most seasoned among you will remember the time when editors funded content development for games AND technology development. These days they prefer to focus purely on content, imposing existing technologies. It’s a winning strategy for the editors in the short-term, but studios no longer have control of the ownership of their technology. They are therefore increasingly vulnerable, as they are dependent on middleware solutions from outside sources (consider Criterion/Renderware by EA and the impact this had on developers).
In that respect, PLAY ALL represents a unique opportunity to benefit from funding for developing the technology to serve our games. The PLAY ALL project is officially certified by the Cap Digital competitiveness cluster in Paris, and is funded for a period of 24 months by the General Department of Trade (DGE), Region of Île de France, as well as the Departments of Paris, Hauts de Seine and Val de Marne.
Motivation : Collaboration and mastering technology
You’ve never had enough human or technological resources to go all the way with your ideas, development desires or research?
Neither have most studios. Technology development needs never cease to grow, such as for tools, engines and new target platforms. Not only that, but our editors are ever more demanding and competition is increasingly fierce. For a studio, no matter how talented, facing the adventure alone has become a huge risk. In the near future, independent studios will no longer even have cost-effective access to multi-platform projects. PLAY ALL’s community of founder studios would rather focus on pooling its technology development and maintaining control over its intellectual property. That way, members can optimize their own resources and concentrate serenely on game content.
Sounds impossible? Why?
Create a video game production tool along with the associated game engine for multiple target platforms in just 24 months, impossible?
If you’re new to the video game industry, come join us and prove the opposite, that it is indeed possible!
If you already have experience with many productions, then you know it’s complicated, but still possible. Others of you may be almost there, but tight production and budget constraints have kept you from going all the way. Come join us and help build PLAY ALL!
General Information about PLAY ALL
PLAY ALL is a project that has been officially labeled by the Cap Digital competitiveness cluster in the Greater Paris Region (Ile-de-France and by the Ministry of Economy, Finance, and Employment’s General Department of Trade (DGE)). PLAY ALL was initiated by five development studios, Darkworks, Kylotonn, LoadInc, White Birds Production and Wizarbox, plus technology providers Atonce Technologies, Bionatics, SpirOps and Voxler, as well as research laboratories such as CNAM, ENST, LIP6 and LIRIS. PLAY ALL seeks to leverage shared development across the entire game production chain:
100% multi-platform solutions for PCs, home game consoles, portable consoles.
Long-term results thanks to support from multiple technical, documentation, and dedicated support teams.
The PLAY ALL concept is to build a structure capable of developing a tool chain to handle future technology cycles, targeting beyond today’s production. PLAY ALL mainly leverages the R&D efforts of game developers, with involvement by specialized middleware companies and university laboratories in order to produce a unified standard across game developers, technology suppliers and educational institutions.
PLAY ALL’s role is to be truly open for French and European development teams. As soon as the project is launched in September, a special interest group will be established and opened to development teams wishing to follow PLAY ALL development closely.
Programmed over two years, PLAY ALL benefits from an overall budget of 13M€, with 6.5M€ in funding from the French government (inter-ministry fund dedicated to business competitiveness managed by the General Department of Trade), the Region of Ile-de-France, as well several Departments, namely Paris, Hauts-de-Seine and Val-de-Marne.
For more information, please write to our press contact, Michel Bams: info[at]playall.fr