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Games Personal

Moving on Up

Please allow me a bit of flag waving. First off, I was very pleased to see the following list by Forbes of the best employers in Canada, with Ubisoft Montreal (where I work) coming in at #6, and then #1 for the province of Quebec. I find it to be a pretty great work environment, and so it’s nice to see it recognized as such.

Also, this week marks my first official title change since I started working in the games industry in 2015 (following my move from Japan). After working as a production coordinator at both Eidos Montreal (on the Shinra Technologies project) and Ubisoft Montreal (first as part of the For Honor team, and then on the studio’s Game Operations Online team), I’ve now taken on the role of project manager. I actually did the transition back at the end of the summer, but it took a while for all of it to become official (it accompanied a level change, which I’m also very happy about).

Pictured above is the meeting room I book every week to watch an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer at lunch time with a couple of colleagues — we started with episode 1 of season 1, and are now in the middle of season 2.

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Uncategorized

For Honor

It’s with great pleasure that I can announce that from next week, I’ll be taking on the role of production coordinator at Ubisoft here in Montreal.

Following the defeat of Shinra, it’s been an interesting month of exploration, and I’m incredibly excited for this new challenge. Although it’s technically the same role that I had at Shinra, it will be within a much bigger team, which I look forward to joining.

I’m also quite excited that I’ll be working on a game this time (as opposed to a platform, which is what we were building at Shinra), and a new IP at that – I’ll be joining the For Honor team.

It’s also going to be quite interesting for me to have a new studio experience, to compare with my previous one (as an employee of Eidos Montréal, but working out of the Square Enix Montréal studio), and I’m already happy that I’ll be seeing a few familiar faces once I get there – and also working in what is quite possibly the biggest game studio in the world (current employee count here in Montreal is apparently 2750). 

Michel Ancel is one of my favorite game creators, and I’m incredibly excited to join the company that gave birth to games like Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil – and of course also the ridiculous number of other Ubisoft games that I’ve played over the years.

New year, new company, new game!

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Debaser Uncategorized

Shinra Defeated

So yeah, this happened to me on Tuesday (or take your pick).

In the past I’ve started the year with a post that looks optimistically at what the coming year may bring – last year I was already starting to set my sights on moving back to North America, which I of course did. 

This year, well, 2016 has definitely kicked off with some big changes for me.

I should start by saying that the past year of work I’ve done as part of the Shinra Technologies team here in Montreal (as Production Coordinator) has been one of the most rewarding of my life. I was incredibly lucky to work with a team here in Montreal that was not only filled with some insanely talented people, but more importantly for me, it was a group of people that I truly enjoyed working with, every single one of them – and the same can be said for the interactions I had with our New York team (with an incredibly huge tip of the hat to my good friend, James Mielke, who helped me get my foot in the door, and then continued to support me throughout my year there). 

We’ve been through a lot over the past year, and although it’s sad to see a project like this come to an end, one that was initiated back in 2010, I still feel proud and honoured to have been part of the history of this company, and to have been able to work under an industry luminary like Yoichi Wada.

I’m of course sad that we didn’t get to launch the service we were working hard on launching, to see how it would have fared in the marketplace, but that’s how it goes.

So what next? I’m of course currently looking for opportunities elsewhere, and so don’t be shy if anyone reading this might come across something they think could be interesting for me – or if you yourself like the cut of my jib and would like me to work with you – whether it’s in Montreal or elsewhere.

And yes, I’m on LinkedIn.