Gaming

Before working in the game-industry, I was indeed a player. However I started quite late and 3D was already common when I got my first very own console.

Even if I try various games genre for my culture, I am mostly playing 3D action/adventure games. I do not consider myself as a hard-core player and I am always interested in character customization, open world activities, role play and story in games as much as in actual gameplay. I am also frequently playing cooperative games and MMOs, and sometimes board games.

This list of video games may give you a better understanding of my gamer profile: Fable games, The Elder Scrolls games, Mirror’s Edge, Borderlands, Mark of the Ninja, World of Warcraft, Civilization, Brothers, …

Modding

From my first game experiences, I had the will to add my own content, modify the game to create my own experience. When editors were available, I was keen to use it and experiment.

I created some minor content for various games but my main experiences were with the Elder Scrolls Construction Set. I started with Morrowind, creating some basic quest and building my own thief lair, then got to the next level with Oblivion. In this game, I created a full dungeon and I tried as much as I could to use the assets of the game in a different way, giving alternative experiences with existing game bricks.

Guild Management

It may sound trivial, even ridiculous, to add "Guild Management" in a professional portfolio, but this was really an enriching experience. First, a guild is nothing but a community of players, and in a guild we meet the same issues developers or community managers can have with their players. Leading this guild gave me a good overview of social interactions between players, how some "archetypes" arise and how this group behave in a MMO environment. As I also created and managed a website with a forum, I saw what these players needed as social features, and this experience comes in handy when I design social stuff for any online game.

Then, leading a guild is nothing but management - and it is even harder with role players who always have strong opinions. I had to pay attention to communication to sell this guild to other players (role-play unfortunately have a bad reputation in MMOs), to prevent conflicts within the guild and moderate tensions.

Role-Play

Role-play is not only about simulating eating cup-cakes between two dungeons. It brings a new vision of a game, it makes us see other things other players do not see. For instance, role-players pay attention to all the details level builders have set in an environment to find out the story of a place, find. Role players also excel in diverting game mechanics, or imagining new uses for them.

This experience as a role-player gave me a new sensibility, a new layer I apply especially in level-design or level-building - a layer that improves the feeling of an area or a mechanic, and not only for role-players.

About storytelling & stories in games

I have always loved writing and reading, and was doing so even before knowing what a video game was. To increase my knowledge and the quality of my writings, as well as to know more about my passion for worlds creation and characterization, I read several books on these topics from contemporary authors who share their experiences. I am especially interested in contemporary literacy (mainly science fiction and fantasy).

Indeed, I am also interested in storytelling in games. However, the real interest is for me in the ability to tell a story through gameplay, to use game mechanics to convey ideas or emotions. For instance, Brothers: A tale of two sons is for me way more interesting than cinematographic tries like Beyond or Metro (from a storytelling point of view I mean). Making the players build their own story is also an approach that interests me.

Internet Majeur

During a two weeks internship at Euro7 Web Agency, I have been asked to do a quite uncommon task: write a hundred-page book about the history of Internet and do a critical analysis of this media at this time. I accepted the challenge and did deep searches on the origin of Internet, where did it come from, how it became what it became and what it was at the end. The book was locally published and sold or offered to people working in the web design industry in the region.

Other writing

I am frequently writing, mainly for myself for the moment, but as a passionate role-player and interested in character building, I published on my websites the backstories of some of my role-play characters. This may sound trivial, but building a character, whatever universe it is related to, is a real work. Also, making a character story fit with an existing context, without making it a copy-paste of other world-saving heroes is a challenge I always loved.

Azrelia, role-play character backstory
Azkath, role-play character backstory
Azrelia, role-play character story

Webdesign

Webdesign combines all of my passions and requires a wide range of skills, that's why I always liked it and created for my own several websites, based on topics I love. I entirely did all of these sites from my own, including programing, graphic design, texts writing and communication around it.

Creating website is a totally complete work that covers most of the essential qualities for a game designer: thanks to these creations, I sharpened my technical and artistic sensibility, my knowledge in ergonomic, and my understanding of social behavior through online services.

As today games are more and more connected and linked to other applications, my experience in web design and online services is really helpful in my work as a game designer.

Azrelia.fr

Azrelia is the name of my main role-play character in World of Warcraft. More than a simple virtual avatar, it is the main character of a hundred-page story written according to real ingame interactions with other players, without any planification. I have published these stories on the website azrelia.fr , telling the story of my character from the time I created it to – almost – its end.

The website got a very warm welcome when I introduced it to the community on the Wow-europe official forum and it was selected twice by the community managers to appear in the “News from the community”, with a link in the front page of the official Wow Europe French website.

Rp.azrelia.fr

After the success of Azrelia.fr and with the will of helping spreading the role-play as much as I could, I created a service to allow other role-players to create their own role-play diary and publish online the story of their own characters. The website that I have entirely created alone offers usual blog platform features (articles with advanced text editing, categories, picture gallery, comments, …) and gives the possibility to create several sites with a single account.

Unfortunately the sites suffered from a lack of support from me as I then had to focus on my studies and jobs. However, I am currently working on a new version with more features and a graphic design made by a professional, and I will try to make it a real social site about role-playing on MMO, with the support of other people to help me to manage it, preventing the mistakes I already did.

Pictures galery

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

Convinced that the future of our planet (and so the future of humankind) is linked to the way we consider animals, I decided last year to start fighting for the wildlife. I chose to volunteer with Sea Shepherd Conservation Society for the efficiency of their methods and became a Cove Guardian for a month.

In Taiji, Japan, 6 months every year, Cove Guardians stand still on the coast to monitor and denounce the slaughter and capture of wild dolphins, using social networks and media to spread the word about this awful massacre and put pressure over the Japanese officiels to make this end.

As a Cove Guardian, I watched and recorded barbaric slaughters then reviewed this footage on a daily basis to publish on social medias our daily reports.

N/a'an Ku Sê Wildlife Sancturay

Passionated by African wildlife since I am a child, I spent 3 months in the African bush earlier this year, working as a Research and Wildlife Conservation Volunteer in Namibia, for N/a'an Ku Sê Foundation.

The work at the sanctuary implied taking care of the animals, preparing their food and cleaning their enclosure, participing to the building of new enclosures or rooms for workers.

Another part of the job was focused on research, including tracking wild animals with VHF of GPS systems, finding and identifying tracks in the wild, assisting researcher when handling, releasing and checkingn wild animals such as cheetahs or various snakes.

Photography

Passionate by wildlife and animals in general, I took the opportunity of my travels as a volunteer to practice wildlife photography and catch the best of the wilderness' beauty with my camera.

You can find a few samples of my photographies in the galery below. None of these pictures has been edited in any way, they are all 100% raw.

Pictures galery