The interview was designed and conducted by XofMdS:
Hello. Could you present yourself? How did you came into the Guillotine Games adventure? What is your part in this?
I have been a long time friend of Raphaël Guiton and when the experience of Rackham was over for him and for a big part of Guillotine team too, we met and we had a discussion about future.
At the time I was also in a change mood after 5 years spent working for another company.
I remember I was reading that Brad Pitt was going to produce World War Z and The Walking Dead series was going to be launched.
So I told Raphaël the magic word: “Zombies”. And it came Zombicide.
What is your absolute cultural reference, especially regarding Zombie universes?
Romero, it is a matter of age and culture…
How would you describe Survivor « Percy » if he’d be in the game?
I don’t think I would survive a minute in a zombie apocalypse, probably I would be a Fatty (even if only 5 years ago I was definitely a skinner)
I feel complied to ask you this, because we do not really know you… Nicolas Raoult does much of the « talking » (even you talked about him in the first place). Is that random, or is it part of the roles of each of you?
I don’t think it is my role to appear and give interviews, for this aspect Nicolas is suiting perfectly the role. My job is operational and I am the nightmare of the poor designers and artists in terms of deliveries and deadline. Also one role I took to keep the Zombicide spirit intact is the definition of the Kickstarter campaign (even if the Kickstarter campaign is belonging to CMON).
Sometimes I have to be in the front line (there is a video circulating in internet of a panel I gave one month ago at the CMON Expo… where you actually discover my real name. 🙂 )
Speaking of the KS-to-come, how is the creator-side just before such a run? And during the run?
It is just stress because we already know that some people will complain, many other will not be happy of the offered value, but we have an incredible community and criticism when is constructive is always a great tool!
There is once again great expectation about the stretch goals. An exclusive Abomination as been talked about. Any other new type of Stretch Goal to expect?
We will have some new promo survivors, we know many backers are complaining that there are too many, however we have to think to newcomers too. So we will mix different type of goodies and I think backers will be happy!
We saw you indeed on the CMON Expo video, as you mention. Do you travel a lot? Are you more in charge of the American continent?
Yes I do travel a lot. Brazil is, after France (and I am not French!), the country where I spend most of my time. I have also to spend some months in USA and China…
You say you are not french. Where do you come from, then?
I was born in Milan, Italy, but I consider France as my home country. With two soft spots: Paris and Toulouse. Cities that I truly love.
These travels explain the famous Brazilian video! It came out very early (last august) and spoiled some nice stuff. Any chance a fan-site like ours could have same privilege?
Well I can’t tell you so much to be honest, but we are actually working on 4 different products. Two of them with Studio McVey.
You cannot stand in the middle of such a bridge!!! One of the Studio McVey’s being « The Others », any pitch or key word for one of the 3 left? At least, is there anything related to Zombicide universe?
Yes there is something related to Zcide universe.
Back to the international aspect… Why did Guillotine Games choose CMON, a discrete distributor back then?
Because it was the only company who was willing to take the risk of a game with so many miniatures and such an high price. I remember it was Gencon 2011 and I presented to the two directors of CMON a prototype with some cardboard home made tiles and the figures of AT43. After two turns one of the director miserably failed opening a door and he was killed. I think CMON decided in that specific moment to sign the game.
CMON is the right partner for Guillotine Games because they leave us complete liberty and they do not interfere in our creative process. Believe it or not, this doesn’t happen so often in the boardgame market.
Why did you choose China to product the minis? Isn’t it too hard to manage?
Because I know where to produce and how. We have a great partner in China and it is also a good friend of mine. So it was an easy call.
Also few words should be spent on Edge Entertainment role. The work Gilles and Jose do in France and Spain is outstanding. One of the reason of our success is also linked to them.
You speak of Gilles for Edge France. Hervé (MarsEye) is the one that roams our forum. A word for him?
Hervé is one of the driving force of Zcide in the French community and we consider him as a Guillotine member!
So with all of this, what does a typical week of Percy looks like?
It is a quite normal working week if I don’t have to fly. I just wake up early to catch up with China…
Do you like heavy metal too?
It is not my favorite. I am a big fan of Depeche Mode and The Cure.
The first KS was a big (and surprising) success. Delivery was outstanding. The second came out with a few flaws (17P & 18P openings; Shannon & Watts colours; wave 2 ID cards numbers). How did that happened? Could it happen for KS3? Is there any room for fan-base proof-reading?
Mistakes happen, it happened to us as it happens for some others.
We have established a new layer of control and we hope these unfortunate events won’t see the light again. We also took some measures to fix some of them.
We are not perfect even if we would love to.
And yes, we have now a fan base team that we selected to check our products.
Anyone from the french side of the pool? If not, why?
We normally prefer English speaker editors, but we have a small group of French editors.
How do you feel about the fan communities? Do you sense any French touch?
Well fan communities are vital and we have more than 17k followers in facebook. So the French touch is very diluted now, however our roots are French and our French community is one of lead driver in our Zombicide world. And we are very grateful to them.
What would be your favourite card in the game?
The extra activations cards are my favorite.
Which important question did I miss? (Deal is that it won’t be asked)
Well you didn’t ask me about “The Others”. This is a project Mike McVey and I created together and in which we believe a lot.
It will be completely different from Zombicide and we took on board one of the best designer in the market, Eric Lang. The Others or 7 Sins (this will be the title of the first chapter) is something unique. We created the world before and I was blessed to work with incredible names like Karl and Stefan Kopinski, Adrian Smith and Paolo Parente. As a golden age GW fan it was a dream coming true.
With this project we are trying a different approach, we will see if it will work… Stay tuned in our facebook page and in our site www.7sins.com.
Any last word?
Nope!
