Once a week, discover one of the talents of the Polycorne team. The this time let’s talk with the boss: Aurel.
What is your role at Polycorne ?
At Polycorne, I write and architect code, and I drink a lot of coffee. I motivate the team and train the junior developers with their coding techniques.
I’m also holding the vision of the final version of Silicon City and share it with the whole team to drive the project to its end.
Why do you want to make games ?
I believe video games are an amazing way to get creative and entertained. Also it brings people together, online and offline. I’ve been touched by many games during my childhood. These games I’m nostalgic about were fantastic, even though back in these days , gaming had quite a bad connotation.
I’m proud today to push forward the video game industry with games I want kids and adults to get creative with and entertained by.
How did you joined Polycorne, what’s your background story ?
I’ve been a gamer during my teenager and student years and always was passionate about computers. While I played a lot (too much if you ask my parents) I graduated up to a bachelor in software engineering.
I worked as a software developer then as a software architect for a dozen of years in a few small companies before starting to work with 3D and Unity on personal projects circa 2010.
One day, while travelling in Hong Kong I got inspired by the concrete jungle around me to start making a city builder. After 3 years of part-time development, Silicon City was mature enough to pass the 2nd gear and start Polycorne as a proper video game studio.
What is your favorite game of all time ?
Portal 2 was for me a revelation about how complete a game can be. It mixes an amazing gameplay, an emotional story, attaching characters, beautiful music and a well-thought universe.
This game was such an inspiration and is the one I’d recommand to anyone who’s not into video games, as “If there was only one game to play” that would be Portal.
It’s also an FPS game with guns (at least a gun without bullets) which proves once again violence is not necessary when you want gamers to have fun.
What is the game to played the most ?
I can talk about two games I played a lot. First of all, there is Roller coaster Tycoon 3, which has an incredible set of tools to build a hyper-customized theme park. Building is so much fun I literally played hundreds of hours drawing queue lines for attractions and making innoncent virtual peeps head to a certain death on a broken roller coaster.
Battlefield (BF1942 and BF2) was the first LAN game I played. The local network experience of playing a such game was incredible and offered my friends and I hours of laugher and fun. Can you imagine calling your teammates on a ride in a WWII tank to drop them at a strategic warehouse checkpoint while you shoot down planes from a turret? This game provided hours-long games that would feel instantaneous when with friends. A lovely memory hard to reproduce now my playing time decreased.
Do you remember the first you ever played ?
Sim City was maybe the first game I played on super Nintendo. It was such an incredible discovery. The genre was new to me and the gameplay got very interesting. It looked like a serious game to me and watching a city grow at my fingertips triggered the same sensations as playing with an ant farm.
One last word ?
Love !
