How the developer is adapting the values that made Life is Strange a success

Dontnod Entertainment could have been a failure. The studio, founded in 2008, has a familiar origin story: Five developers left prestigious jobs to strike out on their own. They came from companies like Ubisoft, Criterion Games and Electronic Arts, united by the desire to make their dream game. It was not as easy as they thought it would be. The French developer's first project, Remember Me, was a troubled one. It involved a publisher drop and swap, and a launch greeted by mixed reviews and mediocre sales. Its sophomore effort, despite criticism for its writing and some technical issues, signaled a more confident, competent studio at work. Life is Strange went on to win multiple awards, nominations and praise for its handling of relatable characters in real-world situations. As Dontnod prepares to release its third title, an action role-playing game called Vampyr, it has something to prove — both to itself and to its audience. The company is done chasing dreams of AAA, co-founder and CEO Oskar Guilbert says, and has a more specific vision in mind. "We see ourselves as more like the Sundance Festival of movie independence, American movies," says Guilbert. "Maybe like — it will be pretentious, but — like HBO in TV. They [brought] something new to the TV series in the '80s, the '90s. This is something we want to do in games — to bring the content, the emotion — and I think we've shown that it's possible with Life is Strange. We want to continue like that."

Dontnod, adrift "You know when we started it, we really wanted to do the perfect game from our point of view," says Guilbert. "Something we were really proud of." In Dontnod's founding days of 2008, that game was Remember Me. It was the studio's initial spark, its reason for existing. But it was an ambitious project, a AAA-style sci-fi action-adventure that didn't meet the studio's expectations. "The result was not perfect," he says. Defining Dontnod In defining the company's future, Guilbert first acknowledges what it isn't. When the company started, he says, it looked up to AAA developers like Naughty Dog. As the team continues to carve out its own space, its admiration has shifted to smaller, scrappier studios like Telltale Games — with one major exception. Dontnod has little interest in pursuing licensed content, and instead wants to continue creating original properties. "Maybe one day we will do it, but that's not our goal at all," he says. "We see ourselves as creators of IPs. We have [been] doing that, so we want to keep this." He likens the ideal company model to some parts Naughty Dog, Telltale and even Ubisoft: a combination of strong narrative and tough choices. "For me, it sounds maybe a little cliche, but it's an emotional journey for me," he says. "I really want people to remember this game as a different way of — a different kind of emotion we can provoke in this crazy world. It's a nightmare." "We faced the difficulties of building a new team, creating a new IP, finding the publisher. ... It was hard to do this first project." Guilbert's memories of those days are fond ones. Although it was a turbulent time, building a new studio, it was exciting as well. The team was lucky, he says, because it had the creative freedom to pursue what it wanted. It created from nothing. "No money," he says. "Lot of fun, lot of passion. Something very new for me, because it was the first time for me when I created a company. Good friends, because we were friends in the beginning." Slowly, a studio was born. Guilbert and his cofounders built up their team, eventually bringing on developers such as Philippe Moreau and Stéphane Beauverger, to work on their first title, Remember Me, then known as Adrift. "At the beginning it was crazy at every level," says Beauverger, who worked on the game's story. "We were so confident. We signed with Sony so quickly. We said, 'This is it. We are going to make The Game.'" But the project soon ran into trouble as Sony made cuts from its upcoming catalog, with Remember Me among them. "They were downsizing," Beauverger says of the games cut. "So for a few months, we had no idea where we — we really believe that from the difficulties, come the better ideas. If everything is easy, you get a little bit lazy." Dontnod eventually signed with Capcom to publish the game, but it was a move that came with consequences: axed characters, cut sequences, killed gameplay ideas. "We had to be swift, deadly and unforgiving," Beauverger says. "When we signed for the second time, we knew that we could deliver this, because we had cut so many things in the game that we could deliver what Capcom was expecting." Asked if Remember Me suffered from those cuts, Beauverger is blunt. "Of course," he says. "Yes. You can't create a whole world and a whole universe and a whole storyline and then say, 'No, we're going to show just one-third of this story.' … We had to rebuild a whole new storyline from the same basis, from the same universe." "We made a mistake when we said we were going to make a great AAA game. That was not Remember Me. That was not what we delivered. We delivered a AA game, middle game — I guess it was a solid middle game. It was not a great, huge game." In moving on from the game, the team learned to better "choose our battles," Beauverger says. This would come into play heavily as Dontnod pushed ahead on Life is Strange, a more concentrated title on a small budget.

The surprising success of Life is Strange In theory, Life is Strange shouldn't have been a success. The episodic game follows high school student Max and her best friend Chloe as they hunt for a missing girl and tackle both the normal and not-so-normal problems of high school. Although the game has a sci-fi twist to its drama, it's in large part a contemporary study of typical teen problems. "We had a lot of themes in this game that were supposed to not be 'sellable,'" says Oskar Guilbert. "Female protagonists, things like your social network going adrift, [things] like drugs — many themes that are not 'supposed' to be in video games." In the past, Dontnod has spoken about pressure from potential publishers to change its games — specifically, to ditch female leads for men. Other changes to the game's themes and characters were not always as direct, Guilbert says, but "even if it was not fully clear, what we understood within the lines was that it could be a problem." With Square Enix, Guilbert says, there was no pressure to change the original vision. "what we understood within the lines was that it could be a problem" "It's difficult to not sound too pretentious, but really, from my point of view, I'm very proud for what we did with this game," Guilbert says. "It reached people young, people like teenagers, but also people my age. I had friends ask me, who are like 45, when the next episode will be released. I really had people telling me that it allowed them to talk to their parents again, or to talk about subjects they would never talk about with other people. These kinds of things for me are very important." To date, Life is Strange has sold more than 1 million copies. It's a financial success that's had a large impact on Dontnod: It's given the company a more prestigious profile, and made for an easier time hiring new talent. At the studio, developers speak as affectionately about the game as a parent parading good grades would. The game's heavy focus on emotional narrative and its staying ability in the minds of players exemplify some of Dontnod's goals. That's something Guilbert has on the brain as attention shifts to Vampyr. Unlike with previous titles, there's been no pressure to change the game's vision. Guilbert credits this freedom to trust between Dontnod and the game's publisher, Focus Home Interactive. "We [had] a lot of pressure after Remember Me, because the game was not as successful as we expected," he says. "So yes, we had really a lot of pressure to do a game which worked and was sellable. But who knows that? No one has the recipe to know what will be successful and what will be not. We decided to do really what we wanted to do, what we liked, and push it as far as possible. "[Vampyr] brings the same kind of surprise with Life is Strange in a totally different universe."

Life after Life is Strange Dontnod has been unabashed in both its pride for Life is Strange and its interest in a sequel. In previous interviews with Polygon, members of the studio mused on what they would do with another season, such as starting over with a brand-new cast. Although Dontnod has only one game it's speaking publicly about at the moment — Vampyr — each of the developers interviewed for this story did mention another unannounced project that's currently in progress. Asked directly about a Life is Strange sequel, Oskar Guilbert says the studio is "fully focused" on Vampyr, but that the core team from Life is Strange is "doing something I'm not allowed to talk about." "In a few months, we will maybe reveal more or have a different conversation, but now my focus is Vampyr."