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Dofus Interview

Dofus is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. As a mixture of video game and interactive animated cartoon, Dofus Kamas brings a new concept within online games.
With its graphics inspired by mangas, its tactical gameplay and its scathing humour, this game is in a class of its own among other MMORPG. Experienced players are appealed by its unique fighting system which is based on strategy - quite rare in MMORPG -. Casual players also like it for being easily accessible.
Here comes the interview with Anthony Roux, one of the three founders of Ankama Studio.Let him take us into the world of Dofus Kamas.

MMOsite.com: Can you basically introduce yourself and your company to our audience?

Anthony Roux: My name is Anthony Roux (aka Tot). I¡¯m one of the three founders of Ankama Studio and the director of creation within this very same Studio. I¡¯m also the game designer of Dofus Kamas and acheter des kamas-Arena. Ankama is a studio ¨C which mainly makes videogames, that I created 5 years ago with my friends and partners Camille Chafer (Lead Programmer) and Emmanuel Darras (CEO). Our first videogame is Dofus Kamas, a tactical MMORPG. And I¡¯m glad to say that it¡¯s also our first success.
MMOsite.com: The number of Dofus Kamas users is growing stably due to its top quality. But we all know that promotion also contributes to its success. Can you tell us a little about how you promoted the game?

Anthony Roux: We are an independent studio and we want to make videogames that everyone can afford. Obviously, at the beginning we couldn¡¯t afford to set up big advertising campaigns. Fortunately for us, as soon as the Dofus Kamas beta tests began, there had been a great by word of mouth. As it is a special MMORPG in terms of gameplay and graphics, it aroused curiosity among players. We also caught the attention of specialised journalists who were attracted by our will to create unusual videogames. And I must admit that the free version really helped as well.

MMOsite.com: Dofus Kamas is featured with cartoon-style graphical effect. When I first played Dofus, it stood out like a Japanese game. Why did you decide to choose such a style?

Anthony Roux: It¡¯s quite simple¡­ We are all big fans of Japanimation, mangas, films and, of course, videogames coming from Japan or Korea. We are quite open-minded and also like things coming from the US or Europe. Yet we share a unanimous preference for Asian products. Each of us has a favorite Marvel hero while we are all fans of One Piece, Naruto or other creations of the Ghilbli Studio. Finally, should be kept in mind the fact that Flash imposed us a style with simple form easy to animate which is typically Asian.

MMOsite.com: If not reminded by the right-click menu, I won? t believe that Dofus Kamas client is entirely coded in Flash. Why did you decide to use Flash?

Anthony Roux: There are many reasons. First of all, we had a good experience of this format since we had used it to make web-based videogames. Plus, at the very begin we were only about 10 people in the studio when we started the adventure acheter des kamas and we didn¡¯t have much choice to make such a large scale videogame. At the time, Flash had all the qualities we were looking for: cartoon-like graphic rendering, a cross-platform access and with a final data file size small enough to be diffused. We didn¡¯t quite choose Flash; it just appeared to be the best format for us.

Water aside, the most immediately obvious difference between Dofus Kamas and Wakfu is in the presentation. Freed from the browser window, the first thing we noticed when we headed out into the beta is that everything’s bigger, chunkier, and more richly detailed. And the map is no longer broken into a grid of single screens; Wakfu is a continuous scrolling environment, where even heading inside a building is handled with a gentle dissolve rather than a cut. This may sound like small change to WOW players who regularly soar over craggy mountain ranges on lavish mythical beasts made of fire and treacle, but in the conservative world of European browser games, it’s a huge step forward.

It also means one of Dofus Kamas most irritating problems, the endless search for the unnecessarily tiny tile that takes you from one screen to the next, has been consigned to history along with Pol Pot, bubonic plague and the Air Bud film franchise, freeing up untold man hours I can now invest in weaving tapestries or studying cryptozoology.

Like Al Gore, Wakfu wants to make you think about the environment. Less like Al Gore, it wants you to do it while wearing a witch’s hat and skeleton pyjamas.

It’s hard to argue with the fact that the house style’s looking more beautiful than ever: there are some nice new particle effects, and a lot more character to the animation. It’s still the same kind of landscape bucolic and solid, filled with down-to-earth elements like milking stools and log piles alongside the more fantastical bits and pieces, but the wildlife now swaggers and squelches along where previously it could often stutter.

Graphical improvements are to be expected, but the second change that stands out is a real departure, one that’s filled with potential hazards. There are no NPCs in Wakfu, and the reason is that Ankama is completely