Behind Massive Screens - a Game Development Podcast

Hosted by Massive Entertainment - a Ubisoft Studio

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Aug 2024

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Massive Entertainment - a Ubisoft Studio is the studio behind classic games like The Division, The Division 2 and World in Conflict, and that's currently working on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Star Wars Outlaws. In Behind Massive Screens, we dive deeper into games development, the gaming industry and the people behind the games.

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39 recent

August 15, 20241 hr 8 min

#26 - Designing the Characters in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

In this episode of Behind Massive Screens, Petter and Dóri meet Brenda Bae, Lead Concept Artist on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Océane Näsström, Associate Lead Character Artist on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Hear about their roles, how they got to where they are today, and what went into designing the clans and characters in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora – and making them come to life in the game. How the environments in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora affected the characters in the game, in everything from their silhouettes, hairstyles, clothing and gear – and much more.

July 3, 20241 hr 14 min

#25 - Designing the Immersive World in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

In this episode of Behind Massive Screens, Petter and Dóri meet Mikhail Greuli, Associate Art Director on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Kunal Luthra, Lead Technical Artist on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Hear about their roles, how they got to where they are today, and of course what it was like to create the immersive world of Pandora – as we deep-dive into the creation of biomes, scattering systems, shaders, destruction of plants, pollution systems, and so much more.

June 19, 20241 hr 5 min

#24 - Game Design in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

In this episode of Behind Massive Screens, Petter and Dóri meet Martin Jansén, Expert Game Designer at Massive Entertainment, to talk about the Game Design in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Hear about Martin’s role, how he got to where he is today, and learn more about how Martin and the team worked with player movement, haptics, the three Cs (character, camera, controls) and much more.

February 6, 202457 min

#23 - Sound Designing Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

In this episode of Behind Massive Screens Alex Riviere, Audio Director on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, joins Petter & Dóri to dive into the role of an Audio Director. Hear about how Alex got to where he is, and of course about some of the design, systems, and tech behind the audio in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora now!

February 6, 202440 min

#22 - The Evolution of (Ubisoft) Connecting Players

In this episode of Behind Massive Screens, Petter and Dóri meet Johan Flote, Live Producer in the Ubisoft Connect team at Massive Entertainment, to find out more about how his job works and to talk about the open beta. During the summer, Ubisoft Connect launched their open beta. But why did they choose to have an open beta? What sort of feedback has been implemented? Also, what is a Live Producer and how to you become one? All these questions and more are among the things Petter, Dóri and Johan discuss on this episode of Behind Massive Screens.

November 22, 20231 hr 2 min

#21 - Snowdrop Game Engine

In this episode of Behind Massive Screens, Petter and Dóri meet Julia Stegemann, Lead Knowledge Manager in the Snowdrop team at Massive Entertainment and Ola Holmdahl, Snowdrop Operations Director, to find out more about how their job works, through a discussion that touches on Academia, table-top games, late medieval love songs and more! The Snowdrop engine, with its flexible and empowering tools, has helped develop a number of Ubisoft titles such as The Division, Mario + Rabbids, The Settlers, South Park and more upcoming games from Massive and Ubisoft. But how did Snowdrop come to be? Why was it developed in the first place, and how do you set up the users, the game developers, to easily find the information and guidelines they need to do their craft?

October 18, 202348 min

#20 - Technical Artistry in The Division 2

In this 20th (!) episode of Behind Massive Screens, Petter and Dóri meets Conny Bengtsson, Technical Artist for Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, to find out what makes “technical art” technical. The discussion turns into a journey of spinning backpack fans, how you make glasses fit on characters’ faces, helmet shaders and – believe it a not – a big pile of virtual shirts that needed fixing. We also get an insight into how Conny and his team worked on the latest The Division 2 apparel event, Nexus, and what brand-new innovations they brought to it.

September 27, 202352 min

#19 - Community Development for The Division 2

Once a video game has been released, how do you keep track of all the discussions surrounding it? How do you gather actionable feedback to improve the game? How do you keep a conversation between developers and players going? And how do you make sure that a game’s community stays engaged and informed? In this episode of Behind Massive Screens, Petter and Dóri meet Daria Ilyina, Community Developer at Massive Entertainment for Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, to find out more about how their job works.

June 30, 20231 hr 3 min

#18 - The Magic of Online Programming

In this episode of Behind Massive Screens, we delve into the subject of online programming together with Senior Online Programmer Omar Elbehaedi to find out what makes online games tick. We also delve into the subject of why code is beautiful and discuss that most forbidden topic – netcode. You head into a Team Deathmatch, the Dark Zone, or a 4000-player battle in a space MMORPG. The players are located all over the world. The bullets are flying. But how does the technology that makes all this possible actually work? What do the online programmers do behind the scenes to make sure the information is sent over the Internet, in the most effective way, and that all those connections are stable? Resources Books: A Tour of C++ 3rd edition, by Bjarne Stroustrup - https://www.stroustrup.com/Tour.html C++ Templates: The Complete Guide 2nd Edition by David Vandevoorde, Nicolai Josuttis, Douglas Gregor - http://www.tmplbook.com/ YouTube channels: That Dev Ops Guy YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/@MarcelDempers Onur Mutlu Lectures - https://www.youtube.com/@OnurMutluLectures Tools: Kubernetes - https://kube.academy/ Intel VTune Valgrind perf (Linux) Prometheus Loki and promtail Grafana

May 30, 202354 min

#17 - Art Direction in Video Games

In this episode of Behind Massive Screens, Petter and Dóri meet Marthe Jonkers, Associate Art Director at Massive Entertainment, to learn about the role that art direction plays when creating a game – the impact it has on a game’s development, how it helps set a game’s style and tone early on, and how it together with concept art communicates ideas to developers. We also get insights into what it is like to work in the Japanese games industry, and what it can take for someone from outside of Japan to ace a job interview there. And what role did a certain scary zombie girlfriend play in Marthe’s career? Let’s find out! Resources: Shotdeck - https://shotdeck.com/