Jade Raymond hints at what might be next

Jade Raymond was at Fun & Serious Game Festival to receive the Pioneer Award 2018 and also to talk about a couple of topics with the audience of young developers and gamers gathered in Bilbao. Other than foreseeing the future her favourite genre (which after games such as Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell is of course action adventures), the Canadian producer wanted to introduce the new game model she's been thinking about.

"I have this thing called the Network Engagement Model", she explains during the video interview with Gamereactor below. "Which is kind of a new model for thinking about designing games in terms of not just thinking of creators and players, but thinking about all the different roles now that are part of the gaming ecosystem. You know, how to design a game for the viewer, for the streamer, for content creators. How do you think of creating a brand or a game as an ecosystem for engagement".

As Raymond has been focused on deep single-player experiences, its seems like a model she would also like to try out in the genre.

"The part I'm excited to resolve is how do we democratize that type of game making as well", she adds regarding to single-player, narrative-focused games. "Can that live on different scales? How do more people tell stories? Or, how do more people enjoy their own stories? So I think those are the questions that I have in terms of what's next".

Indeed, her expertise also comes from working with multiple satellite studios in a network environment, something that happened both at Ubisoft and at EA.

"Yes, and I think it's a trend not only for the big triple-A projects, but also even indie projects", she says about this approach being potentially widespread in the future. "I think it's becoming more and more common to collaborate with people wherever they are, if you have an artist who's really passionate who happens to live in Bilbao, you collaborate at a distance and the tools are there, but I think also the way that we work together, we're getting used to running projects across different time zones and across different places".

To some extent, all this includes several hints on what Raymond is working now:

"Unfortunately what I'm doing next is top secret (laughs). Highly secretive, but basically there are so many interesting opportunities in terms of what is happening in the game industry. We've talked about a few during this interview, and so maybe if you dig into some of the things I said you might be able to find some hints (laughs)".

"I really do like working with the teams and pioneering and doing new things", she finally admits when asked about creative and manager roles. "I like working with small creative teams and setting really high objectives and really ambitious ways that we want to change gaming, and that's ultimately what I care about and what I want to do".

Play the interview for more on "the Internet of Experiences" and previous projects such as Star Wars or the aforementioned AC and SC. On what type of project and with which company do you think Jade Raymond is secretly working right now?