The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 4

A4 THE GAZETTE, MONTREAL, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2006 A A YTTP' FFD AT I started pmgrammingphgsicsJbrLideo games, raciiig games. That's how I got started. BenoitFrappier THE CODE Physics, computer science and passion CENOn FRAPPIER LEAD MULTI-PLAYER PROGRAMMER Age: 35 Hometown: Montreal Education: B.A. in physics, M.A. in astrophysics, University du Quebec a Montreal.

Average salary for a lead programmer with three to six years experience: $82,000 U.S. What makes a good game? "It depends on the type of game you're playing. I think it's something that's compelling to the player, whatever that is. It has to be a mixture of graphics, of storytelling, and of emotions as well." CONTINUED FROM Al "We added a really cool feature with Xbox Live Vision. That's, the camera that plugs into the Xbox 360.

We can actually scan your face. We take two pictures, one from the front, one from the side. We can then generate a mesh for it and make a texture of it. So you can generate a Rainbow Six character and play the game with your face on it." He grins sheepishly. "Everyone we've shown, they go crazy about it.

It's very cool. "But that technology, we didn't develop it. It's Digimask. It's made by another company. We integrate that feature into the code into the game." Video-game designers draw their inspiration from a mixture of media, Frappier says.

"Whether it's comic books, movies, other games, sometimes even real events like wars, it depends on which game you're making. "For the player, though, it needs to be very simple. Whether it's the controls with the actual gamepad or what he sees on screen with the interface. All this needs to be very simple, because if you complicate that job for the player, he'E lose interest." Frappier studied physics at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal before joining Ubisoft in October 1998. "I applied and I started programming physics for video games, racing games.

That's how I got started. I have always enjoyed playing video "Sometimes we mess up. It's always a learning experience. You just try to make the next one better. Benoit Frappier wiwwmm i i to, rt 'VT 1 -t -nt I rlU 1 i i v- The company's headquarters is itself a sprawling beast with a high, glassy face.

The shell is brick and mortar, auburn and faded cinnabar. The stairs leading to the entryway are flanked by a fleet of Vespa motor scooters, chrome and rubber, with mirrors that stick out like long reflective antennae. Inside, each wing is sealed with magnetic keycards. In the hyper-competitive video-game industry, where a leak can derail the hype machine or give a competitor the edge, all that technology has to be kept under lock and key Ubisoft won't divulge the bill for Rainbow Six: Vegas, but premier video games can cost up to $25 million U.S. to produce.

Rainbow Six: Vegas is a violent game. It features alot of guns. Thirty-five of them, to be exact. You can view all of them on the game's official website, each rendered in menacing 3D detail. They're intimidating things, made of carbon fibre and polymer.

It's hard to look at one without thinking about the Dawson College shooting rampage in which Kimveer Gill killed Anas-tasia De Sousa and injured 11 other students. On his Slog, Gill wrote: "Life is like a video game, you gotta die sometime." Does Frappier feel that video games are to blame? Are they "murder simulations" as some critics have charged? He pauses for a moment and shifts in his chair. The father of two has had plenty of time to consider the impact of video games. "Of course, it's on my mind. But we could say the same thing about rock music 10 years ago.

Putting blame on the media is never a good enough excuse. It's upbringing, it's values, it's more social stuff than just video games or a rock album." Frappier is mum about his next project. First, he says, he'll take a vacation and a well-deserved break from the six-month grind. Maybe some sun. Above all, he wants to spend some time with his kids.

So, is Dad cool? "Yes. When they tell their friends I work at Ubisoft Montreal, they think it's very cool. Without the superhigh money maybe. But yes." tytodd thegazette.canwest.com The game is simple: Hunt down the terrorists, take them out and don't kill any hostages. The execution has been more complicated.

"When I go home, I still think about the game," Frappier says. "We're so deep in development. Sometimes I resolve issues while driving home or having breakfast. It becomes part of your everyday life. It's always on my mind." His colleagues are video-game fanatics who play during their lunch hour and so is he.

"You have to be. It's part of the whole culture to just play all the time." There is no formula for success. For all the late nights and the months spent tweaking and testing, sometimes games splinter and fail. Frappier says the last project he worked on, 2005's Rainbow Six: Lockdown, was poorly received by the gaming press; "Lockdown didn't get very good reviews. Sometimes we mess up.

It's always a learning experience. You just try to make the next one better." At its peak, the Rainbow Six: Vegas development team swelled to 180 members and Ubisoft is juggling "16 to 20" other projects, according to its public-relations director, Cedric Orvoine. whose creatures can be seen on ads in the metro, today work for Hollywood studios and game publishers the world over. Their craft has been seen in Shrek, Lord of the Rings and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The school, which churns out 90 graduates a year, hopes to bump that to 120 in two years.

Applicants need at the minimum a college degree and a serious artistic bent with a large portfolio to prove it Yet a flair for making jazzy sprites is no longer sufficient, as gamers mature and demand more urbane titles. "We need to recruit students games." He's seen the company balloon from "about 10" to 1,600 employees. About six months ago, he joined the latest Rainbow Six project the video game has been in development for 2 years and now he's down to the short strokes on his "baby," polishing the last bits of the tactical teaim based action game for Microsoft's Xbox 360. PIERRE OBENDRAUF THE GAZETTE Programmer Benoit Frappier says when he goes home, he's still thinking about Rainbow Six: Vegas. "We're so deep in development.

Sometimes I resolve issues while driving home or having breakfast. It becomes part of your everyday life." 3D animation school in video-game boom a big player who also have a good knowledge of history and culture," Guevremont said. Its history began in the mid-1990s, when movies like Terminator II: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park pushed 3-D graphics to the mainstream. CEGEP Jon-quiere, which had a strong media program, opened a Montreal school to train 3-D artists for film and called it the Centre national d'animation et de design. The technology quickly bled into video games, with Tomb Raider being among the first to exploit three-dimensional game-play.

So in 1997, the NAD Centre offered the first program in down changes to curricula. While a ministerial seal of approval normally gives schools more weight, NAD's 15 years in the business gives it enough cred of its own. If it didn't, students wouldn't come from Switzerland, the U.S. and China, and pay the $21,000 tuition for foreign students. Canadians pay $16,500.

"Here's the most fascinating part of this industry," Guevremont muses. "It's one of the few out there where you see artists who make a decent living." rrocha thegazette.canwest.com Canada for creating computer-generated graphics for video games. The non-stop evolution of games doesn't allow the centre's program directors to rest. At the school's conference table, producers and developers of competing game studios sit together to update NAD on the market's changing needs. "We never offered the same program twice in a row," Guevremont noted.

To be able to quickly change its program, the school cut its ties in 1995 with the provincial Education Department, as government bureaucracy dragged III T'I I Look for exclusive Web content and read the stories thus far in The Gazette series Came City: Montreal online at montreal gazette.com Saturday. The concept chasing the player fantasy. Meet Ubisoft's Maxime Beland. WEB VIDEO Behind the Came: The team pulls it all together. Yesterday: The production -Alexandre Parizeau oversees Rainbow Six: Vegas project from A-Z.

WEB VIDEO Character Sketches: It all starts when the concept artist puts pencil to paper. VIDEO Sound Vision: Foley artists use everyday props to create elaborate soundscapes. Today: The code programmers led by Benoit Frappier write the code and zap the bugs. WEB VIDEO Mapping Motion: Actors and technology collide to recreate realistic movement. Tomorrow: The sell marketing a video game from idea to finished product.

Luc Duchaine's in charge of the hype for Rainbow Six: Vegas. WEB AUDIO SLIDE SHOW High Score: Splinter Cell composer Amon Tobin on creating a videogame soundtrack. AUDIO Play that funky music, Came Boy: A sonic history of on-sceen blips and bleeps. Wednesday: The gamers -Patrick Sullivan, 31, and Sara De-Cennaro, 22, both play games. When it comes to consoles, he is loyal to Nintendo; she's a PlayStation fan.

WEB VIDEO Game on: The couple that plays together slays together? VIDEO Gamespeak: All the lingo you've never wanted to know. ROBERTO ROCHA THE GAZETTE After 15 years of churning out ogres, spaceships, ninjas and the occasional ultra-seductive vixen, Montreal's NAD Centre can't keep up with demand. But with the growing sophistication of video games, the city's premier 3-D animation school is growing out of its young britches. "Our graduates need to develop games that are more intelligent, that aren't just targeted to the usual 25-year-old male," said the centre's general manager, Suzanne Guevremont. Graduates of the centre, From sketch to model, to model si rr If (( COURTESY Of NAD CENTRE with texture, to final figure: the process of creating a 3D animated figure.

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