OUAT ENTERTAINMENT
MAKERS OF THE REAL GARDEN SITE

For more info: www.realgarden.com


OUAT ENTERTAINMENT was founded in 1999 by Frederique Doumic, Sebastien Doumic, Pascal Ruiz and Thibault Nolte, each of whom bring complementary expertise in media and interactive entertainment. Ouat now has 22 employees and is rapidly expanding thanks to a major capital investment of 22 MF (@$4M) entirely dedicated to the REAL GARDEN Project, a new online portal to the young urban techno-eco community. Ouat answered our questions about the creation of the REAL GARDEN.



Real Garden's central attraction is a Tamagotchi-like perpetual plant game made with Dev™, serving as the focal point for this innovative online community. Other services for the urban gardener include ecological e-commerce, discussions and gardening reference information.

While the site is currently French only, the English version of the game should be online at the end of March, while the rest of the site should be translated in April. Plans for international versions, including Japanese, are slated for September.

In late 98, being 2nd generation urbanites, we longed for a bit of garden of our very own, in an apartment or a terrace. Having studied the question, we realized that there were millions of people like us who were waiting for one thing to put the plan to action: that we encourage them, that we give them the means, and that it doesn't turn into big ordeal. The concept of a web-based techno-eco community was born.



Who is "techno-eco"?

They live in cities or suburbs, often in families, often between the age of 25-45. What unites them is an ethical concern for the environment without necessarily being militant. They seek quick gratification, not from laziness but from lack of time. They have no reticence about using new communication tools that feed their curiosity.

What's unique about the Real Garden?

What's unique is its attitude or world view: of the house, of nature, of the city, of the world. It's a crossover approach that reconciles notions often seen as antagonistic. With Real Garden, we want to be current without being elitist, interest the young without alienating the not-so-young, speak to urbanites without being provincial, establish our expertise without generating yawns, reconcile theory and practice...

What's planned for Real Garden?

The base is in place for quickly developing a "techno-eco portal": both a meeting place for the community and a starting point on the web. In two words: lots of development in the community and interactivity in general, as manifested today in the forum and the Game - which required quite a bit of development. The Real Garden concept was born from the Game, the "entertainment" aspect is primordial to the site.



The English version of the game is ready and should be online at the end of March 2000, while the rest of the site will be ready to welcome English visitors in May. The Real Garden Boutique, selective by nature, will have 700 references by the month of April and 1500-2000 by September. To describe the ambition of the project, we can call it a "techno-eco theme park." At least, that's where we would like to head.


What tools do you use and what is your relationship to these tools?

Our tools are classics of video game production: Visual Studio for development, Photoshop and 3DSMAX R3 for creating graphics, and Dev for staging and production, of course.


What are the benefits of using Dev?

Being voluntarily concise, their two strong points are: rapid production and an open architecture for research and development.

How did Dev integrate itself in your work process?

Dev places itself at three level in our game production cycle: First it's a research and development tool for our "growth" engine and our special effects. Then it's an editor for the fine tuning of our plants and vegetables. Last but not least, it's a staging tool for the creation of interactive content.

What is the biggest technological limitation of your profession, and how do you deal with it?

The creation of an online game for a large public must keep several parameters in mind. Naturally, taking into account the average available bandwidth, a problem resides in the size of the data exchanged between the server and the client PC. We have to use every available technique to diminish the flux of information, like the use of textures and procedural objects. But the most important problem for wide distribution is situated around the deployment of the game's software components. To answer this, we have tried to simplify a maximum of download and installation procedures. Sadly, there is one dark point: the Mac version...

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