PUNKSHEEP: Bio Marc LY

1) a world of technical magic

On a beautiful first of may, a day nobody works, just like for making a celebration of my arrival, I came to born. Very young, I discovered a wonderful world of electronic stuffs.
As my understanding of an engine making things move was clear, all those machines that hadn't got any moving piece but still making so much more things, like showing images, displaying characters, words, making sounds and noises, controlling other things from a distance... and also speak! that was real magic to me!
Few years later, I discovered video games with the Atari 2600 console. Although I had so much fun, I didn't had any glympse of how all of these can just only be possible. My curiosity emerges but still no clue at all.

2) on the path to discover my passion for game creation

Few years later only, I've been struck by an adventure game, "le diamant de l'île maudite" (the diamond of the cursed island), and struck by the computer that made me the passionate game creator I am from that moment on : the ∅RIC/Atoms.
I realized the expressiveness of the creativity and the capability that machine represented : I was able to talk to it and able to ask things. And this was it! burning in a passion, I began to create small programs then little games like a hangman game, my personnal pac-man which I was originally a fan, and also some tools like a calculator ploter of mathematical curves, a disassembler... I found my purpose and my chief aim : create and design entertaining software and utilities.

3) a step towards real game creation

A little bit lured by what I thought was a fascination for mathematical reasoning, I rapidly felt that it was the finess of the processes and the logic I found in computer science that moved me. Clues and answers came to me and I finally started to understand.
I thus throw myself in computer science and on my way, I encounter COBOL and came to realize that it wasn't what I was expecting, nor what I thought it was to create applications. A wink of the Heavens pushed me into joining a professionnal group of game developers and I started to work on my first entertainment game: an interactive CD-ROM game type.
Working like in Hell and doing my best, I learned a lot, especially about myself when I wrote my first game engine to improve a productivity limited by the lack of tools.
But reality stroke me back into my shoes, the project aborted in spite of my effort and my willingness, and I learned in pain that working with people, as a group, is no such easy thing at all!
I then integrated an other team for short term game development and I rapidly made two of them successfully when it had been decided I'll be the team leader of all the newest developers.
But with the success of releasing two games of my own and five other games I participated in, I felt that, pride and pleasure don't necessarily come with success.

4) "real" games on game consoles ^_^

At that moment, I decided to join a development team working on "real" video games, the pure, the meat: video games for game dedicated platforms, game consoles. And the Nintendo won my choice back then.
It was the first time I discovered real work among a real team with artists, producers, clients, and everybody participating in the same osmoze and synergy.
Passionate as always, I finished my first game and helped in creating six other games.
And on that way to real games, I came to work with teams all over the world in prototyping and preproducing games for which I discovered the exultation but also the awful tiring that it was to initiate multimedia projects on big platforms: Game Cube, Play Stations... and Personal Computers.

5) a little detour scattered with "little" games

I finally started working on "little" games with short time period development and started my experience in creating video games for cell phones at a time the screen was small with very low resolution, and highly limited power processors embedded with non touch screen material.

6) back to the console games

With very poor creation and not so much creativity, far from what I loved to do, it was time for me to get back to the development of real games anew. Nintendo won again my choice of development platform because of the mobility the Nintendo DS offers and the funny touch screen it had with that cute little pen: back then, only few cell phones only had that.
So I tackle the hard task of writing a powerful engine on a limited machine, plus the corresponding tools, to help artists and other creators unleash their creativity.
I ended up directing a whole technical development team in crafting casual games composed of mini-games. And my position was the opportunity I needed to experiment a new method I was learning for years and principles that brought me a lot since then. I started to "manage" the team with agility.

7) the way of agile methodology and personnal development

Hard to push in the head of my colleagues, I decided to throw myself anyway in that adventure of agility from wich I learned so much.
That brought me closer and closer to management and then, leadersheep (^_^), and from coaching to selling. I now am a fervent advocate of agile development. My experience in that area emphasized the importance of human relationship in a team work, the necessity of marketing your idea and at the end, selling yourself; that is selling the team.
Thanks to my video game passion, I indirectly came to know creators like Michel JANICKI.
Thanks to my different positions in video game development opportuinities, I had the chance and the pleasure to work with talented creators like Philippe DESSOLY and Jérôme LIGNIER.
Plainly now on my way to personal development, I am proud to join leadersheep games group as a founder. This allows me to match some other faces on people I only knew by names in our common desire to put back the video game creators at the center of the designing and creation process, and to highligth the importance embodied by the role they play and the richness they are capable of.
All of that to give back the means and the say to these actors that made video-games what it was and that still makes video-games what it is!
I'm glad to participate in that renewal.