Alexandre de Rochefort, Chief Financial Officer, kicks off the week dedicated to our veterans. He's been with Gameloft since the beginning, so be sure to watch and read the interviews below to learn more about him and the past twenty years at Gameloft!
How did you come to be at Gameloft?
I started my career in London as a sell-side research analyst at a bank called Schroders where I covered tech companies. That's how, in 2000, I came upon Gameloft and Ubisoft and left for Paris. Gameloft was my second job only after graduating from university.
I was very young, like twenty-six years old, and Gameloft was a small company with a few dozen employees at the time. I really hesitated accepting the job of CFO because it was quite different from what I had been doing so far at Schroders, but during the interview with Michel Guillemot, he totally convinced me to take the job.
How have you grown professionally and personally over the years at Gameloft?
I learned much of what I know today at Gameloft. What really helped me was that it was a progressive learning curve; I grew professionally at the same pace as the company.
In a way, I was lucky that Gameloft started out as a small company because what was at stake was less scary. We were generating a revenue of a few hundred thousand euros with only a several dozen employees, so I had the time and space to learn over the years.
As Gameloft grew, I had to work on more diverse projects. I learned a lot, and quickly, about legal, tax, international law, finance, accounting, technology, and communication. We didn't have the luxury of having big teams helping or giving you advice, so the managers had to deal with lots of different tasks.
I still work on lots of different projects and learn a lot, but I love it—it's fun! For example, I often work with Mathieu Verlaet, who's our Tech & Services Vice President, and the finance and tax teams. But this is what makes my job at Gameloft so interesting and is the number one reason why I'm still here after twenty years. Besides being extremely attached to the company, I'm still learning after all these years, and I learn something new every day.
What was one of your favorite projects?
I've been a part of so many projects over the past twenty years that it's hard to think of one that stands out. But recently, we've been working on integrating new companies within Gameloft after having acquired them and these projects has been very interesting for me to lead. Bringing new blood into the company, new ways of doing things, and trying to find synergies with our existing businesses and teams is very exciting.
What do you enjoy most about working at Gameloft?
I'm a big video game and comic book fan. I've loved them since I was young, so working in a field you're passionate about is really fantastic. The people who work in video games are also interesting and being able to interact with people who share the same passion is incredible.
What advice do you have for those wanting to grow and succeed in a similar role?
Don’t specialize too much. You’ll need different strengths and expertise to succeed and survive in the video game industry.
Be sure to stay alert because you could become obsolete relatively quickly without noticing it. What's important is to keep learning and to keep your eyes open. Keep up to date about everything, and be informed.
How has the industry evolved, and what do you hope to achieve in the future with Gameloft?
Our biggest challenge in the past twenty years of existence has not been the permanent technical changes we’ve had to face, even though we’ve had to go from making black and white, offline, 2D games weighing a few kilobytes to creating full, online, 3D games of two to three gigabytes with PvP, leagues, chat rooms, et cetera. Looking back at the past twenty years, we’ve dealt with these permanent tech challenges relatively easily.
It’s actually the change in business model, and in particular, the move from premium to freemium that created the biggest disruption for us in 2011-2012. I believe the next business model will be subscription, and I think it'll be a positive move for the industry on multiple levels and not just financially.
Gameloft has always been at the forefront of market changes and one of the avenues we’re currently exploring is the subscription business model. We’re working on finding a way to diversify and have a successful game without relying only on microtransactions. This is one of the reasons why we've invested so much in Apple Arcade. We're one of Apple’s major partners for Arcade, and it's currently the only subscription business model that a company is trying to seriously push on mobile.
Besides this, one of our key strategical pillars is to diversify our production and to go cross-platform. That’s the big challenge ahead of us: to go beyond mobile gaming towards cross-platform games that are fun to play on PC, console, and mobile.
What would you like to say to the community for the new year?
Come and join us! 2021 can only be better than 2020, and a lot of things have been put in place for 2021, so it'll be a pivotal year for us. I’m looking forward to it!
Like Alexandre said, come and join us! Click here for all our job opportunities in our studios around the world, and see you tomorrow for another edition of The Vault!
