Interview with Michel Thomazeau, Cubical Drift’s CEO and developer of Planets³

I had a chance to do a quick interview with Michel Thomazeau, the CEO of Cubical Drift. Cubical Drift is currently in the final week of a Kickstarter campaign for their amazing-looking gamePlanets³, an open world, voxel-based RPG. I asked Michel about their company and the legal issuesthat go into creating a game.

Full disclosure: I am also a backer of the Kickstarter campaign. I think it looks super cool.

Can you tell our readers a little bit about you, the company, and how the Planets³ project got started?

My name is Michel Thomazeau (NeoM), and I am the project director of Planets³ and the CEO of the Cubical Drift Company. I am 32 years old, and have a 9 years background in CAD software development at Realviz first and then at Autodesk. I did quit everything to launch this project last year.

We are a small team. Me and the 2 other co-founders of the company are 3 old friends that met at their engineer school 13 years ago.

We surrounded ourselves with competent and truly motivated people from different horizons (creative artists, graphics and musician) to develop the game of our dreams.

At first Planets³ was a project between friends (myself, Codingmarmot and Guyk), to code after our jobs. The more time passed, the more serious the project became. Today Planets³ is a really ambitious project.

I see that you incorporated your company. Can you speak to why you did that and what the process was?

We created the US corporation for 2 reasons: to sell the game on the US continent next year and to be able to go to Kickstarter. The process is rather “simple” and it takes about 2 months to be ready.

What other legal protections, for example, agreements with artists and programmers, did you put in place prior to launching the Kickstarter?

We have an agreement with all the team members, but all will depend on the Kickstarter success. [O]ur team is spread all over Europe and almost all the members have a full time job. It was somehow difficult to handle the project since one year. It’s the first reason of the Kickstarter campaign, to be able to work together full time on Planets³.

Do you think that the business side of things is overlooked in many Kickstarter projects?

We are 8 for the moment and I want to expand the team so legal “frame” was required. I think every project on Kickstarter is different. In our case, as the project is ambitious, the business side of things was not an option.

What advice would you have for those seeking to fund their first game, through Kickstarter or through other means?

If I need to choose one advice: it will be to take your time to be ready, do not rush things.

If you are interested in backing the project, check out the latest trailer below. The Kickstarter campaign ends in just a few days, so get to it!

And if you are ramping up to launch your own Kickstarter or game development project, why not take advantage of a free consultation with a game lawyer?