Translation courtesy of /r/Translation:
https://www.reddit.com/r/translator/comments/3de0mh/french_english_video_game_article_about_shenmue/
Transcript:
>Cédric Biscay: "Without Kickstarter, Shenmue 3 would never have seen the light of day"
> An interview with the man behind the rebirth of Shenmue 3
> By Gianni Molinaro, published 15 July 2015, 15:00
> His name is Cédric Biscay, he's French and he's in charge of a company where lots of people would like to go around dressed up as little mice (?). The fact that we were able to shed a tear watching Yu Suzuki announce Shenmue 3 during the Sony conference at E3 2015 was thanks to Shibuya Productions. And of course we'd like to find out more about it...
> What is Shibuya? How did it come to resuscitate Ryo Hazuki while working on other projects? How does it manage this kind of project and all the hype that goes with it? A few days from the end of the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter campaign, Cédric Biscay agreed to answer our questions, most of which were devised by fans Julo and Romain.
> 1. Shibuya Productions
> Hello Cédric. Could you introduce yourself and your company, Shibuya Productions?
> At the very core I'm a fan of video games and animation. I started at age 5 with a monochrome CPC 646 and played import games at a time when games took ages to come out in France (if they came out at all). I'm also an out-and-out fan of the Sega Saturn and the Neo Geo Pocket Color but I've had more or less every single console at one time or another. I started my first business in 2002, Shibuya International, which was a consulting firm specialised in business relationships between Europe and Japan. In 2014 I officially set up Shibuya Productions in Monaco. The business' main goal is to produce animation and video games. Last April we opened a branch in Japan. Since the 2006 school year I've also been a professor of video games at Master 1 and Master 2 level at the Ecole Polytechnique de Nice - Sophia Antipolis. I focus especially on the Japanese, Korean and Chinese markets.
> How many people work in the business?
>5 people currently work for Shibuya Productions. I don't think that a creative business needs a large staff to work well. Our strength comes in our ability to surround ourselves with high-quality partners.
> Why the name "Shibuya?
> When I first discovered Japan, I was fascinated by Shibuya - its lights, its game centres, the very fashionable side of the population. During my first trips to Japan I went to Shibuya every single night. Also, when you consider the cosmopolitan nature of the district, I thought that the name corresponded exactly to what I wanted to do.
> Apart from the next MAGIC, the Astro reboot, Windwalkers and Shenmue 3, are there any other projects that you can talk about, or give us a teaser about?
>We've just finished our first feature-length animation, Lilly and the Magic Pearl, which is an indie movie with Ben Cross (Chariots of Fire, Star Trek) cast as a voice actor in the US version. We're also working on Fusion, a trans-medium, thick and complex universe, the first part of which will be a novel by Alain Damasio coming out in early 2016. We're also working on manga, video games, TV series, and so on. Soon we'll be unveiling our first piece of hardware, a tool which will help you get fit and play games at the same time! We showed it off in Japan last month to famous faces of the gaming world such as Yuki Naga, Shinji Hashimoto, Fumito Ueda and Yu Suzuki, to name just a few.
> How did the idea of financing a videogame project worth more than €100,000 through a competition come about?
>Personally I believe that gameplay is becoming more and more of a secondary priority in video games. Seeing great graphics and sublime animations is all well and good, but if you can entertain yourself at the same time then even better. With €100,000, we can't create triple-A games, of course, but if we can help people like me, who want to put gameplay back at the heart of their games then we'll gladly do it. We set this priority out when we created the competition. Leon, the winner of the 2015 competition, is the perfect example of this.
> Were you satisfied by the way the competition went on, and what lessons did you learn for the next competition?
> I was surprised by the success the competition had - there were more than 40 entries from 5 countries, including Japan, which is amazing for a first time. The professional jury, made up of Eric Chahi, Alain Damasio and Oskar Guilbert, were also surprised by the quality of the submissions. Entries are open on the site www.magic-ip.com and two members of the jury have already been announced, Viktor Kalvachev (Blue Estate) and Christophe Heral (Rayman).