Gamasutra: French indie MMO Dofus began when some web developers got together to make a game. With its charming graphical style and free to play area (a small percentage of the full game), Dofus has gained favor with players and critics, propelling the company from a small indie to a larger player. The original game was done entirely in Flash, well before it became a popular platform for games.
Ankama was formed in 2001 by Camille Chafer, Emmanuel Darras, and Anthony Roux, and has since grown to 400 employees, including a new studio in Japan, focusing on animation and manga extensions of the company's properties.
As the company rolls out Dofus 2.0 and a new game called Wakfu, we spoke with CTO Camille Chafer and international marketing manager Cedric Gerard about Ankama's past and future, including the new animation studio, the ups and downs of working in Flash, and player/subscriber numbers.
Turn-based strategy/MMO hybrid Dofus - well known for the French gaming public - has indeed been around for a while, and it has now taken another step towards increased notoriety, by hitting the mobile market, albeit in a rather timid and half-hearted manner: the mobile version of the game, called Dofus Touch, has soft-launched in Canada and it will apparently only be available for tablets. Content-wise, the mobile game will come with everything that the 2.14 version of the game has, so it will indeed provide quite a full experience. Needless to say though, the fact that it will only run on tablets, will represent a serious limitation.
Dofus review with screenshots and videos. Dofus is a 2D fantasy MMORPG by Ankama Games that launched in 2004.
DOFUS is a mmorpg from French developer Ankama in 2004. Recently, the developer and Wizcorp jointly announced the game is coming to tablet with a refreshed mobile UI. But it is pity that the tablet version won't be synchronized with the desktop and streaming version, available on dedicated servers, which means players should have to start fresh on tablet.
