Every day, Mathieu Côté walks the hallowed halls of Behaviour Interactive’s 25-year history. So does every employee at the studio: The new worksite was a former sweat shop that’s been almost entirely renovated to accommodate the needs of a growing development house.

But Côté’s path through those halls is different. He not only oversees every project in production, he volunteered to become a human repository of Behaviour’s history. Given that, you’d think his steps would be heavier, ponderous with 25 years of successes and failures, new hires and departing friends, games gone awry—the same highs and lows as any developer able to survive the increasingly turbulent video game industry.

Instead, Côté’s steps are lighter, almost brisk, because his load is lighter. “Here, most days at 5:30, 6:00, I'll bump into my boss, who's also leaving, because we have a life,” Côté tells me during our interview in a meeting rooms adorned, like every meeting room at Behaviour, with a beautiful mural depicting a scene from one of the studio’s many projects.

The sights I saw during my visit at Behaviour Interactive backed up his words. Around 4:30, the office grew quieter. Monitors were switched off, drawing tablets were set aside, and backpacks were hoisted as employees flowed toward the elevator, first in a trickle, then in a wave as the minute hand of wall clocks ticked closer to five p.m. By five, the wide open spaces filled with desks and equipment had become a ghost town.

“We encourage people to do that in their free time, because that's another thing: We do have free time here at Behaviour,” he continues. “A very hot topic right now in the video game industry is crunch time. There are people who give their lives to work on a project for three, five years. Not to name any, but there are the big triple-A projects where people have been working 100-hour weeks, and, ‘If you're not coming in on Saturday, don't bother coming in on Sunday.’ That's intense.”

Côté and I talked more about Behaviour’s interactive, the history that runs through the building’s walls and floors, and how a prototype no one could put down gave the developers the freedom to keep experimenting.

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Craddock: Congratulations on Behaviour’s 25-year anniversary. That’s a huge milestone, especially these days. What has that meant for the company?

Mathieu Côté: We're celebrating 25 years, and a little more than that. We're celebrating this year the 25th anniversary of our president and fearless leader, Rémi [Racine]. And mostly it's been making games for other people: licensed products, ports of existing games, things like that. Behaviour was very well known among developers and licensors. These people knew Behaviour stood for something: That you would have a quality game; that you would have it on time; that it will cost you exactly what we said you would pay for. We had a great working relationship with these people.

But, obviously, video games is one of those rare industries where most of the people working in it are passionate about what they do. You could end up working in a bank, to take an example at random, but people rarely end up in video games by accident. You have a passion for it. Over the years, a lot of us had ideas for games we wanted to make, games we wanted to play. There were a few instances where Behaviour created its own IP. Way back when, it used to be in collaboration with a publisher, because you had to. You had to reserve a space on shelves, and other sorts of things that demanded contacts and expertise we didn't have.

[Gestures to mural] This is from Scaler, one of the first IPs we made. Jersey Devil was before that, and then Wet was another IP [after Scaler], and then we did Naughty Bear. All of these games we tried, and they worked a little bit. A couple of years ago, we were kicking around this prototype that was essentially hide-and-seek: One absolutely powerful person running after someone with no power at all, who's trying to accomplish a thing. It just needed to be a symbolic thing, and it was super-fun.

Since Naughty Bear, and a bit before that, we had wanted to do a game where you're living the fantasy of being a villain in slasher movies from the '70s and '80s, that classic horror [sub-genre]. We sort of mashed those two things together, and it turned into Dead By Daylight. It was this little project: "We're going to put out a 20-dollar game, guerrilla-marketing style." We didn't quite know what would happen. At that time we were collaborating with Starbreeze, a publisher that did Payday, which was a similar [style of game], if you will. They were very good on guerrilla marketing. They didn't do regular [marketing campaigns] that most big publishers do.

They told us, "Okay, you have to do it by yourself. You're keeping the IP, so it's got to be you, Behaviour's team, that's out there talking about it." Essentially it turned into this ridiculously big success that we have today.

It also helped because within the company, we have, because of that, we've created a unit called Behaviour Digital. It's where we create our own IPs. We've had a team of prototypers, essentially: Two people who are creating just fun little gameplay. [They usually make] gray boxes, something simple that we can put in someone's hands and say, "Are you having fun right now?" If it's yes, then it's a good idea. If not, move on to something else. We create more and more, and once in a while we pick one and say, "Let's work on this."

Dead By Daylight was the first one. They kept at it. Deathgarden was, I think, number six or seven. We have others coming down the pipe that we want to put together, and we'll be able to keep doing that because we have the best of both worlds in the company. On one side, we still have a lot of work-for-hire business that we're doing, with bigger and more exciting contracts with different publishers. All the big names, we're working with them on super-secret projects.

And that's very secure work. That's work that you know, from the moment someone spends five minutes working on something, you're going to get a paycheck. It's very financially secure.

On the other side, we're prospecting for our future. We're creating stuff, we're investing, and one of them might be a hit. But you don't know. That's sort of the other way of look at it: We're prospecting, with the safety net of the rest of the company, which is a great balance. Very few companies could be in this position.

Craddock: Behaviour had to buy some part of Dead by Daylight back from Starbreeze. How did that transaction work?

Côté: From the beginning, the deal we had with them was we keep 100 percent of the IP. It's ours. But they had the publishing rights; they were the publisher of record for the game. And we had a financial deal where they paid a part of the costs and got a part of the profit, which worked absolutely wonderfully on both sides. And in fact, that's why we got with them in the first place. They were one of the only [publishers] who offered to let us keep the IP. Everyone else was like, "Yeah, we'll help you, you'll get some money, but the IP is ours." Obviously that's the most valuable part of the whole deal.

At some point, we got to a position where Starbreeze had their own story, which is very interesting, and we were in a place where we were flush with funds because things were going well. We had an opportunity to buy back the publishing rights to Behaviour. That was about a year ago, maybe a little more. So we were able to buy back those publishing rights fully, and now we're publishing Dead By Daylight under the name Behaviour, and it's just us doing our own thing.

We'd never have been able to do this without them. They were great. They had a lot of support and expertise. They knew what they were doing. They helped us grow into the company we are now, and the face we are presenting to our players and to our business partners. But now, we have an expertise that we created through that, and we're able to do this on our own. In the end, it's a perfect conclusion to that story.

Craddock: There are some Meccas of the industry: the Bay Area, Dallas, Texas. Montreal has become on over the last 20 years or so. How did that spring up, from your perspective? And how would you define Behaviour's part in that?

Côté: I think that Montreal has always been a special city because it's a big city--culturally, there's a lot of stuff happening here in the world scene--but there's not as many people. We don't have the population of New York or San Francisco. It's a much smaller scale, but we're still somehow managing to create culture and create something that's significant on the world stage, which is amazing.

As far as video games are concerned, one thing is that Quebec's government has some very generous grants and tax credits to motivate companies to [open] in Montreal, and to stay in Montreal. That, in turn, means better schools will start to teach 3D animation, modeling, video game programming, because they know that students who come out of there will find good jobs in Montreal. Then it becomes a cycle: Companies say, "Oh, there's some talent in Montreal; we might as well invest a little more [in that area]."

Craddock: I'm interested in Behaviour's definition of indie developer.

Côté: Yeah, that's a tricky one.

Craddock: It is. This is a large office; you staff multiple teams. Not that indie developers can't do that, but the definition of "indie" has become so nuanced and granular. The basic definition is, of course, a developer that publishes its own work. I'd like to know Behaviour's definition of an indie culture.

Côté: Last year, I think something like hundreds of indie studios registered in Montreal. A lot of them are maybe two people in a small office somewhere. There's a lot of those common spaces where you can share infrastructure costs: five, 10 companies in a place, and they share the electricity bill or whatever. There's a lot of that in Montreal. This is a very creative place, and it sort of feeds on itself.

Some examples are Red Barrel, which is a company formed by people from other studios [including Ubisoft Montreal]. It's such a small world. I've worked with people who are now at Ubisoft, Warner Bros., Square Enix, EA. After 10 years in the industry, a lot of people know each other. You throw a big launch party, and you run into people: "Oh, I went to school with him, and then he went to this place." We all know each other. Obviously there are big companies in competition, but at the employee level, at the people level, there's very little competition. It's respectful, and it's passionate. It's a very beautiful community, at least from my perspective, and I may be completely deluded.

Within that, there's always this desire to create. "I have an idea! It's be really cool if..." At Behaviour, we have a program called BE Free. It's a program where, if I have an idea for a video game, I can send an email [to management] saying, "I'm making a farmer simulator," and management will say, "Okay, we're not making a farming simulator. That won't be in competition with anything we're doing, so feel free to do that. The idea is yours."

We encourage people to do that in their free time, because that's another thing: We do have free time here at Behaviour. A very hot topic right now in the video game industry is crunch time. There are people who give their lives to work on a project for three, five years. Not to name any, but there are the big triple-A projects where people have been working 100-hour weeks, and, "If you're not coming in on Saturday, don't bother coming in on Sunday." That's intense. Here, most days at 5:30, 6:00, I'll bump into my boss, who's also leaving, because we have a life.

In the morning, we come in around 9:00 or so, and we work hard while we're here. That's one reason why Rémi doesn't want to have, you know, a pool table: When we're here, we're working. If you want to play pool, you can go home [at a decent hour]. There are repercussions on our projects. You will see that maybe we can't cram as many features into a game as we could if we had people working 100-hour weeks. But we can keep up development for five years with the same team, because people are happy to come in every morning. They're still passionate, and they're still excited. We'd much rather keep people happy, excited, and committed.

I don't have the exact numbers, so I may be completely out of line, but we have hundreds of returns. It may be your first job, and you may say, "Man, I want to work on a Batman game!" or "I want to work in a big company." People leave. And then six months later, a year later, they go, "You know, that was fun, but I'd like a job where I can still have a life and be happy, and work with people who are smiling every day." That has huge value.

Craddock: Has Behaviour's culture always been that? Or did the success of Dead By Daylight--being flush with funds, as you put it--facilitate that culture?

Côté: It's always been that. When I came in, for the first couple of weeks, I noticed there was something different. And obviously, we'll put in the extra effort when it's necessary. We've all been there. When I started here, we were doing a lot of work-for-hire with smaller production cycles. During a year, you may see two games go from start to finish. If you have six months to do a game, or nine months, maybe people put in a few extra hours the last week, but not everybody.

The most important thing is [overtime] is not planned in, which is usually the case in game production. They'll say, "Okay, over the last six months, people will crunch, and we'll be able to accomplish more." That's not the case here. To us, crunch, or extra time, is a failure of management.

Craddock: Why do you think that culture is the exception to the rule in this industry?

Côté: I want to say greed. Because some people can get away with it. I mean, don't get me wrong: We want to make money. Everybody here wants to make money, and if it's possible, we'll make a little more. But there are costs we're not willing to pay for that.

I think [culture] starts from the top. There's no other choice: That has to start from the top. Whether it's me or the other executives here, all the senior VPs--they truly believe that people should be happy working here. I used to say this a lot, and I haven't said it in a while, but I think it's still true: If we're not having fun making the game, it's going to be very hard to make sure that people are having fun playing that.

You can feel it. To a certain extent, game development is like any art: If you put something into art, it will be felt on the other end. If what you put in is pain, misery, and stress... You can still make beautiful art. There's haunting music and blockbuster that are poignant, but that's not what we want. Even when we're making our horror game [Dead By Daylight] and we want you to feel stressed, we also want you to have a good time playing it.

Craddock: Is it a challenge to maintain that atmosphere as the company grows?

Côté: It's not a struggle, but it is a concern. For us, it's very important. Let's say we start a new project. We need people to start it. I think right now, we have around a hundred open positions. We're growing because we have new projects we want to do. When we start a new project, it's important to start by taking people from existing projects. People who have lived our culture and understand our values, and then we grow a team around that. It can't just be new people, because then, maybe they come from different cultures, and that would make it harder to get them to understand, and to internalize what it means.

We want to grow a lot, and we have. But we always need to be very aware of on-boarding new people, and making sure they understand the reasoning behind why we do things the way we do.

Craddock: What is a general overview of the on-boarding process?

Côté: It's a constant work in progress. It must be constantly reevaluated. The biggest thing is about connecting new people to the right people. It's about social chemistry: Making sure people--new, but it's also true for long-term employees--are put in a situation where they're surrounded by people who will push them, support them, and make the best use of what they can offer.

That's probably the bit I enjoyed the most when I was a producer putting together teams. But even today, when I get to do that on new projects, I like finding the perfect place to put someone who has a special skill that's maybe a weird shape. I like to make sure that people are put together in a way that will make something magical. Dead By Daylight was one of those teams that you don't see very often. You get a programmer, and he says, "There was this artist I worked with before. Maybe we can get him in." Then, "Oh, this sound guy is great. He's my friend, and we have a band together. Maybe..." And we say, "Okay, sure."

Dead By Daylight was grown from people who already had respect for each other. They saw each other as valuable people who could bring something to the table. Then a lot of people discovered [or recommended] other people, and it became this beautiful motor of passion... and that's so very cheesy, but it's true. To this day, we try to take pieces like what you do with a tree: It's a sprout that you try to grow it into a different team, and we put different people around them to try to recreate that atmosphere, and to keep that culture alive.

Craddock: You mentioned while we were chatting that you kind of fell into this position of, in addition to putting together and directing projects, being an ambassador of the studio's history. How'd that happen?

Côté: I remember the meeting where we kicked off Dead By Daylight. We were getting ready to release in a couple months, and we had that meeting with Starbreeze. One of the guys there was saying, "You guys should get someone from your team who will be the person talking about the game, who will be the person whom people can put a face to. That way when you publish something, instead of it coming from a faceless corporation, it'll come from someone they can associate with and empathize with."

I said, "Yeah, I think I can do that." And he said, "No. I don't think you understand what I mean. I don't think you understand the repercussions." We had a good chat about, "Okay, you know what? I have no idea what I'm getting into, but I'll do it. It sounds like something I can do, like a new challenge, and it sounds like fun."

It was much crazier than I could have ever anticipated, but it's amazing. To this day, one of the things I find the most exciting is the way the community was inspired by what we did. They give us so much back in return. If you look at all the cosplayers, the artists who do fan art, the people who write stories about our game, people who wrote music, posted video clips. These are people who are passionate about the world we've created. Seeing that come back to us, and seeing that inspires the team--that cycle is beautiful.

To me, every day is like that. I'll get a message on Twitter: "I met my wife in your game. We became best friends, and we just flew together to Gamescom and we're going to get married there." I'm like, this is crazy! It's completely mad! But it's beautiful. I'm lucky enough to be in the crossfire of this conversation. I can bring news from the community to the dev team, but at the same time, when the community wants to say something, they say it to me. It's great. Well, for the most part. There's a little bit of salt in there.

Craddock: Is that what you meant earlier by repercussions? You're the face of the company for better and for worse?

Côté: Absolutely. I understood that there was going to be good and bad, and that people could be horrible on the Internet. I was aware of that, but the extent of the intensity of some people... I had no idea. There's always something that can top it. One good example was at the Tokyo Game Show last year. We were sponsoring the Twitch booth, and there was Dead By Daylight stuff everywhere. We have a lot of Japanese fans, and they are fans. I mean, they are passionate. Games are a big thing there, and being a fan of something is a big thing.

I went on stage to talk to people, and in the line in front of me, in the first row, there was a guy with my face on his shirt. And I'm like, "What? That's crazy!" But it's passion. It's pure passion. We release a new outfit, something obscure for one of our 30 characters, and two days later we have pictures of people who made the cosplay, this highly detailed re-creation of this outfit we just made. It's like, "Wow, you're still at it three years down the line [from Dead By Daylight's release]." It's amazing.

Craddock: I have to ask about this building. Not just the open areas, but I like at the floors, and they're rough. It has this warehouse sort of feel.

Côté: This was a sweatshop. Literally. This was a place where people made clothes up until the '50s or '60s. The whole neighborhood used to be that. This building was stripped down to the concrete: wiring, plumbing, everything was taken out. Brand-new materials were installed. But the floors we kept as-is. I mean, we put a varnish to preserve their look, but everything else is brand-new.

That's important because it's part of Montreal's heritage. That's the kind of business, the kind of work and exports, you used to have in Montreal. That's what was created here. Now, it's AI, and video games, and technology. This building continues the tradition of being where we create what we export.

Craddock: I like how you've... not grafted onto that culture, but created an extension from it. You have the bones of what was here before, and then you have these meetings rooms, each with a mural of a game Behaviour has done before. The company has left its mark here while making sure to preserve history.

Côté: That's the thing. Our president is Quebec through and through. He is enthusiastic about what it means to be from here, and he's proud of our heritage. He wants to continue to build something that will continue to be a part of that proud heritage. We want to show the world: "This is the kind of thing that can come out of Quebec, and out of Montreal."