Feature: 'Making Stories Real: Autodesk’s Michel Kripalani'

In today's main feature, Gamasutra speaks to Autodesk senior games industry manager Michel Kripalani about the company's relatively recent merger with Alias, how 3DS Max and Maya can peacefully co-exist, and the future of this key game tools company. In this excerpt, Kripalani, who joined Autodesk in 2004 after a long industry career founding Presto Studios and working as a developer on projects such as Myst 3: Exile and Whacked!, elaborates on Autodesk's stated mission to "make stories real": "MK: Well, I think that at the core gameplay is king, but beyond gameplay, all real good games have a story. There’s two ways of looking at a story in games; there are the games that are more narrative driven and have a story that you’re being told or, in a lot of cases, there are games where players create their own story. The process of playing World of Warcraft, for example. So with the Autodesk tools we are enabling creators to make games, and ultimately all of those games really are story based whether its stories that are being told to you or stories that you’ll tell afterwards." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject with more from Kripalani on Autodesk's merger with Alias, keeping both Max and Maya's product lines separate, and the company's commitment to the XNA and indie development communities (no registration required, please feel free to link to this column from external websites).