Playing Hard: Video game designer Jason VandenBerghe takes us inside the making of For Honor

For 13 years, Jason VandenBerghe believed in his vision for a video game. The Montreal-based video game developer wanted to design a fantasy fighting game called For Honor for Ubisoft — one of the biggest companies in the video game business. Now, a new documentary follows VandenBerghe's journey in bringing his vision to life.

Playing Hard is just like any creative project you've been a part of before. The film shows plenty of ups and downs, stressful moments and a growing team of 20 to 500 people across the world working to cross that finish line.

Today, VandenBerghe joins guest host Laurie Brown live in the q studio to tell you what it was like to live through all of this and why he wanted to make For Honor. 

"I wanted to make a game that gave people who have this warrior's heart a place to try it out — to see what it would be like to stand in the way of danger," says VandenBerghe. "And I wanted to create a game [that had] a community of supportive, positive people that would include all races, creeds, genders — everyone — I wanted everyone to be included in that. I wanted to create a space for people to become that knight, Viking or samurai that was inside of their heart."

For Honor was finally released in 2017. You can see Playing Hard, directed by Jean-Simon Chartier, at the Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto from Wednesday, May 2 until Friday, May 4. 

— Produced by Tayo Bero