The summer break is over, I hope you were all able to recharge your batteries during that time! I have the pleasure to post here again, sharing with you this amazing interview with Lova Ranaivoson, Associate Producer at Sunny Lab currently working on The Witch’s Bakery!
I’ve been keeping my eyes on this game for quite a while, and this is on the French Discord server of Women in Games that I stumbled upon it! Lova was sharing the news about their cozy relaxing game about a witch healing the hearts of people in Paris. Their Kickstarter campaign is now live so please feel free to show them some love!
Nice to meet you, Lova! Could you please introduce yourself to our readers?
Hello~~ 🌞 I’m delighted to answer your questions.
My name is Lova, it’s pronounced /luv/ – ‘she-wolf’ – and it means ‘heritage’ in Malagasy!
(Yes, that’s a real part of my introduction ahahah).
I’m nearly 32, I live near Paris, I’m originally from Brittany (Brest, in fact!) and I spent all my teenage years and early adulthood in Nantes. I’m now an Associate Producer at Sunny Lab, a small French indie studio that I joined in February 2024. Before that, I worked in IT recruitment for nearly 7 years in a firm!
As for the rest of my life, I’ve been dancing since I was 5 and I’ve been practising ‘ori Tahiti (Tahitian dance) since 2020. I play games, of course! At the moment I’m playing Cyberpunk 2077, and before that I played Venba. I’m trying hard not to say goodbye to Spiritfarer (I hate saying ‘goodbye’), and we did a big Baldur’s Gate III run with my partner 🔥
Johanna: Huge fan of Spiritfarer and Venba as well, they really found a way to propose a great gameplay combined to a moving narrative. And it’s nice to see that you’re coming from another industry! I am sure it will inspire a lot of people reading this.
How did you end up working in the video game industry?
It was far from obvious, because a few years ago I had no idea how many jobs there were in the industry. I went through a ‘meh‘ period (understand: depression and mid-thirties crisis 😅) which led me to a break, then unemployment, then a career change.
During my research and skills assessment – which I did with Même pas Cap ! – the idea of joining the video game industry came to me tentatively. Listening to my coach (Jordan, the best ❤️) keep telling me ‘And why not?’ and being more and more closely involved in the industry thanks to Afrogameuses and Women In Games, I finally realised the obvious and dared to admit to myself that I wanted to give it a go.
And here we are!
What made you become an Associate Producer?
I didn’t want to work in recruitment anymore because the ‘service’ side (VS ‘product’) didn’t interest me any more. I did my time there, it taught me lots of things, but now I want to dedicate my time to a product, something tangible that you can hold in your hands (via a controller 😂). Something I can be proud of at the end of the great adventure that is creating a video game!
My skills assessment enabled me to take the time to ask myself: OK, what hard and soft skills could I transfer from my 7 years in Tech Recruitment? I know how to coordinate, manage an activity and ensure the quality of what I deliver. I don’t know how to manage a project as such, with its timetables, budgets… What do I do?
So I decided to take another course in Project Management applied to Video Games (MBA Video Game Management at the IIM): I could see that I was missing out on a lot of hard skills and industry culture. It wasn’t fun. Going back to school at the age of 30? Weeeell, I tried to dodge that part, but it kept coming back to me. So I had to go for it: today I don’t regret it at all, I’ve met some great classmates, the courses and speakers were top quality for the most part, and then in June we went to the Game Camp in Lille, which was brilliant.
Johanna: This is actually really brave to go back to studying to have a brand new career! I love seeing that it was worth it 💛
It was great to be back in higher education for a while, with all the excitement that goes with it and the fact that it’s a real learning experience, the fact that it’s very short-lived and that you’re only there for a few months. But I was happy to get back to work behind the scenes 😆
Note: as a jobseeker, I was lucky enough to have my training funded by the Île-de-France region. Otherwise I’d have had to come up with nearly €10K from my own pocket for the year’s training. That helps!
What are your main responsibilities when working on projects?
I work with Charlotte (Creative Director) and Hugo (Narrative Director), the co-founders of Sunny Lab and my direct managers on:
● Planning and allocating team tasks
● Day-to-day monitoring of team members (1-1 meetings with each member individually every week)
● Leading key meetings (Sprint Planning, Sprint Reviews, Stand Up Meetings)
● Creating and updating our internal and external processes
● Monitoring our external collaborators
Alongside this, I’ve also been involved in other tasks:
● Recruiting our future members (yes… I can’t get away from it! ahahah)
● Building our Kickstarter and Steam page
● A directory of our Content Creators resources and specialist journalists to contact for PR
Each day is different, and I’m doing my bit to help the game move forward step by step 😄
What qualities and skills are the most important for this position?
Overall, I’d say you need to want to and be able to work with and for people.
The job of Producer (and Associate Producer at a more junior level) requires a greater ability to take a step back than any other job in a studio. Because the specialist teams are there to do their job, and ours is to do everything that these teams can’t take on in their responsibilities!
So if I had to mention just a few of them:
● A good overall knowledge of the industry: how do you create a game, what are the key stages, what are the current challenges in the industry?
● A great deal of empathy: knowing how to put yourself in the place of the team members, to understand their issues and situations
● But also firmness and rigour: because even if we can understand the team, we’re also there to sell a finished product, we’re subject to financial and economic stakes
● And finally, overall, excellent listening and communication skills: this will be your main source for learning, growing and resolving situations 🔓
And I’m deliberately not mentioning various IT tools because really, you have to learn them. And mastering all the subtleties of Jira while not listening to your team: that’s all well and good, but unfortunately doesn’t always help move things forward and contribute to a virtuous working environment!
Are there projects you have been especially proud to work on?
I’m currently very proud to be working on this game that Charlotte introduced to me a year ago: ‘Can you see Kiki’s Delivery Service? Can you imagine her in Paris? Well, the game is about managing our emotions like Kiki in Paris setting!‘
The Witch’s Bakery, of course!
Johanna: And what a beautiful game, friends!
Did you encounter challenges when working on The Witch’s Bakery or any previous projects?
My current challenge is to fight my impostor syndrome and to improve the old tropes that I keep inside me when I panic. I’m lucky enough to be extremely well supported and to have found Charlotte and Hugo to be excellent mentors for my first steps in the industry.
They have the patience to help me grow, even in the areas I’ve been struggling with since the start of my career, namely my ability to synthesise (you can tell), my verbal logorrhoea, and the fact that I often get lost in my head when I’m stressed 😅
So this isn’t a challenge linked specifically to The Witch’s Bakery, it’s an overall challenge of managing myself, to myself!
You are also doing communication work for Afrogameuses, a French non-profit organisation. Could you tell us more about what they do and your mission for them?
Afrogameuses is an association set up in July 2020 by Jennifer Lufau, with the initial aim of bringing together Afro-descendant female gamers, finding our peers and looking for solutions to help us become better integrated into the video games industry. The association is very open to all our allies, and we’re continuing to grow step by step.
Johanna: Awesome to see these associations growing in popularity, they are such nice platforms to connect and learn from each other.
We’re organising events, we’re taking part in other events created by our peers (Women in Games, Next Gaymer, Furax, etc.), we’re communicating on social networks, and we’re offering free training partnerships for our members.
For my part, I’ve been working on communications since November 2023 (and normally until Nov. 2025): I manage a team of 4 people (Community Managers and Writers) to ensure the association’s comm’ 📰
In your opinion, what things could be changed and improved within our industry?
Turning words into action.
We hear and talk about the desire of studios to diversify their teams, to improve their games… But at the moment it’s still too timid and even if we’re working to change all that, it’s a job that has to be done collectively and on a company-wide scale.
Anything else you would like to share?
Thanks for the interview!
It’s always fun/strange to be able to express yourself publicly, and it makes me realise that I’m already starting to be able to share a bit of experience 🐣 About the job, the industry, how to grow up in it and which paths I’ve chosen to take (French indie, Cosy Gaming niche ahah).
If I had to say one last thing: go for it. It will probably take time, energy and effort, but in the end it will pay off! And if you want to talk about it, please don’t hesitate to reach out ❤️
Lova Ranaivoson – Associate Producer (she/they)
LinkedIn / X / Instagram
Thank you so much Lova for taking the time to answer my questions! This really is a wholesome interview, with lots of tips for people aspiring to get into the industry. Don’t forget to check out The Witch’s Bakery on Steam and Kickstarter!
I will see you all again soon for another story to share 💛
