Customer
From Indie Dreams to AAA Reality: Triple Boris's Journey with P4 and P4 Plan
Game Technology Toolset
Game Engine(s): Unity
Version Control: Perforce P4
IDE: Visual Studio
CI/CD Tools: Jenkins
Cloud Services: AWS Hosting for P4 Server
On a mission to develop games that captivate and bring together communities of passionate players, Simon Dansereau founded Triple Boris in 2016. What started as a small team of three freelancing for game studios has evolved into a renowned co-developer and indie studio, contributing to several large budget games and franchises.
Now, Triple Boris is gearing up to launch their most ambitious and innovative game to date, Hack 'n' Stack—a couch co-op game that promises fun, frenzied teamwork, and delightful chaos.
Introducing Triple Boris
Triple Boris is an independent video game studio based out of Quebec, Canada—supporting studios of all sizes in every stage of the game development process, as well as developing their own original games. With specializations in Unity development and game porting, their services for studios have ranged from providing technical support to contributing to the design and process optimization of the game itself.
Before starting Triple Boris, Simon Dansereau had several years of experience working as a game developer and lead programmer for studios like jamdat and Ubisoft. He later began freelancing for game studios and offering his services on LinkedIn. As more contracts and an investment to start a studio came in, he decided to hire a small team—eventually bringing on his former jamdat colleague, Jean-Philippe Pinsonneault as Technical Director.
Triple Boris has built strong partnerships with AAA studios like ZeniMax and Activision, earning their place as a trusted co-developer. Their dedication and craftsmanship have been pivotal to their incredible growth, expanding their studio to over 50 team members.
By collaborating with vendors large and small, Triple Boris has gained exposure to a wide range of processes, workflows, and cutting-edge game technologies. This experience has fueled impressive growth and kept them in high demand in a competitive game market.
Challenges
- Difficulties handling large assets and extensive project repositories.
- Need for secure workflows with end-to-end encryption for AAA partners.
- Expanding projects and a rapidly growing team.
- Working with a restricted budget.
Right from the start, the team needed a version control system to support their large projects. With decades of experience in game development and teaching game programming in Montreal, Dansereau knew Perforce was well regarded in the industry.
Triple Boris originally started using Perforce P4 (formerly Helix Core) free for small teams. However, as their team added on more developers and projects, they quickly outgrew their 5 free users and 20 workspaces. Needing more capacity but hesitant about the cost of a paid version control system, they began exploring other free options. Their search led them to Git—a popular version control amongst developers.
While working with Git, they struggled to keep track of changes and lacked visibility to what other team members were working on. Additionally, the team experienced inefficiencies in working with their assets and files in Git Large File Storage (LFS).
Triple Boris realized they needed a version control that made collaboration easier and effectively managed large files and project repositories.
Solution
- A version control foundation for creating without limits in P4.
- Increased efficiency for artists with instant access to latest project version in P4.
- Streamlined and secure collaboration with P4’s enterprise-level security.
- Centralized project planning and custom workflows with P4 Plan (formerly Helix Plan).
Triple Boris tackled these challenges by investing in P4 as their version control solution, integrating it across their team of developers and artists for streamlined collaboration and greater efficiency in managing assets and code. P4’s checkout protection system and ability to shelve changes also enabled developers to test changes without impacting the rest of the team.
“Since day one, P4 was fast, efficient, easy to learn, easy to understand, and it’s full of resources.”
Simon Dansereau, Chief Executive Officer, Triple Boris
With P4, the team now works from a single source of truth—fostering stronger collaboration and empowering the team to tackle projects of any size, including their newest game Hack 'n' Stack, a couch co-op game where you play as a team of makeshift builders tasked to reclaim the kingdom of Faunis.
Along with P4, the team uses P4 Plan as their go-to project management tool. Once the team signs a contract or launches a new project, they quickly set it up and assign team members. Project Manager, CAPM, Michelle Laflèche oversees all Triple Boris projects, and relies on P4 Plan to ensure team members have clear tasks and full visibility of the project.
“We follow Agile methodology, and P4 Plan is incredibly helpful for sprint planning, team communication, and aligning with our long-term vision. The reporting features allow us to quickly identify any performance issues and adjust our planning as needed to keep projects on track. It provides us with the flexibility to adapt and ensure continuous progress, which is a key factor in our project success”
Michelle Laflèche, Project Manager, CAPM, Triple Boris
The team runs P4 and P4 Plan on AWS, having started out with the free instance of AWS and scaling within a couple years as their team and projects grew larger. Simon shared, “It was easy to just scale the server for our instance and for our needs AWS just works. It’s easy to set up the security and everything.”
Impact
By harnessing the power of the P4 Platform, the team has significantly optimized their collaboration with both their team members and external partners. Their commitment to delivering high quality work has only solidified their reputation as a trusted partner among AAA and Canadian game studios, bringing them more opportunities to collaborate on innovative games and projects.
That foundation has now paved the way for a significant milestone in Triple Boris’s journey—the launch of Hack ‘n’ Stack. This title is a culmination of years of growth and highlights the team’s creativity and technical skill. With Hack ‘n’ Stack, they’re not just creating a game—they’re creating connections, bringing players together, both online and offline, and continuing forth in their mission to bring ambitious vision to life.
Discover the P4 Platform
Explore how Triple Boris evolved from an indie studio grappling with Git inefficiencies to a co-developer of AAA games, by getting started with Perforce P4 and P4 Plan. P4 is free for up to 5 users and 20 workspaces, with no limits on features and functionality.
Go Behind the Scenes of Hack ‘n’ Stack
Curious to see more footage of Hack ‘n’ Stack and dive deeper into Triple Boris’ development and creative process? Perforce Senior Solutions Engineer, Jase Lindgren spoke with Triple Boris Community Manager and Content Creator, Sophie Blanchette; Triple Boris Project Manager, CAPM, Michelle Laflèche; and Triple Boris Game Developer, Andrew Gareau in the interview below. The group dives into topics like:
- The story behind Hack ‘n’ Stack.
- Triple Boris’ transition from co-developing games with partners to creating their own IP.
- How P4 has streamlined their developer and artist’s workflows, enhancing team collaboration.
Play Hack ‘n’ Stack
If you’re interested in checking out Hack ‘n’ Stack, you can wishlist it below.