“It’s the best stand here! There is an incredible diversity of games! “says an elated visitor, while he sweeps away all the nuggets that it is possible to test, the Made in France space of the Paris Games Week. On this 600 m2 pavilion, in the shadow of the giants of the sector, the video game fair has been home since Wednesday, Porte de Versailles, to those who make French creations shine all over the world.
Because yes, the hexagonal video game is booming. Perhaps he is even experiencing a veritable golden age. There is a Ubisoft, of course, many of whose hits are made in France. But not only. In recent years, there have been countless French independent studios whose productions are exported beyond the borders. Mostly daring, amazing or courageous titles, which stand out in the global market. A Plague Tale: Requiem, designed by Asobo Studio, in Bordeaux, a game of infiltration in a Middle Ages plagued by the plague. Or stray, developed by the Montpellier studio Blue Twelve, where you embody a larger-than-life cat in a cyberpunk world. Some studios hit it so hard that they are even bought up by industry behemoths. Others raise funds that are barely believable.
An “incredible effervescence”
“The United States is very advanced in terms of independent video games, but in France, it has really exploded”, confides Augustin De Vita, producer at Nadeo, the Parisian studio which developed Trackmania, a series of racing games with a global aura. In 2009, the small company was even bought by Ubisoft. It is also, notes Augustin De Vita, in the wake of this video game giant that the French ecosystem has grown over the past twenty years. “Ubisoft trained talents, some left, and created their own studios, he explains. This is why in Montpellier, Paris, Bordeaux or Lyon, there is today an incredible excitement in video games. »
If so many small studios are created, and sometimes manage to impose their creations on the four corners of the world, it is because the tools have evolved, continues Augustin De Vita. The Unity or Unreal development platforms have simplified the work of those who have ideas, and who want to make them happen “very easily, and very quickly. And then there are the blinds [les boutiques en ligne], which allow us to highlight our games. Much more easily than 30 years ago, when the only way to market a video game was in physical format, in cartridges or CDs. It is still necessary, however, to make a small place, in the middle of the thousands of titles which land every year on Steam.
An “excellent ecosystem”
For Laurent Lemoine, the production director of Amplitude Studios, “the French Touch” in video games is not new. “Me, I’m an old man, he laughs, I remember Delphine Software or Adeline Software, French studios, which were already radiating [dans les années 1990] on the international scene. “Today, if French creation is a hit, it is thanks in particular, notes Laurent Lemoine, “to our excellent ecosystem. Schools prepare students very well for this sector. We are also helped by the various successive governments, with the tax credit, in particular, which has been renewed. The NCC [Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée], also, allows to put in the stirrup a lot of new structures. We, for Endless Space, we received a grant from the CNC, and that allowed us to make a game that is of even better quality, and to get noticed at the international level. »
And when players connect, on the other side of the world, to play the Endless series, it’s always a great pride for the talents of Amplitude Studios. “When we look at the figures, and we see that many play in Australia, Singapore, all the feedback we have from Japan, Korea, we say to ourselves “But how can we, a French studio , we managed to touch them? “, is surprised Laurent Lemoine.
“The French play a lot”
For Amplitude Studios, Sega has something to do with it. The Japanese video game legend bought the French company in 2016. And “it allowed us to be much more ambitious in our video games, it helped us enormously”, notes Laurent Lemoine, who was project manager, back when Sega knocked on the door of the studio. “To find yourself chatting with people who rocked our adolescence, wow! he smiles.
At Game Source Studio, in Cergy, this is only the beginning of the adventure. Their first game mahokenshi, will be released in January. A Dutch publisher, Iceberg Interactive, is lining up to publish it. “And that will allow us to already have international visibility”, and to have the ear of console manufacturers “who choose to highlight, or not, the games”, rejoices Océane Quimpert, associate producer of the studio. “What makes us strong in France is that we have an audience that is really fond of video games,” she adds. The French play a lot. In its latest barometer, in 2021, the National Video Game Syndicate in France (SNJV) counted 700 game studios in France, 200 more than two years earlier. On average, in 2020, 36.5% of the turnover of these companies was made internationally.