“Being almost glued to Disney is an opportunity for us, that’s clear,” says Fabien Goupilleau, municipal councilor responsible for video games, e-sport and digital communication in Bussy-Saint-Georges. Alongside YouTuber Tev and collector Ludovic Charles, the municipality of Seine-et-Marne, located around thirty kilometers from the heart of the capital, is delighted with the arrival of the project on its territory in 2026.
With a fundraising campaign that displays more than 2.2 million euros this Thursday, the “Odyssey Project” even received the attention of the President of the Republic. In a video message broadcast on Tev’s Twitch channel, “Here Japan”, Emmanuel Macron was enthusiastic. “I simply wanted to give you my support and my high patronage for your video game museum project, an active museum, a living city.”
Located on the eastern branch of the RER A, two stations from Disneyland Paris and one from the Vallée Village, the location of Bussy-Saint-Georges could be truly strategic in attracting visitors outside of Paris itself, and directing fans of entertainment. “The proximity to Disney undoubtedly gives promoters hope that the museum could attract a clientele beyond the Ile-de-France borders,” analyzes Laurent Chalard, doctor of geography and consultant in regional planning.
A common passion
“We expect 100,000 people per year in our projections,” announces Fabien Goupilleau. So yes, we hope to attract visitors from outside Île-de-France, and even tourists from French-speaking countries like Belgium or Luxembourg.” Confident, the municipal representative explains how this partnership took shape.
“We can’t really talk about candidacy. I am, personally, subscribed to Tev’s channel and from February 1, the day he published his video to announce the project and specify that he was looking for a location, I immediately thought of our fun center project , which was then in the competition phase. I immediately called the mayor so that we could shake up our plans and include this video game museum project in the file. While I imagined dozens and dozens of application emails – Tev still has a million subscribers – he replied to me the next day and in forty-eight hours, it was done! »
In Bussy-Saint-Georges, the town hall decided several years ago to develop a fun center, including a Game Arena, a performance hall focused on e-sport and video games with 1,500 seats. “It will also be able to host concerts, plays, conferences, but it will be one of the first rooms in France with the label e-sports ready », specifies Fabien Goupilleau. Integrating the “largest video game museum in the world” therefore seemed obvious. “It’s a way of enriching our offering so that visitors spend the entire day on the site,” he adds.
Why settle in the outer suburbs?
For Laurent Chalard, the reasons for settling so far from the center of Paris are multiple. But the main one is, for him, the cost of land. “In general, for cultural projects which do not benefit from funding from large groups like that of Bernard Arnault or François Pinault, it is difficult to find the financial means to establish themselves in the heart of the capital. We will therefore be looking for inexpensive land that can be developed which is located in the greater suburbs, and particularly in the new towns.” Bingo! Bussy-Saint-Georges, still almost a village in 1990 with its 1,500 inhabitants, has more than 30,000 inhabitants, and aims to reach 40,000 in 2030 and 50,000 in 2050.
Built on the edge of the A4 motorway, in the eastern part of Marne-la-Vallée, it is close to an important recreational ecosystem. “First, there was the creation of Disneyland Paris in 1992, then that of the Vallée village with its branded stores, and finally the Villages Nature Tourisme in 2017, bought by Centerparcs in 2022,” lists Laurent Chalard. This has changed the length of stay of visitors from one or two days to visit the amusement park to a week or more to enjoy this area.” He adds that Bussy-Saint-Georges “has the highest concentration of population of Asian origin, more Sino-Vietnamese, but it is the same cultural sphere as Japan”. Which also validates the Japanese village project planned by Tev, “to help the museum financially since it is very complicated to maintain a museum in the long term. Without state aid or donations from foundations, we must find other sources of income,” adds Fabien Goupilleau.
Significant advantages
Thus, Bussy-Saint-Georges has many assets and is counting on this project to benefit from financial benefits. “It’s a middle-class town, with no particular problems, but its town center has not taken off. We are in a new city, and we are already talking about redoing the city center even though it is really not old!, notes Laurent Chalard. For the moment, it is clearly suffering from commercial competition from nearby Val d’Europe, residents take their car and have access in ten minutes.
Fabien Goupilleau makes no secret of it. “We have a sporting and cultural associative fabric but we lack private play spaces. The opportunity was too good. And then, by not being even ten minutes from the largest European amusement park, we hope that visitors will say “why not stop at the video game museum on the way back?” “. “We need to see what this space will look like,” adds Laurent Chalard. Video games interest children and teenagers, but also a population aged 30-40, often from the middle class. But with such projects, we are never sure that the sauce will work.” These are not the attempts at Schiltigheim at the Pixel Muséum, which lasted three years, or at the Arche de la Défense video game museum, open only ten days in 2010, which will say the opposite.