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Imagine a game with as many plots and endings as there are players. “Heavy Rain”, the brainchild of French designer David Cage and his Paris-based studio Quantic Dream, is a ‘perfect storm’ that asks players to serve as the hero in a film-noir styled interactive drama. Players actually determine the dénouement through the choices they make, amid footage to rival a blockbuster movie. This budding industry is going through a mini-revolution, underlining the creative talent of French developers.
In a constantly changing sector, with 3D, real-time games and increasingly immersive gameplay, it is crucial to stay ahead of the pack and to react to market trends which were unveiled last week at the glittering E3 2010 exhibition, the biggest video game trade show in the world. While France abounds with game titles that have put it on the map, like “Flashback”, “Alone in the Dark”, “LBA” and “Trackmania”, it is no less competitive when it comes to today’s innovations. It is no coincidence that the video game spinoffs of the planetary success Avatar have been developed by Paris-based Ubisoft…
France has a wide array of incentives in place to support its entertainment industries. In no particular order, examples include technologically cutting-edge clusters that are shaping the future of video games (Imaginove, Cap Digital), the most generous research tax credit in Europe, a creative tax credit that covers up to 20% of production costs, as well as the FAEM Multimedia Publishing Support Fund.
Simply put, France has a penchant for games as French Minister for Culture and Communication Mr. Frédéric Mitterrand recently made very clear when introducing a “special action plan” for the video game sector. In broad terms, it lowers the minimum threshold (currently €150,000) at which project budgets become eligible for the tax credit and addresses copyright issues so that creators can be rewarded more fairly. Armed with these new measures and an ever-increasing number of gamers, France is more than ready to attract foreign investors into the sector.
As such, the French interactive entertainment market can be seen to be a solid investment opportunity: in 2010, the industry recorded sales of €3.6 billion according to a consultant’s report for developers of the video game Newzoo, putting France right after the United Kingdom and Germany. What’s more, the future bodes well too: GfK has forecast growth of 25% between now and 2014, which would make France the leading video games market in Europe, ahead of Germany. Foreign publishers have already been making informed choices, with a number of them choosing France as a distribution platform for the European market (Electronic Arts, Codemasters, Koei France, Konami France, Namco Bandai, NCSoft, Freeze Interactive, Gravity).
The work being done in this sector is feeding hopes that foreign publishers will take the next logical step to set up R&D centers and produce their next virtual projects in France. Xbox gaming console creator and game publisher Microsoft, with its new R&D center just outside Paris, has set its sights on France by backing the Play All Project and opening up the Imagine Cup to digital projects and educational video games in particular.
A new market where games are becoming a serious business? That’s the trend in France, which has already added its own touch to what has been baptized the “serious games” market in English. France boasts competitive companies in this field, like start-up Daesign, and has everything to attract new industry leaders. Among the projects currently underway are “Donjons et Radon” being developed by Ad-Invaders in collaboration with Microsoft, where players can wander at will through an imaginary world and explore lessons from physical science curricula. France is determined to attract new projects in this vein from around the world and to make “serious games” a key factor in its economic growth, especially with sales forecast to reach €10.2 billion by 2015 according to a recent study by the Audiovisual and Telecoms Institute IDATE.
