this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2026
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If the lesson is "just let Ubisoft die, and support their former workers if they want to produce labour-of-love games in small indie studios", then we could be in for great things. E33 is possibly the French-est game ever made and has brought French culture around the globe, in the way that "yet another Rainbow 6 sequel" certainly does not.
Idk, apparently theres a game series about navigating a literal flood of rats swaying like the grass, might be hard to beat that level of Frenchness.
I wish that was how it would work, but we have to step all the way back here and consider how there is a fundamental difference from an employment perspective, from a target product perspective and from a budget perspective between indie game companies and large boring game companies.
I love indie games, I don't play AAA games really, but you have to recognize the crucial role larger game companies play at providing consistent employment for entry level game development jobs... those workers can go on and found indie game companies and make their best games fine... but what about before that? What if you want to develop awesome video game but you have a family? You really want to fuck around with going it alone as an indie game company?
From the other side, even in the sanest possible world are indie game companies the right tool to craft highly iterative cinematic sports games with? ... that sports fans will want to play?
We have a big sample bias with good indie games too. For every big hit, there are dozens of abject financial failures. Which in Canada with stuff like the CMF, its fine... but these funds can only support so many things.
AAA studios might be ruthless with layoffs and cancelations, but they have a much better batting average of breaking even or making money. Indie games go belly up all the time and people lose everything.
Like just play stuff on the Steam next fest. Tell yourself that only the top 10 or so games will ever get any sales. Half the games you play might never even make it to market. There's hundreds of good games there.
Sorry, let me point out one thing: that's a load of crap.
The only thing I agree with is that AAA studios have the funds to make huge projects, while indie devs usually will not.
However, their business model is built around developers being treated as an expendable workforce, and offers little if any job security at all, almost all mass layoffs in tech up until recently were by AAA studios.
Especially entry level jobs, including Q&A folk, they're the first to go once a project is complete, if they were even hired in the first place and not just contractors. Zero job security.
And if you think they provide stability from a family time perspective, you mustn't have heard about the "crunch", the ridiculous number of mandatory overtime, or the high burnout rate.
AAA is cancer.
Well you aren't going to have a mass layoff as an indie studio, you're just going to fold
Trust me, there's just as much crunch and toxicity in indie studios. Layoffs are just as common, if not more so.
But your boss is clueless and well intentioned with the abuse... which honestly is almost worse I'd say. A prick boss that is honest about being a prick boss is a + in my book. At least you know the game.
I don't dispute that at all. What I was pointing out is that AAA is not some sort of solution, as it was implied.
I am not saying the culture of AAA studios isn't toxic as hell, but the size difference does create the potential for stability a smaller studio just physically cannot have even if its culture is far better.
Just don't be creative if you want a family
Edit doubly so it's the thing you do when you are following your biological programming, so like, pick a lane.
Insane take
I should have put a /s there
Ah, right
😭
Is it though? It feels very J as in JRPG with a superficial French coating. I don’t see much „culture“ but it might be too subtle for me.
This post is funny because it sounds like you may not be aware of the whole cultural confluence/intentionally cultivated relationship between French and Japanese art (particularly in the fields of animation, woodworking, and video games) that’s been going on for well over a century now
Can you tell more about it?
I think that’s exactly what was meant, though. Taking only this screenshot into account, that’s not French culture, that’s French caricature. Are there other aspects that more genuinely express more subtle aspects of French life and history? Genuinely asking
It's literally based on Paris around 1900, the architecture and the trains, the technology and stuff are directly taken from the French "belle époque" of those years. Then there's the music (accordion), the outfits, the entire painting theme, etc. Obviously technology is not exclusively French, and the architecture is generally western European, but that is literally Paris around 1900. Oh, and the names of the painters are from actual people.
For real. It's extremely in your face with French culture, and I love it.
As someone still at the beginning of the game it still feels somewhat superficial. I dunno what else I would expect, were it not for the descriptions like the OP, which conjure an image to me of game mechanics involving the freshness of bread, force-feeding geese, and interrupting traffic to play bowls (though on that subject I have found two "pétanks") not just art and music.
You might have read way too much into that comment. It still is a JRPG through and through, the devs have made clear comments about the FF (old turn-based) and Persona and Dark Souls inspirations on the gameplay side and the whole frenchness is entirely in the writing and the designs. You'll get the bulk of the story in the last 10% of the game.
That’s awesome! I genuinely don’t know much about it, so I appreciate the perspective
Sorry, the screenshot was mostly a jab at the guy pretty much saying a game made by French developers and artists, with songs in French, in a setting heavily inspired by a distinct historical French period wasn't genuinely French enough for him :>
Are you American or something that you don’t get what I mean?
Yes, superficial and on the nose, as corvi said a caricature. Something an actual Japanese studio might cook up for the pitch. Maybe the humor is the Frenchest thing about the game, but then again there might be something under all this that’s too subtle for me. I get more honest vibes from Plague‘s Tale for example.
The story is very French in my opinion and I don't care if you could say it is very Japanese or not (honestly can't judge), those things are not contradictory. It could be both as well.
It's not Japanese, it just has almost all the JRPG tropes (except the terrible writing). But it's as French as Flight of the Conchords' Foux du Fafa.
I mean, It's made by a team of largely French developers and artists. The songs are in French, the setting is basically Belle Epoque France with all the included architecture and dress. Even in the English language version they throw in French swear words.
Sure they throw in baguette costumes as a fun tongue in cheek option but if you think the game is a caricature of French culture based solely on that, you're missing the forest for the trees.
Like, what would actually meet your standard of appropriately representing French culture?
oh and not a single cigarette? French my ass
I don't know, I'm not French, so maybe I'm just not picking up all the little things the French creators put in there and therefore don't see the forest. It would be great if someone more knowledgable about (modern) French culture could point some of these out. I'm fond of the mini documentary Karambolage by a French-German tv channel which points out differences in culture and it's a bit more than "look here in this country is the Eiffel tower and there might be French words unlike in this other country".
What do you mean, let Ubisoft die? That's not the presidents decision to make.
Alao, certainly not everyone that currently works at Unlbisoft would find success making indie games. The games industry is fucking brutal. Force closing Ubisoft would be a cruel decision and almost everyone currently working there would suffer for it.
I don't know about france specifically, but in general the state has many options to prop up a failing capitalist endeavor.