Two additional nominations which prove France’s great form in terms of video games. Two French works, Chants of Sennaar and Tchia, are nominated for the Game Awards, the equivalent of the Oscars in the world of gaming, the ceremony of which will be broadcast this Thursday evening from Los Angeles (from 2 a.m. in France). They follow a host of French games nominated in previous years, such as A Plague Tale: Requiem, Sifu or Deathloop, and Stray, which won the award for best independent game in 2022.
Presented in the “Games for impact” category, which rewards titles carrying a “positive” message going beyond the straitjacket of video games, Chants of Sennaar and Tchia will compete against four other games: A Space for the Unbound, an adventure game tackling the themes depression and anxiety; Goodbye Volcano High, which tells the anxieties of adolescents facing the end of the world; Terra Nil, a strategy game consisting of transforming a barren land into a thriving ecosystem; and Venba, which explores themes of family, mourning and cultural heritage, making us embody an Indian mother who immigrated to Canada.
While it is obviously impossible to predict the results of the Game Awards, the winners of which are chosen by the vote of players and the international press, Tchia and Chants of Sennaar are nevertheless among the favorites. The first, which puts us in the shoes of a little girl looking for her father in an archipelago inspired by New Caledonia, was praised for its graphic style and its highlighting of New Caledonian culture.
The second, which received a score of 85/100 on Metacritic (site which aggregates the test scores of specialist journals around the world, Editor’s note), was praised for its concept: this puzzle game, which places translation at the heart of its gameplay, transports the player into a Tower of Babel type structure, in which several completely opposed populations reside.
While a conflict brews, the player will have to decode the languages - made up of ideograms – of each civilization, to climb the edifice and hope to reconcile the peoples.
Both titles are considered indie games. In other words, low-budget works developed by (very) small teams. To find a place among the big guys, their creators had to stand out, particularly on the artistic aspect.
“Generally speaking, French games are noted for their creativity. It’s no coincidence that there are French people in the artistic branches of all the major development studios,” confides to Figaro Julien Moya, co-founder with Thomas Panuel of Rundisk, the tiny studio of two people who developed Chants of Sennaar. “We have a lot of training, a lot of students who go to art schools. We have fairly renowned art schools, which allows us to create very interesting and highly sought-after graphics,” Pierre-Étienne Travers, artistic director of Shiro Games, behind the French strategy game Dune: Spice Wars, also added to Franceinfo. .
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“To stand out, and because the two of us could not compete with studios employing thousands of people, we therefore opted from the start for a radical artistic direction,” continues Julien Moya. With its flat areas of saturated colors, Chants of Sennaar actually borrows part of its graphic style from comics from the 1970s and 1980s, and in particular from Arzach, the work of the French author Moebius. “We were also inspired by the Romanesque architecture of Toulouse and its surroundings. A decor that resembles us”, the studio being domiciled in the town of Haute-Garonne, continues Julien Moya.
This desire to pay homage to France in its finest finery can also be found at Awaceb, a small New Caledonian studio behind Tchia. The game is largely inspired by the overseas archipelago to which a majority of the development team claims to belong. “We were inspired by Disney, Ghibli, traditional Kanak art… to present a sublimated vision of New Caledonia, how if we told it through the eyes of a child,” advances with the Figaro Phil Crifo, co-founder of Awaceb.
If Tchia does not reproduce the entire archipelago in detail, he captures its essence, and succeeds in transcribing some of its emblematic places, such as the Poule de Hienghène or the Roche Percée. It also introduces the player to its culture, its traditions, its legends – through traditional clothing to unlock or side quests to accomplish – but also its languages. Thus, Tchia highlights Drehu, a Kanak language spoken by only around ten thousand people in the world, and in which the songs of the title are recorded. “I think representing this little-known culture was risky, but our approach aroused curiosity and interest, which greatly contributed to the game’s nomination for the Game Awards, an extremely prestigious ceremony,” says Phil Crifo.
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Beyond the quality of these two productions, such a nomination in the “Games for Impact” category can be explained by the universal messages they carry. In addition to promoting overseas culture, Tchia tells the story of a child prey to the kidnapping of her father, but also of a native exploring her origins, and confronted with the expansion of businesses and of industries that took place in the game’s fictional local capital, Aëmoon.
“New Caledonia today is not just wild nature: the presence of man has also shaped the landscapes and it was important for us that this was represented in the game, hence the presence towns and villages, factories,” says Phil Crifo to the National Center for Cinema and Animated Images (CNC). To denounce the horrors of industrialization, the developers added a light veil of pollution misting Aëmoon. And on the beaches surrounding the city, waste and rubbish litter the sand. These details generate a contrast inevitably pushing the player to flee the urban areas of the game, to indulge in climbing or diving activities only available in the large expanses of Tchia.
Chants of Sennaar, for its part, wishes to convey a discourse of tolerance. “Without falling into eccentricity or naivety, the message of our game is the following: that wars and conflicts are above all the result of misunderstandings, whether religious or political,” Julien Moya told Le Figaro. “Throughout the game and meetings with different peoples, we discover that the civilizations of Chants of Sennaar are in reality very similar, and seek to achieve the same objective, but by distinct means,” continues the co-founder of Rundisk .
By giving the main character the role of interpreter, Chants of Sennaar intends to place the player in the shoes of others, so that they adopt their vision of the world, at least temporarily. A message that could hit the mark at the Game Awards, especially given the current global context.
Whether they are sacred or not, these two games are the symbol of a French sector in great shape and above all supported by the State. Beyond the very good statistics for the video game market in France (5.5 billion euros in turnover in 2022), French studios can count on several aid schemes, such as the video game credit. video games tax (CIJV), from which the creators of Chants of Sennaar benefited. This measure, “which aims to preserve and increase the productivity of video game companies” as the government assures, can benefit all developers whose future game exceeds 100,000 euros of development.
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“It’s very practical, because it allows us to recover part of the taxes we pay,” explains Julien Moya. The tax credit is thus equal to 30% of total production expenses, which includes developers’ salaries or office rent, in particular. Other possible French aid, from which Rundisk, Awaceb but also Sloclap, developer of the kung-fu game Sifu which was nominated last year for the Game Awards, benefited: the video game aid fund (FAJV), managed by the CNC since 2021. A subsidy which can go up to several thousand euros from the first months of development.
“The good shape of French video games can also be explained by the pragmatism of our publishers, like Focus (which ensures the publication and distribution of Chants of Sennaar, Editor’s note), who make more realistic investments,” continues Julien Moya. He also points out the independence of “the major players in French video games, who remain French” despite temptations. The trend in the industry is indeed towards “consolidation”: foreign giants, such as Tencent, NetEase, Sony and Microsoft, have increased mergers and acquisitions in recent years, buying up dozens of studios and licenses. “French publishers like Ubisoft or Focus do everything to remain French and independent, and that’s a good thing, because that’s what allows us to avoid layoffs as much as possible.”
Because behind the buyout announcements, the global video game industry is facing a wave of job cuts. Since the start of 2023, the website videogamelayoffs.com has counted no less than 9,000 layoffs around the world, mainly in large companies, such as Unity, Epic or Embracer. An epidemic from which, for the moment, French studios have generally escaped.
