I know the "gonna tell my kids this was Undertale" comment at 9:02 was a joke, but I've got to jump in. There is a French indie game heavily inspired by Earthbound and its looks resulting in a retro style, just like Undertale, where you're faced with the morality of your own actions, just like Undertale, and where the protagonist isn't what you think, just like Undertale, and where the final boss judges you, also like Undertale. This game is called OFF, it was made by Martin "MortisGhost" Georis, and it was one of the inspirations for Undertale. I've been learning French for a few years (it's not my native language), and I was happy when I could play OFF in the original French, understanding all of it.
Quite surprised too that Off wasn't mentionned, that's litterally the first thing that came to my mind when I read the title of the video, and boy is it an amazing game !
Even though I'm french I didn't know any of that, and I have the feeling it is actually quite an important piece of video game history I didn't know about. Thank you for your video !
This was a fascinating deep dive, Simone. I wish I had learned about this in high school French class instead of watching the same music videos over and over again. 🙃
@@tenebriusneith I just wish my college had a History course in the Games & Entertainment major. Hand out som DoS Box ports after class and I would have had a blast.
Wow, you've managed to uncover some serious gems there ! As a french-speaking european I didn't think there was still so much I didn't know about the french industry. And you highlighted some great contributions by POC and women ! The early days of video games sure were a different time...
Definitely! I think movies like Hidden Figures and some societal shifts have increased awareness to women in computer science like Ada Lovelace (the literal OG programmer), Grace Hopper, Katherine Johnson, Margaret Hamilton, and more but it's definitely still glossed over or diminished as a "modern thing" way to often! Muriel and her games Méwilo and Freedom are especially interesting because they're great examples of showing how PoC (especially darker skinned PoC) could be rendered on older graphics. I've seen the argument way too often that PoC were excluded from older games for "technical" reasons vs cultural/prejudicial ones, but these games easily show a counterpoint to that idea. Definitely some gems in this video!
@@Dancingpinata- I wanna know what goes through the head of those people when black is literally one of the only colors that all computers could render but the weird pinkish white skin that white people have wasn't part of any palette and at best you just went with pink or purple. Also the more I learn about the early history of video games the more it becomes clear to me that it didn't just have a lot of marginalized people it was dominated by those groups at the time. Marginalized people naturally were some of the first to start using this new medium as they couldn't be excluded from it in the same ways they could with other mediums and just generally it tends to be the story of life that marginalized people are the first ones to adopt new technologies and trends. There were also many trans people in early video games for example who get completely erased.
Even games like chess had political backgrounds. Politics is just the dynamics that happen when power and status are involved. Anyone who think there's smth in society that ISNT politically related is misinformed.
@@usermcskull4713 That's usually what makes them great. A piece of art that isn't willing to take any stance on real world issues is boring and usually has nothing of substance to keep you interested. No one cares about generic action movie 35 a few years after it came out but Charlie Chaplin's The Dictator is still widely praised and highly regarded.
Immediately surprised by the fact that France is 2nd. I thought it'd be USA and Japan at 1 and 2, considering most of the major video game companies come from one of those 2 countries.
We '80s gamers get a lot of mockery for loving "shoot the red circle with the blue square" games back in the day, but when the only other gameplay option was "spend an entire Saturday trying to figure out how to advance the story to the next screen like you're deciphering ancient Sumerian", red-circle-blue-square games were AM-AZ-ING... It was literally one extreme or the other! *wipes away single tear*
As a kid I had a c64 and my dad had these suitcases full of floppy discs containing hundreds of bootleg games. Most had early warez scene intros in them. I used to grab whatever sounded cool and play them. Usually I was profoundly disappointed (anything by Psygnosis was generally always a winner), but sometimes I'd find something fun for an 8 year old. I don't really remember much, but I have played Captain Blood and was disappointed that it wasn't as cool as its name made it out to be. Also, this was a fantastic video!
Yankee knowledge of Europe... Well it's next to Switzerland right? You know the country where Battlefield is from? Bordering Australia? Nah who am I kidding, they don't know the names of that high amount of countries.
We had a Rayman game for the Dreamcast but I doubt we ever got past 15% of its gameplay before we'd get stuck or lost the save etc. I should sit down one day and complete it- was probably one of our most played-least completed games.
@@CityState_of_Valletta I had several ones but my first was a version only released in my country ... In France, there was a collection of games, for windows 98 I think, named "Rayman Junior". It was a software sold by Ubisoft with modified levels of the first Rayman to learn things like mathematics. Every time, the Magician would come out of his own hat and ask the question: "How much is 2+3 ?" for example. And then you would choose a path between the ones where you had different numbers as choices for the answer... If you respond the wrong answer the path would lead in a way or another to your death. But MY game had a bug ! And at this time, there was no patch or anything ! The Magician would come out of his hat but no sound would come out of his mouth ! So I just had the answers but not the questions ! So what did I do ? I just tried again and again... And that's how I won levels through trials and errors, memorizing the path. I was 7 years old and I thought that it was the normal way of functionning of the game ! My neighbor had the ps1 version of Rayman one and I was really surprised because my first experience of Rayman was awfully hard compared to his XD
@@laplayade1207 Geographic proximity doesn't negate influence. Revachol clearly owes a debt to French culture, and DE is shamelessly political like these games. But, the more obvious influences are games like Fallout and Planescape: Torment.
I mean I think it's universal in mainland Europe to consider France the standard for high culture and art so if you're making anything artistic here you'll definitely take some inspiration from France.
@@MackenzieChandlerDunnavant Yeah, Révachol is definitely a French speaking place, I was surprised to learn it was an Estonian game developped partly in the UK.
This is so good. Video game history is fascinating, and as someone who really likes low-action indie games it's cool to see where some of those roots came from.
Honestly I am just here to enjoy the way Simone pronounces French words. (and also for all the underrated jokes, like seriously, the champagne one was perfect)
Bartender here. We have a wine called French Frog which has brought up several conversations among the bar staff as to whether it’s appropriate. It’s a French wine so I suppose it is, but still seems a bit like a slur. We’ve also got a Sam Adams Porch Rocker that seems to very much invoke plantation vibes. It’s a radler, which came from German cyclists as the story goes, but the company seems to have just taken the lemonade part and tried to tie that to sittin on the porch in the hot Georgia sun sippin lemonade
I was half expecting this to be a video essay on OFF, oddly enough tho that's the only game I can think of that I knew was from France was very surprised to learn its the second biggest game producer in the world!
I just finished this video and wow, this is perhaps the video I have most enjoyed at the very least this year. I was riveted as I watched this video, full of good jokes and information. Simone explained it all concisely but perhaps more importantly, passionately. I feel I actually care about the French now, something I had previously thought was, comment c'est dit, impossible. Okay, l I'm off to watch it again now like a normal human being! (Seriously this was freaking amazing)
I'm sorry for making you care about the French! (BUT ACTUALLY seriously thank you!! I'm so glad it came across how interesting I find all this) - Simone
So glad Muriel Tramis got spotlight. Very underrated figure in Adventure game history. I wish cinematic platformers were touched. Eric Chahi's Another World + Delphine Software's Flashback had considerable influence, former being cited by Fumito Ueda, Goichi Suda and Hideo Kojima.
Thank you for continuing to cover such interesting topics, Simone. I really enjoyed seeing the influence and history of games outside our more myopic western lens. Really enjoy that for a long time french games seemed to really less heavily on violence as the interactive input. Always like seeing games that find alternative methods of interaction or progression.
Cannot thank you enough for introducing me to Muriel Tramis. I am blown away by her vision and upset I've never heard of her or her work until today. Black folks stay innovating everywhere and everywhere!!!
Definitely check out this video about her on The Icon, he's able to go much more in-depth and interviews her as well! ruclips.net/video/rHM0U-IBqxc/видео.html
The video game boom in Québec was in part started by Ubisoft opening a huge studio in Montréal in 1997 (because tech tax credits + french-speaking workers). This lead to local schools starting to offer degrees in game design, and eventually other big studios (Warner Bros, Eidos/Square, EA) moved in, and veterans from those big studios later created the many indie studios in the city and elsewhere in the province (there's a lot of them in Québec City too). The video game expertise also led to the development of a 3D design/visual effects industry and an AI industry in Montréal. It also helps that Montréal has 4 universities that were able to jump on board and train people to do those things to meet the demand.
"Do you ever think about France?" I'm Cajun French, Simone. I unfortunately consider France far too much since nobody knows what Cajun is beyond seasoning.
i had to read kate chopin's the awakening in high school so i learned a LOT about cajun louisiana. didn't learn anything about the lavender scare from what we learned before reading the crucible, though....
ily simone also that ending is a MOOD if there ever was one,, i've tried on multiple occasions to play the bbc anniversary hhgttg rpg but it's pretty much impossible without the cheat sheet dfhvjbgf the parameters of your abilities are so hard to figure out, and you die if you don't follow the exact set of events they want you to ghbj anyway this video was great and i felt like i learned a lot
To be fair HHGTTG and Douglas Adam's games were the original troll games. Very deliberately designed to waste your time in ever more elaborate and cruel ways.
this is so good omg and it's so fun to hear simone speaking french :D i love how much excellent relatively-niche information i learn from every new polygon video it is such a delight
Fantastic video, would love more retrospective one other countries as well. Just a quick heads up, on the Europe map where you show where big games are made in the end you show that Control is made in Norway, not Finland, where it is actually from. As a Swede I had to correct it in form of Nordic solidarity.
It felt so wierd seeing "Don't Forget Me" and "Haven" in this video, I didn't know the first was known outside of our borders and I didn't know the second was french!
Even in the 90's, France had a topical games... and they were pretty good and fun to play ! You should try Little Big Adventure (I think it's called "Relentless" outside of France). Even tho it looks colorful and the game is really full of jokes and nice moments, it speaks of totalitarian regime, how science can be used for bad thing and how we could kill our own planet if we are not careful. Its creator was knighted "Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres". On a side note, as a frenchman, it's always funny to see how foreigner see our videogame history. Even funnier is to see Jack Lang in this.
It's so strange to watch an American-based video discussing France with earnest praise, without defensiveness, derision or even the slightest hint of jingoism. I'm really glad to see newer American generations changing what was universally expected of them before. Also, no one *in the comments* debased themselves with the almost ubiquitous rhetoric of American nationalism. Great work everyone! This makes me feel very optimistic!
This makes me both want to play all these old games then yeah, you brought up at the end how hard old games are as I remember all the times I've struggled to play retro games jfc
A-vrai-dire, c'est le cas.. Y avait le site du ministère des affaires étrangère qui avait dit que la France est seconde mais la France est bel et bien derrière le Japon, le Royaume-Uni et l'allemagne.
Ouais je pense pas qu'elle soit tout à fait correcte. Elle a du trouver un paramètre précis ou la France est deuxième au monde, mais que ce soit par revenus générés par l'industrie, publication ou développement de jeu, nombre d'emplois etc... je trouve toujours la France 4ème à 9ème...
As a french gamer , I'm so thankful for this video for making me discover all this crazy games, never thought the french vidéo game scene was such a pionner !
This is probably the exact opposite comment you expected to see, but these old French games are SO plausible that I feel like you must have made the whole thing up. I'm not really into the website anymore, but love Polygon's video output, such as this.
Actually, the first to did it were the americans : they choose some games (including a french one, Another World), and put them in the permanent NY MoMa's collection. Well done :)
Thanx a lot! Really liked this docu. "The Jeux Vidéos region..." (delighted chuckle). But the comic shop at 8:10 is of a German publisher with German street signs... ;)
OK So I subscribe to and love Polygon for the thoughtful and thorough deep dives y'all do. But even more than that, I love that each of you has your own angles on it. And I think so far this is the ne plus ultra example of a Simone video.
Patrick Chamoiseau wrote a video game !?! C'est fou! Un récipiendaire du Goncourt est vraiment une des dernières personnes qui me serait venu à l'esprit pour écrire un jeu vidéo. Il va vraiment falloir que je me procure une version pirate de ce jeu.
thank-you for being honest about the interface back then - typing "NORD" over and over instead of pushing forward on the left stick... evolving gameplay gave us improved inputs thank goodness
0:23 That’s also true in the US. I forget the details, but basically, a SCOTUS case ruled that video games are art and thus can’t be censored by the government.
Great video, as a French game designer myself I had not heard of many of those indie titles! Surprised to see no mention of one of the most groundbreaking games ever: l'Arche du Capitaine Blood (1988).
I grew up playing the Gobliiins games (in their Sierra-published American localization) and it is fascinating to know more about their creator and her context.
Simone continuing her pro-France, pro-mime agenda, now apparently with Polygon's corporate blessing
Well, you know what they say, the truth will set you free. They just relented to the power of her facts and logic (about France and mimes)
we love to see it!
Clayton described this on twitter as "an extremely Simone video" and I couldn't be more delighted by how correct that description was.
Dying at the text-to-speech reading "mmmmmmm"
emememememememem
Then you need to seek out "Le manoir de Mortevielle". You'll die for real. This was one of the first game to EVER attempt vocal speech.
"avec un ordinateur ça vous branche?" can be translated literally as "with a computer would you plug?" so that may be a pun.
AAAAAAAAAAAh
I know the "gonna tell my kids this was Undertale" comment at 9:02 was a joke, but I've got to jump in. There is a French indie game heavily inspired by Earthbound and its looks resulting in a retro style, just like Undertale, where you're faced with the morality of your own actions, just like Undertale, and where the protagonist isn't what you think, just like Undertale, and where the final boss judges you, also like Undertale.
This game is called OFF, it was made by Martin "MortisGhost" Georis, and it was one of the inspirations for Undertale. I've been learning French for a few years (it's not my native language), and I was happy when I could play OFF in the original French, understanding all of it.
Yo, this sounds really cool??? I'll have to check it out. Thanks! - Simone
Quite surprised too that Off wasn't mentionned, that's litterally the first thing that came to my mind when I read the title of the video, and boy is it an amazing game !
yooo a fellow off enjoyer :D
@@polygon Also the music slaps so hard
@@theolabbate1611 wow same, I thought this was gonna be about OFF lmao
Simone you can't hit me out of the gate with that "Hey gamers" I don't want to get noise complaints
The highest population of gamers. A dubious honor.
Even though I'm french I didn't know any of that, and I have the feeling it is actually quite an important piece of video game history I didn't know about. Thank you for your video !
Same here! I'm amazed that french video game journalist or essayists don't talk that much about the french games of that period
BTW, La Femme is playable online! You can find it here: ifdb.org/viewgame?version=1&id=brxdd0j3xu8mmgmc
ifdb my beloved
You know you can pin your comment so it's at the top, right?
Great! Now to learn French…
This was a fascinating deep dive, Simone. I wish I had learned about this in high school French class instead of watching the same music videos over and over again. 🙃
was your music video the one that is about french fries that seems like they shouldn't legally show it to children?
To be fair, Stromae's music slaps
i wish i had learned about this in FRIGGIN' VIDEO GAME HISTORY CLASS! 👿
@@tenebriusneith I just wish my college had a History course in the Games & Entertainment major. Hand out som DoS Box ports after class and I would have had a blast.
Oh, what music videos do you watch? Stromae?
Wow, you've managed to uncover some serious gems there ! As a french-speaking european I didn't think there was still so much I didn't know about the french industry. And you highlighted some great contributions by POC and women ! The early days of video games sure were a different time...
Definitely! I think movies like Hidden Figures and some societal shifts have increased awareness to women in computer science like Ada Lovelace (the literal OG programmer), Grace Hopper, Katherine Johnson, Margaret Hamilton, and more but it's definitely still glossed over or diminished as a "modern thing" way to often!
Muriel and her games Méwilo and Freedom are especially interesting because they're great examples of showing how PoC (especially darker skinned PoC) could be rendered on older graphics. I've seen the argument way too often that PoC were excluded from older games for "technical" reasons vs cultural/prejudicial ones, but these games easily show a counterpoint to that idea.
Definitely some gems in this video!
@@Dancingpinata- I wanna know what goes through the head of those people when black is literally one of the only colors that all computers could render but the weird pinkish white skin that white people have wasn't part of any palette and at best you just went with pink or purple.
Also the more I learn about the early history of video games the more it becomes clear to me that it didn't just have a lot of marginalized people it was dominated by those groups at the time. Marginalized people naturally were some of the first to start using this new medium as they couldn't be excluded from it in the same ways they could with other mediums and just generally it tends to be the story of life that marginalized people are the first ones to adopt new technologies and trends. There were also many trans people in early video games for example who get completely erased.
France is one of the biggest consumer and producer of games
I’m surprised it took this long for Simone to make a video about French games. It was worth it.
Wow, learning about Muriel Tramis is especially mind-blowing. I really want to research more about her now...
There's a great video about her here, and if you look her up on RUclips she's done tons of interviews! ruclips.net/video/rHM0U-IBqxc/видео.html
@@polygon Thank you so much!
Indie Games really are the backbone of our society
That might be a typo or might be a profound statement on isolation and counter culture.
@@Bhazor it's a typo lol sadly I'm not that philosophical
@@rainbowdemon5033
What was the typo?
@@sion8 it was out society instead of our society
"one alien's term of endearment could be another's raunchy insult" oh so he met a quebecois
Correc'
🤦♂️🤣
Truly teaching us that gamer bros that say "ugh, games are so political now" are even more wrong. Games have always been political.
Yeah but their idea of "political" is when characters that aren't cis-het white men exist. They prefer apolitcal gems like Fallout and Bioshock....
Even games like chess had political backgrounds. Politics is just the dynamics that happen when power and status are involved. Anyone who think there's smth in society that ISNT politically related is misinformed.
@@winterwilliams3149 And assasins creed, and gta, call of duty etc.....XD
People say games are art but also that games shouldn't be political, even though a lot of great works of art are political
@@usermcskull4713 That's usually what makes them great. A piece of art that isn't willing to take any stance on real world issues is boring and usually has nothing of substance to keep you interested. No one cares about generic action movie 35 a few years after it came out but Charlie Chaplin's The Dictator is still widely praised and highly regarded.
Immediately surprised by the fact that France is 2nd. I thought it'd be USA and Japan at 1 and 2, considering most of the major video game companies come from one of those 2 countries.
Ubisoft and Voodoo (bouuuuuuh mobile gaming bad) are French
@@youssefelamrani isn't ubisoft Canadian?
@@TheHungryhamburger it's a French company with offices in Quebec
Agree
@@TheHungryhamburger UBI in Ubisoft allegedly stands for Union des Bretons Indépendants, doesn't get much more french than that !
being called a gam*r and then having to remember france exists took a year off my life
rest in peace
Merci!
Have any of you played these games? Please tell me which one was the hardest and why it was Meurtre à Grande Vitesse.
It took me the better part of an afternoon to just figure out what I was supposed to do
Non
We '80s gamers get a lot of mockery for loving "shoot the red circle with the blue square" games back in the day, but when the only other gameplay option was "spend an entire Saturday trying to figure out how to advance the story to the next screen like you're deciphering ancient Sumerian", red-circle-blue-square games were AM-AZ-ING... It was literally one extreme or the other! *wipes away single tear*
As a kid I had a c64 and my dad had these suitcases full of floppy discs containing hundreds of bootleg games. Most had early warez scene intros in them. I used to grab whatever sounded cool and play them. Usually I was profoundly disappointed (anything by Psygnosis was generally always a winner), but sometimes I'd find something fun for an 8 year old.
I don't really remember much, but I have played Captain Blood and was disappointed that it wasn't as cool as its name made it out to be.
Also, this was a fantastic video!
J'ai joué à Rayman 2, ça compte? ;-)
Don't let Finland catch you portraying Control as being made in Norway at 12:35.
Too late. I am finnish.
AND I AM ANGRY
@@nullone3181 hide the amphetamines!
Yankee knowledge of Europe... Well it's next to Switzerland right? You know the country where Battlefield is from? Bordering Australia?
Nah who am I kidding, they don't know the names of that high amount of countries.
As a french gamer, I grew up with Rayman. From my point of view, he was as important as Mario, Crash and Sonic.
We had a Rayman game for the Dreamcast but I doubt we ever got past 15% of its gameplay before we'd get stuck or lost the save etc. I should sit down one day and complete it- was probably one of our most played-least completed games.
@@CityState_of_Valletta I had several ones but my first was a version only released in my country ... In France, there was a collection of games, for windows 98 I think, named "Rayman Junior". It was a software sold by Ubisoft with modified levels of the first Rayman to learn things like mathematics.
Every time, the Magician would come out of his own hat and ask the question: "How much is 2+3 ?" for example. And then you would choose a path between the ones where you had different numbers as choices for the answer... If you respond the wrong answer the path would lead in a way or another to your death.
But MY game had a bug ! And at this time, there was no patch or anything ! The Magician would come out of his hat but no sound would come out of his mouth ! So I just had the answers but not the questions !
So what did I do ? I just tried again and again... And that's how I won levels through trials and errors, memorizing the path. I was 7 years old and I thought that it was the normal way of functionning of the game ! My neighbor had the ps1 version of Rayman one and I was really surprised because my first experience of Rayman was awfully hard compared to his XD
@@silikei1810 Hahaha good thing randomization wasn't considered or you'd grow up hating the franchise
@@CityState_of_Valletta omggg noooo XD
I have to wonder if these games had any influence on Disco Elysium. It's Estonian, but it absolutely reeks of that French touch.
The distance between France and Estonia is the same than the one between New York & and Honduras so, who knows? :)
@@laplayade1207 Geographic proximity doesn't negate influence. Revachol clearly owes a debt to French culture, and DE is shamelessly political like these games. But, the more obvious influences are games like Fallout and Planescape: Torment.
@@MackenzieChandlerDunnavant I was kiddin' :)
I mean I think it's universal in mainland Europe to consider France the standard for high culture and art so if you're making anything artistic here you'll definitely take some inspiration from France.
@@MackenzieChandlerDunnavant Yeah, Révachol is definitely a French speaking place, I was surprised to learn it was an Estonian game developped partly in the UK.
Sparkling Digital Amusement was my nickname in college
cyberpunk red npc name
This is so good. Video game history is fascinating, and as someone who really likes low-action indie games it's cool to see where some of those roots came from.
Thank you for watching!
Honestly I am just here to enjoy the way Simone pronounces French words.
(and also for all the underrated jokes, like seriously, the champagne one was perfect)
12:38 not Control being shown over Norway on the map :’( Remedy is a finnish developer…
this truly was upsetting :|
Can't believe Toby Fox plagiarized France
Can we talk about the fact that a French video game company was called Froggy Software?
i think it's more a reference to Frogger than anything else ...
Bartender here. We have a wine called French Frog which has brought up several conversations among the bar staff as to whether it’s appropriate. It’s a French wine so I suppose it is, but still seems a bit like a slur. We’ve also got a Sam Adams Porch Rocker that seems to very much invoke plantation vibes. It’s a radler, which came from German cyclists as the story goes, but the company seems to have just taken the lemonade part and tried to tie that to sittin on the porch in the hot Georgia sun sippin lemonade
Their name was actually picked up to please a foreign audience :) (it is official)
The last game you see in the video is Dordogne !
Very cool to see it here
I was going to ask the name of it in the comment, thanks!
The one that looks like an actual moving painting?
@@sion8 yup
"France invented weird indie games" yeah, not too hard to believe once you've played OFF. That game was a doozy, in the best way possible.
I was half expecting this to be a video essay on OFF, oddly enough tho that's the only game I can think of that I knew was from France was very surprised to learn its the second biggest game producer in the world!
Actually, OFF came from Belgium ^^
@@laplayade1207 Well that just further proves the point! I wonder how many Games I play are unknowingly form France.
@@jamesmax Ever heard of Alone in the Dark, Another World, Flashback or Rayman?
@@LutraLovegood raymans form France? cool!
I just finished this video and wow, this is perhaps the video I have most enjoyed at the very least this year. I was riveted as I watched this video, full of good jokes and information. Simone explained it all concisely but perhaps more importantly, passionately. I feel I actually care about the French now, something I had previously thought was, comment c'est dit, impossible. Okay, l I'm off to watch it again now like a normal human being! (Seriously this was freaking amazing)
I'm sorry for making you care about the French! (BUT ACTUALLY seriously thank you!! I'm so glad it came across how interesting I find all this) - Simone
simone and french stuff, we love to see it
So glad Muriel Tramis got spotlight. Very underrated figure in Adventure game history.
I wish cinematic platformers were touched.
Eric Chahi's Another World + Delphine Software's Flashback had considerable influence, former being cited by Fumito Ueda, Goichi Suda and Hideo Kojima.
Thank you for continuing to cover such interesting topics, Simone. I really enjoyed seeing the influence and history of games outside our more myopic western lens. Really enjoy that for a long time french games seemed to really less heavily on violence as the interactive input. Always like seeing games that find alternative methods of interaction or progression.
Cannot thank you enough for introducing me to Muriel Tramis. I am blown away by her vision and upset I've never heard of her or her work until today. Black folks stay innovating everywhere and everywhere!!!
Definitely check out this video about her on The Icon, he's able to go much more in-depth and interviews her as well! ruclips.net/video/rHM0U-IBqxc/видео.html
Je suis une personne simple
Je vois "France" Dans mes notifs RUclips, je clique
In Canada, Quebec also has a huge video game and visual effects industry. The French are gamers no matter where they live
Indeed.
The video game boom in Québec was in part started by Ubisoft opening a huge studio in Montréal in 1997 (because tech tax credits + french-speaking workers). This lead to local schools starting to offer degrees in game design, and eventually other big studios (Warner Bros, Eidos/Square, EA) moved in, and veterans from those big studios later created the many indie studios in the city and elsewhere in the province (there's a lot of them in Québec City too).
The video game expertise also led to the development of a 3D design/visual effects industry and an AI industry in Montréal. It also helps that Montréal has 4 universities that were able to jump on board and train people to do those things to meet the demand.
"Do you ever think about France?"
I'm Cajun French, Simone. I unfortunately consider France far too much since nobody knows what Cajun is beyond seasoning.
Unfortunately, I will be thinking about France a lot today while I read way more about their video game history. Thank you, Simone.
I've seen the movie Hard Target three and a half times. I know all about cajuns.
Wait, wait, I know this...Cajuns are crawfish that migrate south from Canada to Louisiana for the winter, right?
@@noodroid6736 we love our cajuns cousins :)
i had to read kate chopin's the awakening in high school so i learned a LOT about cajun louisiana. didn't learn anything about the lavender scare from what we learned before reading the crucible, though....
That was great! This could become a series, game culture from around the world 🥰
ily simone also that ending is a MOOD if there ever was one,, i've tried on multiple occasions to play the bbc anniversary hhgttg rpg but it's pretty much impossible without the cheat sheet dfhvjbgf the parameters of your abilities are so hard to figure out, and you die if you don't follow the exact set of events they want you to ghbj
anyway this video was great and i felt like i learned a lot
RIGHT? It's incredible how much more sophisticated and user-friendly design has become - Simone
THOSE PEANUTS
To be fair HHGTTG and Douglas Adam's games were the original troll games. Very deliberately designed to waste your time in ever more elaborate and cruel ways.
@@Bhazor didn't know it going in as a preteen 🙃🙃 but yeah it's hilarious how intentionally ridiculous they made it at times
Love this historical deep dive. Im way more into this kind of content, and Id certainly become a regular watcher with more videos just like this.
I wasn’t entirely sold on watching this video until I saw Simone de Rochefort - Senior Video Producer, Polygon made it
That being said it is very good :)
@@fravia22 ...Just as you'd expect from Simone de Rochefort - Senior Video Producer, Polygon.
this is so good omg and it's so fun to hear simone speaking french :D i love how much excellent relatively-niche information i learn from every new polygon video it is such a delight
Only Simone can make a quick 15 minute video feel like I watched a 30 minute deep-dive. So well written!
Fantastic video, would love more retrospective one other countries as well.
Just a quick heads up, on the Europe map where you show where big games are made in the end you show that Control is made in Norway, not Finland, where it is actually from. As a Swede I had to correct it in form of Nordic solidarity.
It felt so wierd seeing "Don't Forget Me" and "Haven" in this video, I didn't know the first was known outside of our borders and I didn't know the second was french!
I'm french and I knew nothing of these old 80s games, guess I'm too young too. That was super interesting!
This is such a good video. I love learning about lesser known, more regional history. More like this pleeaasseeee
this was fascinating, I could genuinely watch a 2 hour version of this
"They didn't even have mice back then!!"
me, momentarily forgetting that computer mice exist: bUT TOM AND JERRY---???
"you into computers??" "oui-NON i mean NON augh"
C’est une vidéo super! J’adore les vidéos de Polygon, et J’étude le langue de francais pour six années. Très bon boulot!
merci bcp! - Simone
Fascinating video! Especially loved the mini retro news reel focused on the 80s!
You need to talk about "Another World "
This game is a french masterpiece !
you really knocked it out of the park w/this one, Simone. I love deep dives into gaming history like this :)
Even in the 90's, France had a topical games... and they were pretty good and fun to play ! You should try Little Big Adventure (I think it's called "Relentless" outside of France). Even tho it looks colorful and the game is really full of jokes and nice moments, it speaks of totalitarian regime, how science can be used for bad thing and how we could kill our own planet if we are not careful. Its creator was knighted "Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres".
On a side note, as a frenchman, it's always funny to see how foreigner see our videogame history. Even funnier is to see Jack Lang in this.
As a French carribean I didn't knew all of that...
Good job...
It's so strange to watch an American-based video discussing France with earnest praise, without defensiveness, derision or even the slightest hint of jingoism. I'm really glad to see newer American generations changing what was universally expected of them before. Also, no one *in the comments* debased themselves with the almost ubiquitous rhetoric of American nationalism. Great work everyone! This makes me feel very optimistic!
Fascinating look. Before today, I'd have never guessed that French developers contributed so much to video games as a medium.
simone strikes again with an amazing video as always!
3:20 Ah, Gille - the missing link between Gill and Gilbert
This makes me both want to play all these old games then yeah, you brought up at the end how hard old games are as I remember all the times I've struggled to play retro games jfc
Interactive fiction is surprisingly approachable
I’m French but I’m really surprised than the country comes second, I thought it would come after Japan, the UK and perhaps Germany ^^
A-vrai-dire, c'est le cas.. Y avait le site du ministère des affaires étrangère qui avait dit que la France est seconde mais la France est bel et bien derrière le Japon, le Royaume-Uni et l'allemagne.
@@pseudonymef1718 Tu as une source de cette info stp ?
Ouais je pense pas qu'elle soit tout à fait correcte. Elle a du trouver un paramètre précis ou la France est deuxième au monde, mais que ce soit par revenus générés par l'industrie, publication ou développement de jeu, nombre d'emplois etc... je trouve toujours la France 4ème à 9ème...
@@Kwizii Ubisoft tombe souvent dans le top 3 des plus gros éditeurs, c'est peut-être ce paramètre qu'elle a choisie.
I love what a strong sense of self-determined culture always seems to emerge from France
As a french gamer , I'm so thankful for this video for making me discover all this crazy games, never thought the french vidéo game scene was such a pionner !
Love these dives into weird retro games! I definitely want to see more of these.
12:07 every french person just went "NON PITIÉ PAS INFOGRAMES"
Underrated comment
There are more French game companies ending in "soft" than there are "lil" rappers
Simone, I don't how you find the inspiration for all your video but they are awesome!
Excellente video ! Im so happy to see my country in a polygon topic
I LOVE when Simone tells me fascinating game history facts
"do you ever think about france" no actually and I would prefer to keep it that way
sorry to bring this energy into your life
So glad you mentioned Enki Bilal! Just saw an exhibition on his entire body of work in Bretagne (France)
This is probably the exact opposite comment you expected to see, but these old French games are SO plausible that I feel like you must have made the whole thing up.
I'm not really into the website anymore, but love Polygon's video output, such as this.
I'll talk about video games as art and french video game culture for French class. Simone basically made my project
I really hope one day all those games get localised to English. Seriously, they sound amazing.
Control is btw from Finland, not Norway😉 12:36
YES FINALLY, someone accepting video games are art!
Thanks to TAX CODES they are in France, haa!! - Simone
Well as a french i can tell you that a large amount of people still doesn't consider video games as art in France (mostly among older people )
Actually, the first to did it were the americans : they choose some games (including a french one, Another World), and put them in the permanent NY MoMa's collection. Well done :)
I'm French but a bit too young to have heard about all of this, thanks for the video, really interesting!
What a cool history! Muriel Tramis sounds amazing, thank you for teaching us all about such a badass.
That cannery scene from Edith Finch was almost triggering omg
So great to see French touch being talked about. Wrote my dissertation on this!
Thanx a lot! Really liked this docu. "The Jeux Vidéos region..." (delighted chuckle). But the comic shop at 8:10 is of a German publisher with German street signs... ;)
OK So I subscribe to and love Polygon for the thoughtful and thorough deep dives y'all do. But even more than that, I love that each of you has your own angles on it. And I think so far this is the ne plus ultra example of a Simone video.
Fascinating that Ubisoft started out making political games that were saying something, and now they make political games that say nothing
Now they are known for sex crimes.
This was so interesting and also incredibly Simone
Patrick Chamoiseau wrote a video game !?! C'est fou! Un récipiendaire du Goncourt est vraiment une des dernières personnes qui me serait venu à l'esprit pour écrire un jeu vidéo. Il va vraiment falloir que je me procure une version pirate de ce jeu.
That was extremely surprising.
WOA! WHAT A COOOOOOOOL VIDEO! HONESTLY I REALLY ENJOYED LEARN ABOUT THIS AWESOME STUFF THANX U SO MUCH
This one's solid gold. AWESOME job!
thank-you for being honest about the interface back then - typing "NORD" over and over instead of pushing forward on the left stick... evolving gameplay gave us improved inputs thank goodness
0:23 That’s also true in the US.
I forget the details, but basically, a SCOTUS case ruled that video games are art and thus can’t be censored by the government.
I think la différence, fellow simmer, is that our country doesn’t like art. Not in the way we could.
I don't know if an English translation exists, but Les Passagers du Vent is a jewel. Really a must-read of bande dessinée
I now feel completely justified when listening to "L'Internationale" while refusing to use currency in RPGs. Thank you Simone.
dang, i wanna play freedom now. that's sounds spectacular
That "sparkling digital entertainment" joke got me good.
Excellente vidéo. Merci ! You could also do a sequel on the 90s French adventure games which where also all about telling stories !
France: You thought my main business were wine and cosmetics, didn't you?
France: Well, yes, but I also do videogames.
I didn't even know this about my own country as a French person who is also an indie game fanatic... it all makes sense now
This is such a good video! I didn't know anything about any of this.
So good, More of this!
Great video, as a French game designer myself I had not heard of many of those indie titles! Surprised to see no mention of one of the most groundbreaking games ever: l'Arche du Capitaine Blood (1988).
Captain Blood is discussed around 8 minutes in! - Simone
I grew up playing the Gobliiins games (in their Sierra-published American localization) and it is fascinating to know more about their creator and her context.