LOS ANGELES: French indie title &quot;Clair Obscur: Expedition 33&quot; dominated the annual Game Awards in Los Angeles, winning a record of nine categories, including best video game of the year. &quot;What a weird timeline for us,&quot; Guillaume Broche of video game studio Sandfall Interactive quipped, thanking his team as he accepted the top award. &quot;And also I want to extend thanks to the unsung heroes of this industry -- the people who make tutorials on YouTube on how to make a game -- &nbsp;because we had no idea how to make a game before.&quot; &quot;Clair Obscur,&quot; the first game from Sandfall Interactive, tells the story of a group of characters battling seemingly impossible odds in a post-apocalyptic universe with a distinctively French visual style. It was nominated in a record number of categories, winning many despite facing heavyweights like &quot;Death Stranding 2,&quot; from industry legend Hideo Kojima of &quot;Metal Gear Solid&quot; fame, and Nintendo&#39;s &quot;Donkey Kong Bananza,&quot; starring the eponymous gorilla. &quot;Clair Obscur&quot; began in 2020 as a project of Broche, a developer at French games giant Ubisoft. He brought ex-colleague Tom Guillermin on board to create the small studio in the French city of Montpellier the same year. &#39;Thank you to the players&#39;They struck a publishing deal in 2022 with UK-based Kepler, which provided funding for the project. Some 5 million copies of &quot;Clair Obscur&quot; have been snapped up since its release in April of this year. &quot;This was supposed to be a joke; I have no idea what&#39;s happening,&quot; Broche joked. &quot;Just a massive &#39;thank you&#39; to the players.&quot; The grassroots popularity of &quot;Clair Obscur&quot; has manifested in fans attending conventions and video game fairs wearing a striped mariner&#39;s shirt and red beret -- one of the most stereotypically French outfits players can equip for their characters. The action game follows a small group of characters as they seek to defeat a powerful entity threatening their home city, Lumiere, which bears a striking resemblance to Belle Epoque Paris. Inspired by Japanese games such as the long-running Final Fantasy series, the French title is a role-playing game featuring turn-based combat against monsters inhabiting the world. Its popularity was founded on the story&#39;s emotional depth and endearing characters, combined with original gameplay that introduced reactive, rhythm-based elements for parrying enemies&#39; attacks. Sandhill &quot;managed to present something really polished and go toe-to-toe with major titles,&quot; industry specialist Benoit Reinier told AFP at the time of the game&#39;s release. At just 30 people for most of its development, the team behind &quot;Clair Obscur&quot; was far smaller than typical blockbuster studios. Broche said they brought everyone from Sandhill to Los Angeles to celebrate the awards. The music of &quot;Clair Obscur&quot; stuck in many players&#39; heads and played an outsized part in their immersion into its universe. Winning categories for the game included narrative, role-playing, and music score. French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the team in May, thanking them for &quot;putting the spotlight on French-style boldness and creativity.&quot; There are also plans to bring the &quot;Expedition 33&quot; story to the big screen.

(L/R) CTO and co-founder of Sandfall Interactive Tom Guillermin, Sandfall Interactive Art Director Nicholas Maxson-Francombe, CEO, Creative Director, and Co-Founder of Sandfall Interactive Guillaume Broche and Co-Founder and Producer of Sandfall Interacti

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The game won in a record nine categories, including best video game of the year, best narrative, role-playing, and music score.

French indie 'Clair Obscur' dominates Game Awards

Electronic Arts, maker of video games like &ldquo;Madden NFL,&quot; &ldquo;Battlefield,&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Sims,&rdquo; is being acquired for $55 billion, the biggest leveraged buyout attempt in history. Under the terms of the deal announced Monday, the private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, Saudi Arabia&#39;s sovereign wealth fund PIF and Affinity Partners will pay EA&rsquo;s stockholders $210 per share. Affinity Partners is a private equity firm run by President Donald Trump&rsquo;s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Electronic Arts would be taken private. The total value of the deal eclipses the $32 billion price paid to take Texas utility TXU private in 2007. If the transaction closes as anticipated, it will end EA&rsquo;s 36-year history as a publicly traded company that began with its shares ending its first day of trading at a split-adjusted 52 cents. The IPO came seven years after EA was founded by former Apple employee William &ldquo;Trip&rdquo; Hawkins, who began playing analog versions of baseball and football made by &ldquo;Strat-O-Matic&rdquo; as a teenager during the 1960s. EA has been run by its current CEO, Andrew Wilson, since 2013. This marks the second high-profile deal involving Silver Lake and a technology company with a legion of loyal fans in recent weeks. Silver Lake is also part of a newly formed joint venture spearheaded by Oracle involved in a deal t o take over the U.S. oversight of TikTok&rsquo;s social video platform, although all the details of that complex transaction haven&rsquo;t been divulged yet. Silver Lake has also previously bought out two other well-known technology companies, the now-defunct video calling service Skype in a $1.9 billion deal completed in 2009, and a $24.9 billion buyout of personal computer maker Dell in 2013. After Dell restructured its operations as a private company, it returned to the stock market with publicly traded shares in 2018. By going private, EA will be able to reprogram its operations without being subjected to the investment pressures and scrutiny that sometimes compel publicly held companies to make short-sighted decisions aimed at meeting quarterly financial targets. Although its video games still have a fervent following, EA&rsquo;s annual revenues have been stagnant during the past three fiscal years, hovering from $7.4 billion to $7.6 billion. Meanwhile, one of its biggest rivals Activision Blizzard was snapped up by technology powerhouse Microsoft for nearly $69 billion in 2023, while the competition from mobile video game makers such as Epic Games has intensified. After being taken private, formerly public companies often undergo extensive cost-cutting that includes layoffs, although there has been no indication that will be the case with EA. After jettisoning about 5% of its workforce in 2024, EA ended March with 14,500 employees and then laid off several hundred people in May.

Electronic Arts, maker of Madden NFL and The Sims, is being acquired in a $55 billion leveraged buyout by Silver Lake, Saudi PIF, and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, ending EA’s 36-year public run.

Articles tagged with "Video Games"

French indie 'Clair Obscur' dominates Game Awards

Video game maker Electronic Arts to be acquired for $55 billion

French indie 'Clair Obscur' dominates Game Awards