Summary
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33is the kind ofsuccess storywe don’t nearly see enough of in the gaming industry. At a time when all the major studios arecontinuously laying off staff, it’s great to see a small French studio find worldwide success, and in a genre that is constantly underestimated.
Due to this, there are nowa lot of eyes on Sandfall Interactive, withFrench President Emmanuel Macron among them. Now, the team has opened up about how the studio was formed, and it’s as unconventional as you’d expect.
Former Ubisoft Dev Recruited On Social Media To Create Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Speaking to theBBC, Expedition 33 director Guillaume Broche says that he found his team by looking around on social media, making Reddit posts with job openings. Through this, he found Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, who was initially brought on as a voice actor but went on to become the lead writer instead.
“I saw a post on Reddit by Guillaume asking for voice actors to record something for free for a demo,” Svedberg-Yen says. “I was like: ‘I’ve never done that, it sounds kinda cool’, so I sent him an audition.”
She landed the role of a lead character, but as development started, she was moved to being the lead writer, so a far cry from the position she applied for.
It was a similar story with the composer, Lorien Testard, who was found on Soundcloud. He hadn’t composed for a video game before, but Broche was eager to bring him on board anyway.
“Lorien, when we discussed the game for the first time, we had exactly the same references,” Broche recalls. “We loved the same thing. We watched the same things. The discussion was so fluid.”
This all paid off, because the team has a hit on its hands. Many consider Expedition 33 to be a serious Game of the Year contender, too, so we’ll have to wait and see if this all pays off during the awards season.
