French success at the Video Game Awards 2025 in Los Angeles: what deep meaning explains this spectacular achievement?

In the American entertainment capital, Los Angeles, the eleventh Video Game Awards ceremony delivered an unprecedented tsunami of awards on Thursday, December 11, 2025, for the first production of a young French studio: "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33", by #SandfallInteractive.

Game Of The Year. Best Game Direction. Best Narrative. Best Art Direction. Best Score and Music. Best Performance. Best Independent Game. Best Debut Indie Game. Best RPG: for the best game designed with rich player character customization and progression, including multiplayer experiences.

The competition was real, however, with games already known worldwide for years such as Battlefield 6, Assassin's Creed Shadows, Doom: The Dark Ages, EA Sports FC 26, Fortnite, Final Fantasy XIV, Marvel's Rivals, Baldur's Gate 3, Sonic Rumble, Alien: Rogue Incursion, Marvel's Deadpool, Ninja Gaiden 4, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Mario Kart World, Death Stranding 2, Donkey Kong Bananza, and the independent games Hollow Knight: Silksong and Hades 2.

American ceremony usually dominated by productions from world-size video game companies like Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Tencent, NetEase Games, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, and Take-Two Interactive, the sweep of awards by the young French studio is surprising in a business that is larger than film and music combined. In 2024, the global video game market reached $184 billion, while the film and music industries were valued at $33.9 billion and $28.6 billion respectively. Still in 2024, the global number of gamers was estimated at 3.38 billion. Some scenarios predict global video game revenues of $363.2 billion by 2027!

Coming from the medium-sized French video game company #Ubisoft, known for its global successes such as Assassin's Creed, Rayman, Far Cry, Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell, Beyond Good & Evil, but all "old", it can nevertheless be said that the thirty or so young French people from the Sandfall Interactive studio "came from nowhere"!

More than their work capacity, it is the ability of these French people to create a "new cultural hypothesis", a "total universe", where the finesse of the scenery, the emotional power of the music, the originality of the story, enchant the new combat functionalities, that explains the artistic success of the game "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33."

It is precisely this French singularity of interest in, respect for, and love of culture that explains the success of this French video game in Los Angeles. A French singularity that could be crystallized and named by the expression: "the Sorbonne mindset", in reference to the University in the heart of Paris that has been collecting and disseminating knowledge since 1253.