Video Game Studio Digixart Rides On The Success Of Road 96 And Accelerates

With the official announcement of the prequel Road 96: Mile 0's release on April 4 (whose story takes place before that of the previously created game), the suspense surrounding the new game created by the Montpellier studio DigixArt came to an end on January 26, 2023. Additionally, the trailer was unveiled at a gathering held in a Montpellier media library.

After the success of Road 96, Digixart has been able to pursue its goals without being constrained by money ever since the Swedish company Embracer, a major player in the video game distribution industry, acquired a 100% stake in the company in August 2021. Yoan Fanise, artistic director and co-founder of Digixart, explains that they purposefully picked a European group whose philosophy aligns with theirs.

A decentralized, autonomous, and nonhierarchical approach is used by the Embracer group and its subsidiary Plaion. They have total faith in us and don't try to impose their ideas or stifle their creativity.

Our methods of operation have not changed as a result of this acquisition; rather, we are now free to pursue our most irrational fantasies while relying on Plaion's marketing prowess. "Questioning oneself on more serious subjects" This former Ubisoft employee, in particular co-creator of the Rabbids saga, decided to start an independent studio with his wife Anne-Laure for the express purpose of expressing himself freely.

With the following mission statement in mind when they founded Digixart in 2015: "Making fun and playful games but which, on the underside, allow players to to question on more serious, deeper subjects.". Following the creation of a team, Digixart, which was then based at the BIC in Montpellier, released its first musical narrative game, Lost in Harmony, in 2016, and Memories Retold, which was made in collaboration with the English studio Aardman Animations (Wallace and Gromit) and distributed by the Japanese publisher Bandai Namco, two years later.

This historical tale, which is based in the First World War era, has been translated into 17 different languages. The Montpellier studio is really stepping it up a notch with its third game, Road 96, though.

This road trip follows a group of teenagers who are fleeing a nation that is on the verge of disintegrating. It was inspired by the cinematic universes of the Coen brothers, Quentin Tarantino, or the Korean Bong Joon Ho (Parasite). Five awards were given out at the Pégases "I've wanted to make a road trip game for years; it's a genre that hardly exists in the world of video games," says Yoan Fanise.

Being a fan of road movies, I wanted to break free from the limitations of history by taking a dystopian approach to politics. The fictional country of Petria offers players the chance to confront the uncharted, loneliness, and push themselves outside of their comfort zones while pondering the meaning of our modern societies. The game Road 96, which was released in August 2021 and received positive reviews from 135 million players, garnered 88 million views at the Games Awards and five awards at the Pégases ceremony in March 2022, which honors French video game production. These awards included those for best independent video game and I' narrative excellence.

Developed over two and a half years by fifteen people for a total budget of roughly 1 point 5 million euros (including assistance from the Occitanie Region of 150,000 euros), the game features incredibly varied gameplay, phenomenal work in 3D to render a colorful, textured, stylized, angular universe, incredible Road 96 soundtrack, and other cutting-edge features. Motion Capture at ESMA This third game, which was released globally and was accessible on all platforms, was so well-received that Digixart began development on Road 96: Mile 0 right away.

This fourth narrative adventure game is a prequel, and it takes place in White Sands, the only wealthy community in Petria, just before the road trip that starts in the summer of 1996. This will reassure die-hard gamers who worried that the game of Base would be extended in this way. According to the artistic director, "After Road 96, we wanted to keep this momentum going with the team without going through the design phase again.

We wanted to demonstrate the origins of the character of Zoe, the motivations behind her decision to leave her comfortable life, and her reconciliation with Kaito, a man whose background and beliefs are completely different from her own. The conventional approach, however, wasn't what we were after.

We therefore decided to go for a more delirious approach, using musical sections rich in metaphors. The players themselves decide how the two characters should develop, which is funny.

It's almost a philosophical decision » Graphically, the game has advanced further, utilizing innovations like motion capture made possible by ESMA, a Montpellier school that lent Digixart access to its studio. The budget was in the same range as the previous one, but this time the game will be made instantly playable on PlayStation, Xbox, PC, and Nintendo Switch in a digital format.

Despite the fourth installment's alternate universe, DigixArt's core values have not changed. 45 collaborators by 2025. The co-founder of Digixart explains, "We built the studio around three complementary pillars: creativity, humility, and reliability.

Here, everyone contributes to the creative process by laying the groundwork, and we all imagine the content together. Because every idea must be supported by the entire team in order to succeed, this calls for a great deal of humility.

Instead of disclosing its turnover, the Montpellier studio instead declares that it plans to grow its staff by hiring an additional 25 people over the next two years, for a total of 45 people. Five positions for the developer, animator, and graphic designer profiles are already available in 2023, when ten positions are expected to be created.

An advantageous Montpellier ecosystem Digixart is already working on new projects since it has been established in Montpellier's Antigone neighborhood. In the next two or three years, two games that are currently in the beginning stages of development should be released.

Although Digixart is currently ranked highly on Metacritic (an American website that compiles reviews of movies, music albums, and video games), it still aspires to improve its quality and establish a stronger relationship with up-and-coming sourcing firms. similar to Virtuos Labs, a prominent video game development company that recently established a branch in Montpellier.

Or Sentient Art, a business that brings together a team of 3D engineers with expertise in the creation of video game-related objects. According to Yoan Fanise, Montpellier's video game ecosystem is now extremely complete and getting more and more sophisticated because of the presence of Ubisoft and two important schools that built the foundations for it: ESMA and ArtFX.

Paul Valery University offers . Two training programs that prepare students for careers in the video game industry, which is unusual in this industry. There are plenty of young talent produced by this fertile ground, so recruiting is not difficult.

We will continue to rely on these regional infrastructures as soon as we have particular requirements.

Following the creation of a team, Digixart, which was then based at the BIC in Montpellier, released its first musical narrative game, Lost in Harmony, in 2016, and Memories Retold, which was made in collaboration with the English studio Aardman Animations (Wallace and Gromit) and distributed by the Japanese publisher Bandai Namco, two years later.