TV channel finds niche in high-brow video games

THINK PIECE A visitor plays a video game on the stand of the Franco-German public service channel Arte during the “Paris Games Week” fair on Nov. 1. —AFP

PARIS — French-German TV channel Arte is best known for covering cultural events and producing sophisticated dramas and documentaries, but over the past decade it has also been building a reputation in an entirely different arena: video games.

As with its TV programming, the publicly funded channel’s video games reflect its focus on culture and liberal causes—from an adaptation of a story by French author Boris Vian to an adventure game where the main character is a Syrian refugee.

“It’s a way of showing our editorial line to an audience which plays video games but doesn’t necessarily watch TV or consume documentaries,” said Arte’s digital projects chief Adrien Larouzee.

Arte has been in the gaming business for a decade, carving out a niche in “human scale” titles.

“We don’t work on blockbusters,” Larouzee told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on the sidelines of Paris Games Week, France’s biggest video game trade show, where it has a stall alongside giants of the industry like Sony, Nintendo and Ubisoft.

Larouzee said Arte was far happier with the “audacity” and “innovation” that comes from working with smaller, independent studios.

‘Masterful’

“We have the luxury of not having to think solely in terms of market share or commercial success,” he said. “We look for projects that are most compatible with our editorial strategy and those that we are able to support financially, editorially and humanely.”

The channel, funded by TV licenses levied in France and Germany, is finding an audience.Arte has 17 coproductions with independent studios under its belt, its games being lauded at specialist festivals and praised by users.

It all started in 2013 with “Type:Rider,” a platform and puzzle game where the player bounces through landscapes strewn with references to scripts from prehistoric cave paintings to pixel art.

Straight-up literary games have included “Californium,” where the player is plunged into the psychedelic inner world of the famously troubled sci-fi author Philip K. Dick as he struggles with a flagging career.

And the literary theme continued with this year’s “To Hell With the Ugly,” a highly stylized adventure game set in a noirish Los Angeles, adapted from a Vian novel.

The game has already won awards and praise from critics, with specialist site Xboxygen highlighting its “singular artistic direction” and “masterful gameplay.”

Metaverse future

And its games do not shy away from political issues—2017’s “Bury Me, My Love” depicts a Syrian woman’s journey to Europe through messages to her husband.Arte has long been an innovator with new technologies. It was an early adopter of video-on-demand and its social media channels boast more than 18 million subscribers.

The channel has an overall digital budget of between 10 million and 15 million euros a year. Marianne Levy-Leblond, head of Arte’s digital production unit, said investments in individual video games ranged from 100,000 to 300,000 euros.

With that relatively small outlay, the channel’s executives are determined to keep exploring the possibilities technology can offer.