Why French games have always been way ahead of their time

August 17, 2026 - 15:19

France is the second-biggest producer of video games in the world. Franchises like Assassin's Creed, Dishonored, Life is Strange, and whatever the hell David Cage is doing, come from French-based companies. So France has had a huge influence on gaming, globally. But what you might not know is how weird and counter-cultural some of France's early games are. In the 1980s, French game developers were going wild, making games that would fit right in on itch.io today.

While American and Japanese studios were busy perfecting platformers and space shooters, French developers were asking stranger questions. What if a game had no score? What if it had no clear goal? What if it was about mood, or poetry, or just walking around a strange landscape? Titles like "Murder on the Atlantic" and "The Rise of the Robots" were less about twitch reflexes and more about atmosphere, narrative, and a certain surrealist bent that felt more like an art film than a cartridge you'd blow into.

This wasn't an accident. The French game scene grew out of a home computer culture that was more about experimentation than arcade profit. The Minitel, a national online service, gave people a taste of interactive fiction and weird text-based worlds years before the web was a thing. That early exposure to non-linear, text-driven experiences shaped a generation of designers who saw games as a medium for expression, not just competition.

Today, that legacy lives on. You see it in the melancholic exploration of "Outer Wilds" or the narrative risk-taking of "A Plague Tale." While the big publishers chase blockbuster formulas, the French indie scene and even some of their bigger studios still carry that 1980s spirit: a willingness to be odd, to challenge the player, and to put the experience ahead of the scoreboard. They were ahead of their time, and honestly, they might still be.