Why Indie Video Games Like ‘Clair Obscur’ Are Going Gangbusters

By excluding woke ideology, new title Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has shattered sales records since its release in late April and achieved the rare distinction of rave reviews from both gaming journalists and gamers themselves.

Set in a French-inspired fantasy world, the game follows a group of warriors trying to stop the dark plans of a mysterious Paintress. Reviewers praise the game for its combat, writing, visuals, and music, and it is already a strong contender for game of the year.

It’s also the first game from French indie studio Sandfall Interactive with a core team of 30 people. Granted, Sandfall contracted external voice actors, performance capture artists, musicians, and choir singers, and the credits list 412 people total.

But the core team of 30 was responsible for the most important creative decisions. They built the gameplay, wrote the story, directed the music, and designed the characters. Compare that to the bloated “core teams” of thousands at heavy-hitter studios like Ubisoft.

Sandfall’s conquest of the gaming scene has rattled big studios like the aforementioned Ubisoft, where many Sandfall developers ironically once worked.

Ubisoft’s most recent release, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, involved more than a monstrous 7,000 people in its production, as reflected in its comically long, two-hour credit sequence. That army of developers came at a staggering cost.

While the company hasn’t released any official budget data, industry insiders place the total for Shadows at anywhere between $200 and $350 million. Ubisoft almost certainly did not make money, as its financial records from last month indicate that the studio’s sales saw a 17.5 percent drop from last year.

This was particularly devastating given that Ubisoft’s finances were in a terrible place to start, so they needed Shadows to be a hit.

So, where is all that money going, if not to better games or stronger profits? Much of it, predictably, funnels into woke nonsense that diminishes the product. Ubisoft paid for input from Sachi Schmidt-Hori, a Dartmouth professor who specializes in relationships between Buddhist priests and adolescent boys in feudal Japan. How would a pedophilia expert make a game about samurai assassins better? I guess I’m not an Ubisoft executive.

By contrast, Clair Obscur had no such ideological interference. There are no lectures, no jarring identity politics — just a beautiful game. The entire budget funded transporting players into a beautiful French fantasy.

So, naturally, woke scolds have attacked Sandfall for not being activist enough.

Disgruntled social media users accused the studio of racism for allegedly not hiring non-French minorities to work on the game. Sandfall responded: “Expedition 33 was created with respect and tolerance by teams and partners from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives. Our game was crafted with love. Please don’t weaponize it to spread hate.”

Racism claims are the left’s classic tactic for kneecapping rising threats. Interestingly, Sandfall’s response, while including references to diversity and tolerance like a good liberal mea culpa, ended there. There was no push to atone for supposed sins, no promise to do better, no rush to say there would be more minorities in the next game.

Sandfall understands what studios like Ubisoft fail to: Wokeness is costly both before and after launch. The money and effort wasted on wokeness is better left unspent, especially when it causes the final product to flop.

Clair Obscur has the potential to radically reshape the industry. It proves gamers want well-crafted games free of forced messaging. In a sea of expensive failures, Clair Obscur stands out as a paragon of classic gaming from a lean team of focused developers.

The old gaming giants are bloated, ideologically captured, and creatively bankrupt shells of their former selves. Their failure to excise the woke rot has caused smaller, smarter, and far more in-touch indie studios to pick up the slack.

Clair Obscur succeeded because it avoided the political pitfalls and focused on creating a great gaming experience. Sandfall delivered while Ubisoft et. al. haven’t.

Welcome to the age of the indies.