Vaspaan Dastoor is an Editor for TheGamer. Previously worked at IGN India and constantly tries to get people to make time for an LOTR marathon. He can be found giving hot takes for cold responses at @DastoorVaspaan
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 swept up all the awards, including the big one at The Game Awards. It was even crowned the Indie Game of the Year before being stripped of the award due to the use of generative AI. While the debate is still raging, there’s no denying that it has been one of the standout games of the last few years, gaining Sandfall Interactive a lot of prestige and money.
Since their first game was so successful, you’d think that Sandfall would want to use some of that money and expand the studio, However, it seems CEO Guillaume Broche and team prefer working as a smaller unit. Back in July, he mentioned that there were no plans to expand the studio, and all the recent accolades still haven’t changed his mind.
Clair Obscur Developer Does Not Want To Expand The Studio Just Yet
In a conversation with Edge (via the Knowledge newsletter), Broche said that there’s no temptation to grow Sandfall Interactive even after Clair Obscur’s unbelievable reception. He’s more interested in the actual developmental process rather than managing people.
“I think it’s good to have limitations when you are creative,” said Broche. “It’s the best way to be the best version of yourself. We could scale up now we have a lot more money, but I would say it’s not tempting for us, because even the management team and myself, we’d have to be hands-on and doing things for ourselves. We love making games more than we love managing, so we want to keep doing that. These past five years were some of the best of my life, and I want to be happy like that again.”
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is exactly the sort of game to win Best Independent Game. They just don’t usually win Game of the Year too.
He also added that Clair Obscur’s success was down to the team creating a game with their strengths in mind, rather than having a concept and building a team around it. “I think the secret is to adapt the game to the team you have, and not the other way around. And mostly, it’s not about processes, it’s making a game that you want to play. It’s contradictory, but [try to] not care too much about the players, because if you care about your game, it means you care about the players ultimately.”
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