French Video Game Policy - History

History

Although the cabinet of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin strongly encouraged video game studios to gather strength by forming a specific trade group and to make policy proposals, the set of policies was first laid out during the tenure of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin from April 2003 to May 2005.

This French game developer trade group, known as Association des Producteurs d'Oeuvres Multimeda (APOM) (now "Syndicat National du Jeu Video"), which aimed to take a pro-active stand, was founded by Eden Studios' Stéphane Baudet, Kalisto's Nicolas Gaume, former cabinet member and author Alain Le Diberder, financier and former journalist Romain Poirot-Lellig and Darkworks' Antoine Villette. Antoine Villette was elected the first President in February 2002 and appointed Romain Poirot-Lellig as his main executive director. Game publishers were already grouped under the umbrella of the Syndicat des Editeurs de Logiciels de Loisirs (SELL), led by its general secretary, former Philips Media executive Jean-Claude Larue.

Confronted by the bankruptcies or difficulties of many studios such as Cryo, Kalisto, Arxel Tribe, APOM had to propose short term solutions as well as long term, growth-oriented measures to the French government.

As soon as November 2002, Jean-Pierre Raffarin visited for the first time a video game studio, Darkworks, and formally asked game developers to submit him a set of proposals, promising to meet again in Spring 2003 to give his feedback.

Video game professionals came back to the French Premier in March 2003 with a set of proposals drafted by Antoine Villette and Romain Poirot-Lellig, including several options to set up a long term financing system to develop quality video games for the European and international market.

Raffarin responded on April 19, 2003 by announcing the creation of the Ecole Nationale du Jeu Video et des Medias Interactifs, a national school dedicated to the education of game development executives and project managers. He also announced the creation of a 4m€ prototyping fund for games managed by the Centre National de la Cinematographie, the "Fonds d'Aide pour l'Edition Multimédia" ("FAEM"), and that he would order a report to be drafted in order to determine and to answer the needs of the game development industry with regards to international competition and financing issues.

Following Raffarin's mot d'ordre, French administrations began to make room for the video game industry in their budgets and bureaucracies, where a young generation of public servants in their mid-thirties had lived the "Atari revolution" in the 70s and was ready to accept video games as a broad cultural industry.

The report ordered by Raffarin, drafted by Cour des Comptes magistrate and former Vivendi Universal executive Fabrice Fries, was delivered to the Prime minister and the minister of Finances in January 2004. Depicting a particularly accurate state of the game industry in France, it retained the APOM idea of a tax credit on game production expenses and made other proposals in order to develop the game development industry over the long term.

Several factors, mainly European elections, delayed government action following the Fries report for several months. However, in July 2004, the Finance ministry formed a video game task force in order draft the measures proposed by the Fries report. A group of game industry members, led by Romain Poirot-Lellig, joined government representatives led by the Direction du Trésor in this task force from late August to mid-October 2004. The resulting confidential document is submitted to the executive branch of government and, in November 2004, the Prime minister, required to give his arbitrage, ratifies in favor of a Tax credit on game production expenses, enshrining his decision in a "Bleu ministèriel" before being notified, according to European regulations, to the European Commission in Brussels.

On May 31, 2005, the turmoil linked to the French European Constitution referendum caused a change of government in France. Prime minister Dominique de Villepin succeeded Jean-Pierre Raffarin. Although not its first priority in those times of massive unemployment, video game issues, delayed by concerns related to other tax credits under scrutiny in Brussels, are still on the government's agenda. On October 11, 2005, Minister of Culture Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres and Minister of Industry François Loos visited the Montreuil studio of Ubisoft Entertainment S.A. Their visit is shortly followed by the one of Dominique de Villepin on December 9, 2005. During his visit, Mr. de Villepin announced that the government would notify the video game tax credit to the European Commission within the two following weeks.

On March 13, 2006, the French ministry of culture held a ceremony to elevate three famous video game designers to the dignity of Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters. Rayman's designer Michel Ancel, Alone in the Dark's creator Frédérick Raynal as well as legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto received their medal from the hands of minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres. The Minister said: "Because they are a cultural entertainment medium, video games are more than welcome rue de Valois . 'Art is a game between all men from all times' said Marcel Duchamp. I am convinced that our country's vitality in the video game creation field is a guaranty of its capacity to innovate, to evolve and to create."

During the French 2007 Presidential elections, all major candidates pledged to support the video game industry as well as ongoing policies.

On November 23, 2007 French President Nicolas Sarkozy made a speech where he expressed his strong support for the video game industry, underligning the potential for video games to become a major art form in the 21st century. He also expressed his wish that the video game tax credit be approved by the EU Commission and made functional very soon. On December 12, the European Commission approved the tax credit.