Bored at Ubisoft: Director of ‘Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’ Reveals Wild Origin of the Game

Guillaume Broche, the director of Expedition 33, said in a BBC interview that he left his job at Ubisoft because he was simply “bored” and wanted to try something new. That choice led to one of the year’s biggest surprise hits, a game that has already sold over a million copies.

Broche didn’t follow the usual steps of making a big game. Instead, he put the team together in an unusual way. Before getting any money or backing, he looked for developers online. He posted on Reddit and other forums, searching for people who wanted to join him. It all started with a simple pitch deck and some big dreams.

“Expedition 33’s origin is a series of miracles,” according to the BBC interview.

The game’s writer, Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, also joined in an unexpected way. She had never worked on a game before, or even voice-acted.

“I was like: ‘I’ve never done that, it sounds kinda cool’, so I sent him an audition,” she said. That one step led to her becoming the lead writer of the game, which has been praised for its strong story.

The composer, Lorien Testard, was discovered by Broche through SoundCloud. They had been chatting in the comments. Broche said his ability to find people this way was thanks to “massive luck” and also because many people were stuck at home during the COVID-19 lockdowns and looking for creative work.

Many of the people who helped make Expedition 33 had little or no experience making games. The core team was made up of about 30 people, most of them junior or completely new to the game industry.

“We have, I think, an amazing team mostly of junior people but they are so incredibly invested in the project and talented,” said Broche. “Somehow it worked, which still makes no sense to me after all these years.”

When Broche started his game studio, Sandfall Interactive, he launched it with a humble blog post on the company’s website. He wrote:

“Well we don’t have much to share now, other than what we shared on the main page, it’s the very beginning you know. But rest assured this blog will be oh so amazing soon. Stay tuned.”

Now, almost five years later, he was right. Expedition 33 has become a huge success, not just for how it plays, but for how it came to life through passion, bold ideas, and a bit of internet magic.

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