Video Games and the Exception Française

The French government has just announced they will grant tax breaks to video game developers. Patrick Ollier, the head of the National Assembly committee that oversees tax laws, described the tax law as a means to "harbor the innovative vitality of France's creative juices, by inciting small enterprises to create imaginative works that take advantage of tomorrow's technologies." This means the French video industry will enjoy the benefits of the exception française--provided the EU gives its approval.

France has a long history of supporting forms of cultural production that the US leaves to the whims of the marketplace. Most famously, the French film industry has long been heavily subsidized by the government. Consequently, France has one of the largest and most creative film industries in the world. To receive government support a film--or now, a video game--has to reflect "Frenchness," whatever that may mean. This may pose a challenge for French video game developers, for as Wired's Bruce Gain points out, "France's contribution to video-game culture around the world often does not seem very French. King Kong, for example, takes place on a long-lost island and in New York, and was based on the recent Hollywood hit movie." Then again, a few urban realist titles aside, the form's proclivity for otherworldly settings and science fiction narratives would make it difficult to ground its aesthetic in any particular national identity. Maybe a French video game developer can use his or her tax breaks to create a game based on Alphaville.

Supposedly, video games will eventually take the place of cinema in world culture, just as film and, somewhat later, radio displaced Vaudeville and the novel as popular culture forms. It remains to be seen if video games will ever become broadly popular, or even if it's desirable that they do. Thanks to video games we now have 12-year-olds who know as much about battlefield tactics as anyone at the Pentagon. One thing's for certain, though: the video game industry has replicated the American film industry's consolidation of production into a few studios (Electronic Arts, Sony, and Activision) with enough resources to cover the $15-20 million development costs of a PlayStation game.  Independent video game developers in the US are imperiled enough to warrant the formation of independent game publishers like the Gamecock Media Group modeled on independent film production companies--our version of the exception française. While the US government is unlikely to grant tax breaks to domestic video game developers--somebody has to pick up the slack from the oil companies' tax breaks--we're not so far from the French model of granting video games official status as a cultural institution. An archive of video games has been established at Stanford University. Can a graduate program be far behind? Someday soon we may see Will Wright donate to a presidential candidate's campaign fund, then say snarky things about his opponent.