Canadian-made ‘Paralives’ thrives despite gaming sector turmoil

Résumé détaillé

The video game industry has been shaken by job losses and growing threats from artificial intelligence, but the independently produced Canadian game 'Paralives' has defied those…

The video game industry has been shaken by job losses and growing threats from artificial intelligence, but the independently produced Canadian game “Paralives” has defied those headwinds.

Paralives is a life-simulation game, a category in which players control the lives of simulated people in a virtual world, including their relationships, looks, homes and careers.

The genre has been dominated for years by “The Sims” franchise, but Montreal developer Alex Masse’s Paralives has mounted a scrappy, insurgent challenge.

Addressing the Montreal International Game Summit this week, Masse said he pumped “two years of personal savings” into making Paralives, which began as a “solo project” but now employs 15 people.

Masse has fine-tuned the game with help from users, who have also multiplied.

“On my social media page, I had one like. It was my mom,” he told the conference audience.

But he started getting attention on YouTube, quit his part-time job as a game developer at Unity Technologies and devoted himself full-time to Paralives.

He raised funds on the Patreon platform and, after six years of testing, tweaking and retesting, launched Paralives in May.

“We had 200,000 bugs at first when it was released, it was a bit overwhelming,” Masse said, adding that he expects to roll out a first major update in a few weeks.

Début de l'article, extrait de BNN Bloomberg. Pour lire la suite, ouvrez l'article chez le média.