RTBF is taking another step into the world of video games

As part of their core mandate, public service media (PSM) must serve diverse national audiences. Yet there is a cross-generational part of society that is often underserved and underrepresented by PSM: the gaming community.

To address this deficit, Belgium’s French-speaking public broadcaster RTBF launched RTBF IXPÉ in 2021 – a department dedicated to creating content that both fulfilled core public service values and appealed to gamers. Now, building on this success, they are collaborating with the French and German public broadcaster Arte on the co-production of a video game.

In October, PMA journalist Charlotte Pion spoke with Gregory Carette, an expert in video games and e-sports for RTBF, to discuss this first experience in video games co-production.

Charlotte Pion: What is 30 Birds? And what role did RTBF play in this co-production?

Gregory Carette: 30 Birds is an adventure and platform game inspired by Persian art and the Persian world. It was developed by RamRam Games, a Brussels-based studio made up of Laurent Toulouse and Coline Sauvand. It’s a cross-generational game, with puzzles and adventures that everyone can get hooked on as long as they’re a little bit keen to investigate.

It’s a game that conveys a message of cultural openness but also an ecological one, of respect for nature. There’s clearly an important message behind it.

30 Birds is a game that I discovered a few years ago at a Big Brotaru, a big showcase and pitch event for video game designers. I fell in love with the game the second I saw it and it has stayed with me.

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For the last 4-5 years I’ve had this idea that the RTBF could perhaps get into video game development or video game publishing. Not us, obviously, but rather co-produce video games like we do with films and series.

And so, as part of everything I’ve tried to put in place with video games and RTBF IXPÉ, at one point I asked to talk with the people I knew at Arte, telling them that we wanted to get into video game co-production.

You have to realise that Arte has 10 years’ experience of co-producing video games and digital creations.

I thought it would be interesting to take the pulse of the players in this sector. In Belgium, we have the WALGA (Wallonia Games Association), Games.Brussels and the FLEGA (Flemish Game Association), which are three different federations that defend the interests of video game developers. However, as Arte is a neutral ground, we started discussions with them and the question of co-producing together came up. The teams at Arte were really keen for us to work together.

They presented the two projects they were working on at the time, one of which turned out to be 30 Birds.

There was also talk of what RTBF’s investment would bring to the co-production. The fact is that we were bringing in something quite interesting for the studio, namely a better polish for the game, but above all a portal onto Nintendo Switch. Prior to our arrival on this project, 30 Birds would only have been released on the PC gaming platform Steam, limiting access to the game.

What we found really interesting about this project is that the RTBF’s involvement not only means better graphics for the game, but also the fact that the game is being released on another platform, so we’re providing an additional showcase and therefore potentially a bigger audience.

We’re also adding editorial value by showcasing the game on platforms like Twitch, YouTube, and across all our social media. So, we can really extend the game in terms of media, make it more visible and bring it to a more general audience.

That’s how we reached an agreement with Arte, how we finally met RamRam Games, and how we came to co-produce 30 Birds with Arte, RamRam studios and Business Goose, which is a Flemish studio.

In the future, the ideal thing would be to get involved earlier in these projects, so that we can bring something extra to the game. We can give our opinion to the developer, but in the end, I think that the values and themes addressed in these games will be the criteria for choosing which project to move forward with.

It would be really interesting to develop a digital creation centre within RTBF, especially as it would introduce a diversification of revenues, but for the moment we’re only at the beginning with this first experiment with 30 Birds.

CP: How does a game like 30 Birds or an offer like RTBF IXPÉ fit in with RTBF’s mission?

GC: It has both a B2B and a B2C side. For me, the B2B mission is to inform, frame and entertain about video games. That’s what we’re also doing: highlighting Belgian and French-speaking talent.

Above all, we showcase this talent by getting them to work here at RTBF. We have a streaming studio on Twitch that’s On Air all week, so that means we’re putting five or six content creators to work once a day every week.

Beyond that, there’s a whole ecosystem to build, and here I’m not talking about video game development, because we weren’t there at the start, but tournament organisers, production companies and so on. The games sector is facing a crisis at the moment, and not only is it very small, but there are also very few structures. The challenge is to find collaborators and production studios that specialise in video games.

So, does all this fit in with RTBF’s mission? Yes, completely. We strive to respect RTBF’s values and ethics by promoting inclusiveness, which is important to us in terms of gender, social class, education and entertainment.