Clair Obscur: Expedition 33: How the 'Game of the Year' was made:
Quote Originally Posted by BBC
"Bored in their job and wanting to do something different." Working for French gaming giant Ubisoft at the time, he had an idea for his own project - a role-playing game inspired by one of his childhood favourites, the classic Japanese series Final Fantasy. [...]

So, five years ago, he started to recruit people for his passion project, firing out messages on Reddit and online forums to potential colleagues. [...]

One of those who responded was Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, who was under lockdown in Australia at the time. "I saw a post on Reddit by Guillaume asking for voice actors to record something for free for a demo," she says. "I was like: 'I've never done that, it sounds kinda cool', so I sent him an audition." Jennifer was originally cast as a major character in an early version of the game, but eventually switched roles to become the team's lead writer. [...]

After securing funding from publisher Kepler Interactive, the core team grew to about 30 people. [...]

Composer Lorien Testard - who had never worked on a video game before - was discovered via posts on music-sharing website Soundcloud. [...]

"I call this the Guillaume effect. He's very good at finding really cool people," says Jennifer. Guillaume more modestly attributes his success rate to Covid - people looking for a creative outlet - and also "massive luck". "It's always the same story," he says. "I have a list of 15 people to contact and I'm like: 'Okay I'm probably going to get maybe no one at all'. "And every time the first one is like: 'Yeah, let's do it'."[...]

Having the backing of Kepler allowed the studio to attract actors including Daredevil's Charlie Cox, Lord of the Rings star Andy Serkis, and video game actors Jennifer English and Ben Starr. [...]