For a year now, and in the greatest secrecy, an elite team from the French studio Ubisoft has been working against the clock on one of the biggest projects currently under way in the videogame industry: the adaptation to videogame format of the film King Kong, of which the cult director Peter Jackson (of “Lord of the Rings” fame) is filming a dramatic remake in New Zealand for the movie major Universal. This cinematographic superproduction, “naturally” accompanied by a videogame with the same name, will not appear on cinema screens around the world before Christmas 2005, but it is already providing an ideal opportunity to take stock of the present situation and goals of the French videogame industry. Indeed, the somewhat surreal combination of Ubisoft, Peter Jackson, Universal, King Kong and the French game designer Michel Ancel is in itself eloquently emblematic of the present situation in the industry. The entire project is shot through and through with all the intertwined issues and difficulties currently associated with videogames. [More]