Shortly after finishing his studies at the Centre de Formation des Journalistes in Paris, Baptiste Peyron turned to his passion for video games when he became editor for the magazines Consoles+ and Joystick. Cofounder of online media Ulyces, he is now with the press group Link Digital Spirit, and is hard at work on writing his first books.
Since launching his YouTube channel in 2011, Benoît “ExServ” Reinier has been wearing many hats, juggling roles as streamer, journalist at Gamekult, author for Third Éditions, and digital intermediary. Outside his online activities, he is the cofounder of Les Humains Numériques, an organization whose goal is to provide connections to digital life in all its forms. In 2018, he added game designer to his list to explore yet another new facet of video games as a creator.
Bruno Provezza has been an aficionado of video games and fantasy movies from a very young age. Between 2002 and 2006, he was the editor-in-chief of the official website of the Mad Movies magazine before joining the writing team of the monthly press edition. He has also managed the special edition dedicated to video games. He was a contributor to Gamblog.fr from 2008 until 2014 and has also worked as a translator for publications by Flammarion and Pix’n Love.
Passionate about films and video games, Damien Mecheri joined the writing team of Gameplay RPG in 2004 and wrote several articles for the second special edition on the Final Fantasy saga. With this same team, Damien continued his work in 2006 for another publication known as Background, before moving his career to the Internet in 2008, with Gameweb.fr. Since 2011, he has come aboard Third Éditions with Mehdi El Kanafi and Nicolas Courcier, the publisher's two founders.
Damien is also the author of the book Video Game Music: a History of Gaming Music. He has also written or co-written several works for Third Éditions: Welcome to Silent Hill. A Journey into Hell, The Works of Fumito Ueda: A Different Perspective on Video Games, and the two volumes of Dark Souls: Beyond the Grave.
Since 2018, he is editor at Third Éditions.
In 2009, Damien Watier began his non-professional writing career for the website, La Page jeux vidéo—the former and future Console Syndrome. Since then, he has continued to contribute to the site through both engaging and ludicrous articles. Inquisitive by nature, he is interested in all genres but does not hide his leanings towards RPGs and he constantly explores, day in day out, the extent of his ignorance with blissful optimism. In 2013, he launched Johnny’s Game Café, a fake website that was certainly not run by any Johnny; it is more a place where he can deconstruct his relationship with video games when the right words come to him.
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Daniel Andreyev is an author and journalist of Russian origin. His career in video game journalism began twenty years ago, during the golden years of video gaming, with Player One, Consoles + and Animeland, with a particular interest in Japan. Having spent some time on translation, he is now part of the New Games Journalism movement, which places the player at the heart of the video game experience. He produces the After Hate and Super Ciné Battle podcasts. He also trades memories with his friends in Gaijin Dash, the Gamekult show on Japanese video games. He is a fan of far too many things to list them all here. But when he is not writing, not watching a movie, not reading comics and graphic novels, not climbing mountains or exploring ruined buildings, he might be cooking, exercising or dreaming of one day owning a dog.
Educated in law, Denis Brusseaux has worked as a journalist for fifteen years and is a specialist in the two arts that he loves: cinema and video games. He has contributed to the magazines Joypad and Videogamer, and the website DVDrama. He also co-wrote the 2012 film The Lookout (French title: Le Guetteur), which starred Daniel Auteuil and Mathieu Kassovitz.
After spending his childhood and adolescence playing video games and role-playing games , and after a spell in a series of menial jobs as a result, Erwan Lafleuriel became a journalist for Joystick magazine in 2003, with only a little inside help. In 2007, he left print for the web and joined Mondespersistants.com, then joined the writing staff at Gameblog.fr in 2010, where he’d spend half a decade. In 2015, he helped launch IGN France as part of Webedia group, where he still works as editor in chief, hoping one day to secure the pension that will let him enjoy a retirement of endless RPG gaming, doubtless the best hobby ever invented.
A brat reared on grimy dungeon crawls and vending-machine coffee—do not start talking Bloodwych or Final Fight with him—Fabrice began writing for several magazines, including PlayMag, PSM and PC Jeux, in 2001. He later joined the official Xbox magazine as editor of the news section. He remained at that position for eight years before moving to the game developing camp. He joined Spiders in 2011 and worked on the dialogs, quests, interfaces and localization for Of Orcs and Men, and later Mars: War Logs and Bound by Flame. The chaotic direction of the last game finally got the better of him.
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Video game, tech and culture journalist, as well as podcaster. The boss of Artofgaming.fr, presenter and employee at Radiojv.com and Radiokawa.com, and MODOK of lesclairvoyants.net The rest of his biography will appear in his obituary; he is currently under an NDA.
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Born in Brussels in 1987 to Italian parents, Frederico is a graphic artist, a speaker, a
podcaster, and a journalist. And now an author. He wears five hats, one on top of the
other; isn’t that ridiculous? Elsewhere, perhaps yes, but not in JoJo! Frederico Anzalone’s
writings, specializing in manga and Japanese culture, can be found every three months
in the French magazine ATOM. He has also written for BoDoï, Les Cahiers de la BD,
and Chronic’art.
Known to everyone as “Jay” and having a very assertive disposition, Georges Grouard is perhaps one of the greatest specialists in role-playing games. As a well-known figure in the trade press, Jay gained a reputation for his unashamedly excessive love for the RPG genre. In fact, he was the founder of the first magazine in the world to be entirely devoted to the role-playing game: Gameplay RPG. Before that, Jay gained valuable experience by climbing the writing career ladder. He was a journalist, editor-in-chief, then editorial director and finally the boss of his own media company, through which he published the magazine Background. After eleven issues, his career moved over to the Internet with Gameweb.fr, which he unfortunately left, “exhausted by the format.” He is also a contributor to the Les Tauliers podcast. He has devoted his life to cult video games and today he continues working in the industry on a huge number of projects, with no eye towards media support.
A student at the Higher Institute of Journalism in Paris between 2002 and 2004, Gianni Molinaro joined the writing staff of Joypad in the summer of 2003. For over five years, he contributed to many other publications focused on video games, including Official Playstation, Kid Paddle, PSM3, Joystick and Jeux Vidéo Magazine. He then participated in the Game One project and was in charge of reports on the PES League, a virtual football competition. In 2009, Gianni became editor of the news section for Jeux Vidéo Magazine. He left this post in September 2011. He then joined Gameblog.fr as a writer and podcast presenter; at the same time he presented Hotline Gianni, the first call-in talk show devoted to video games, produced by Radio01.net and broadcast on SynopsLive.
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Jordan works as concept artist in the video games industry and is currently based in London, UK. Making big, colourful environments are his favourite things to create and he hopes to one day work as an art director.
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Loïc Ralet–aka Epyon–is a former journalist and Xbox/Bungie expert at Jeuxvideo.com (now JV, the biggest video game outlet in Europe). He worked as a Community Manager for Bungie before going on to his current role as Editorial Manager for Xbox Manager.
Following his literature studies, Loup Lassinat-Foubert began sharing his love for video games by becoming a journalist for the Gamekult website and then a podcast presenter. As a program director for the digital radio station, RadioKawa, he appears on broadcasts dedicated to the video-gaming world (Que le Grand Geek me croque, Les Tauliers), culture (Galeria Ludica, Allô Centrale, Ta Gueule !) and media (TVNR). He is also responsible for scheduling at the TV channel Mangas, on which he hosted Lost Levels, a bite-size weekly report on video games. A fan of Pokémon since the release of the Red and Blue versions, Loup has always chosen the Grass-type starter Pokémon. His preferred types are Grass, Fairy and Ghost.
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While exploring the astounding world of Super Metroid, Ludovic was first hypnotized
by a video game universe at the tender age of seven. Especially drawn to the JRPG genre,
he wiled away his childhood years reading video game magazines GamePlay RPG and
Background. As well as having a PhD in theoretical chemistry, Ludo lent his writing to
the third volume of the “Level Up” collection from Third Éditions in 2015. For the same
publisher, he authored a book in the “Ludothèque” collection the following year, about
the duology Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga. Sekiro: The Second Life of Souls is
his first large-format book. His second one is a French book dedicated to Shin Megami Tensei.
Fascinated by print media since childhood, Mehdi El Kanafi, alongside Nicolas Courcier, wasted no time in launching his first magazine, Console Syndrome, in 2004. After five issues with a distribution limited to Toulouse, France, he and Nicolas Courcier decided to create a publishing house under the same name. One year later, their small business was acquired by Pix’n Love, a major publisher of books on video games. Over the next four years in the world of publishing, Mehdi published more than twenty works on major video game series, and co-wrote several of those works: Zelda. Chronicles of a Legendary Series, Metal Gear Solid: Hideo Kojima’s Magnum Opus, and The Legend of Final Fantasy VII and IX Since 2015, his publishing endeavors have been focused on analyzing major video game sagas through a new publishing house he co-founded with Nicolas: Third.
Fed on club Dorothée and American comics, his personal heroes are and ever will be Goku and Batman. From copycat drawings of his idols (especially Akira Toriyama and Todd Mac Farlane) he knew that he couldn't take another path in his life. Dot by dot, inspired by Sayens, dinosaurs, video games, men in colorful costumes, genre movies, loud music, tattoos and morbid imagery, he compose his own alternative universe: dark, but also filled with melancholia and fun.
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A fan of print media since childhood, Nicolas Courcier launched his first magazine, with Mehdi El Kanafi, in 2004. The magazine's name was Console Syndrome. After five issues with a circulation limited to Toulouse, France, he and Mehdi decided to create a publishing house under the same name. One year later, their small business was acquired by Pix’n Love, a major publisher of books on video games. During the following four years in the world of publishing, Nicolas published more than twenty works on major video game series, some of which he co-wrote: Zelda. Chronicles of a Legendary Series, Metal Gear Solid: Hideo Kojima’s Magnum Opus, and The Legend of Final Fantasy VII and IX Since 2015, his focus has been on analyzing major video game sagas through a new publishing house he co-founded with Mehdi: Third.
At the age of fifteen, Nicolas Turcev was still soaking his cereal with baby formula when he began writing for the fansite Legendra RPG. He moved from being a regular contributor up to editor-in-chief. In 2013, Nicolas finally left the nest to delve into the French press. He started at Merlanfrit and the cultural magazine Chro, where he freelanced in return for bowls of Corn Pops. As a journalist and critic whose flights of fancy led him to work indiscriminately for Games, RPG Player, Level Up and Gamekult, Nicolas developed a taste for research and investigation. Since he is as interested in those who develop games as he is by the game itself, he has turned his hand to designing games in his free time.
Aside being an experienced composer, the Swedish Niklas Åkerblad, also known as El Huervo, is a great illustrator. It's thanks to theses skills that he made a name for himself by drawing art and composing music for Hotline Miami 1 and 2, games which consecrated Devolver as an indispensable publisher of independant video games.
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Pierre Maugein is a specialized journalist who joined the Jeuxvideo.com writing team in 2003 before leaving in 2006. He then decided to change directions and turned to another passion, graphics, when he became a freelancer for several years. It was only then that he returned to his area of expertise, video games, multiplying his experiences with various media before becoming a freelancer for Journal du Geek in 2014. He currently writes for the magazines JV, Canard PC (under the alias of Robin Déboîte), and VideoGamer. He is also a contributor for Jean Zeid's podcast Le Casque et l'Enclume, and author of the book The Legend of Final Fantasy VI, published by Third Éditions.
Pierre-Yves Franck, aka “PyRex,” is above all a passionate gamer with eclectic tastes. He is interested in sports games, arcades and adventure games, but it is RPG that best satisfies his multi-faceted predilections. He started on his role-playing path in an unusual way, abandoning mainstream games in order to explore the genre’s marginalized titles. As a blogger, he has produced off-beat feature pieces that truly reflect his personality.
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Raphaël has over thirteen years of experience in the world of video game writing. First a reader of Tilt and a fan of AHL, he then pursued a university education. After obtaining a master’s degree in history from the University of Paris 1, he then became a freelancer for PC Team before working for Gameplay RPG and PlayMag. In October 2004, he joined the group Future France and worked for Joypad, PlayStation Magazine, Consoles + and Joystick, not to mention a few other contributions to film magazines. Today, he writes for the latest incarnation of Jeux Vidéo Magazine and is a contributor to the review The Game. He is the author of The History of RPGs and co-authored BioShock: From Rapture to Colombia as well as The Legend of Final Fantasy IX, at the Pix’n Love publishing house. On a more personal note, his gaming preference falls on RPGs (Japanese and Western), action-adventure games, first-person shooters and some experimental oddities.
Rémi Lopez graduated with a degree in Japanese from Bordeaux III University. In 2004, he cut his teeth as an author when he wrote website columns on video game soundtracks. Two years later, he joined the Gameplay RPG magazine in which he carried out the same task. He then followed the then editor-in-chief, Christophe Brondy, and his entire team to a new project: the monthly Role Playing Game magazine. Rémi wrote The Legend of Final Fantasy VIII and the book on the Original Soundtrack for Pix’n Love publications in 2013.
Convinced that only frivolous things should be taken seriously, Stéphane became a fan of rock 'n' roll, movies and video games at a very young age. He didn’t really have choice given that he was born in the year that The Thing, Q*Bert and The Number of the Beast were released. His concerned father, who had been a participant in the 1968 protests, tried to push him to do something with his life, but in vain. Stéphane studied many things but seldom completed them, like the film studies he dropped out of in 2008 to join the writing staff at Gamekult as a photojournalist. Photos, broadcasts, articles, video reports, all means of expression were open to him to share his passion and demands. During this period, he developed and mastered the mysteries of the Bouley-Time, a legendary power that allowed a gamer to play an astronomical number of games in little time. Both irrational and a lover of freedom, Stéphane drifted to other horizons after more than six years of loyal service. He then became a freelancer, still for Gamekult, and produced 24 FPS (a program that discussed the links between movies and video games against a backdrop of rock music—Stéphane has clearly not changed in thirty years). He continued to regularly contribute for the website and the magazine JV. Now a mountain dweller, his dream is to found the highest video game museum, not because he could live off it but because it’s a funny idea. While you’re reading this, Stéphane still doesn’t know what he wants to be when he grows up.
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Steve Purcell is a professional illustrator who has been working in the video games and animation industries for over 30 years. He is the creator of the Sam and Max characters and was artist on The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey's Island 2 : LeChuck's Revenge. He works with Pixar since 2002; he worked on Cars, Ratatouille and Brave (which he co-directed).
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Curious by nature, a dreamer against the grain and a chronic ranter, Romieu is also a passionate traveler of the real and the unreal, the world and the virtual universes, always in search of enriching discoveries and varied cultures. A developer by trade, he took up his modest pen several years ago to study the characteristics and richness of the marvelously creative world of video games. He writes for a French video game site called Chroniques ludiques, particularly on the topic of RPGs, his preferred genre.
“Have you gone crazy, Cartapouille? Do you really think you can just dispense with the sacrosanct bio? You work at Third, so you will do me the kindness of presenting yourself just like everybody else. You will tell me about your passions, like titanium or lifetime guaranteed items, or even those hats you insist on wearing despite living in the age of the cap. You’ll briefly outline the path that led you here, your obscure journalism school and the articles that you wrote. Of course, for the video games, no one cares about you interviewing elderly Englishmen who sing in an effort to recover their virility, that's hardly relevant. How? There you go, having written for the Video Game Almanac: 1998 and the Games Library: Eternal Darkness, that works. You see... you can stop putting on the interested tone any time now. And stop giving me those dirty looks, I can see you, get back to your button-pushing. Stupid hipster.”
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As a child and teenager, Thomas Savary was a huge fan of video games, especially RPGs and interactive fiction stories. He retired, however, from gaming when he began studying modern languages. In his spare time, when this music lover is not gardening, he swims and pumps iron. Since 2010, he has fastidiously proofread the ongoing adventures of Mehdi El Kanafi and Nicolas Courcier, from Console Syndrome and Pix’n Love to Third Éditions. Thomas is adept at computers and especially open software; he continues to be enamored by it and it is his principal tool: “If a job is repetitive, it can be automated. If it can be automated, it should be automated.” His typographical-syntax macro has become famous in the publishing world, but only in his dreams so far.
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Valérie Précigout, better known by her pseudonym Romendil, spent fifteen years as a journalist for Jeuxvideo.com, Europe’s largest video game website. A fan of Japanese RPGs, she managed to establish herself as an online critic when the Internet was still trailing the printed press. She also loves manga culture and Japanese leisure activities. Valérie now shares her impressions about video-gaming news through Extralife.fr and contributes articles to the Level Up collection of books published by Third Éditions.
Proficient in using multiple aliases, Vivi loves remaining shrouded in mystery. She contributed to Console Syndrome through many different articles for the website of the same name. Always looking for obscure or forgotten games, with a touch of a monomania, she easily prefers writing new pieces for Third Éditions to writing her bio. Well, they’re more interesting, aren’t they?
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After an intensive undergrad course in Spanish and then cinema, Yann François started out as a movie critic on Radio Campus, Chronicart and Trois Couleurs, where he inherited the managerial duties for the video game section. He then wrote for Joystick, VideoGamer, JV le Mag, and even Games. He is also part of the podcast team at zqsd.fr.
(photo kindly provided by Pras)
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