French – English
The MO5.COM association has the great pleasure of announcing that Nicolas Gaume, founder of Kalisto Entertainment, has just joined the association as an honorary member. He will also participate in the Support Committee for the National Video Games Museum.
He considers our initiative necessary and welcome, and offers us his support by agreeing to become an honorary member of the association. There is no doubt that the support of such a personality from the world of video games will help us to make ourselves known and develop.
Born on February 7, 1971 in Bagnères-de-Bigorre, Nicolas Gaume abandoned his studies in 1990 to found his video game development studio with friends in Bordeaux. The team specializes in creating Mac and Windows titles, before diversifying into other computers and then consoles. Under the Kalisto brand, the company will create around fifty games over twelve years, employing more than 300 people and marketing worldwide, particularly in the United States and Japan. We owe him in particular The Brainies (1992) under the Skweek license, then Fury of the Furies (1994) which will shortly after serve as the basis for Pac-In-Time on consoles on behalf of Namco, the company's first commercial success. She also created the racing game Al Unser Jr. Arcade Racing (1995), the first game under Windows 95. Committed to developing rich universes for its games, Kalisto diversified into the publishing of books and role-playing games, including those of its successes Dark Earth (1996) and Nightmare Creatures (1997), and into the adaptation of universe films such as The Fifth Element (1998). It was so successful that the company went public in 1999. The President of the Republic, Jacques Chirac, invited Nicolas Gaume on an official trip, and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin named him France's foreign trade advisor. Alas, the Internet bubble got the better of Kalisto, which closed its doors in 2002; the companies Asobo Studio and BeTomorrow were created from its assets and continue the projects initiated by the company. Nicolas Gaume was hired as a consultant by Codemasters in 2002, then joined Ubisoft in 2003 to manage the publisher's Parisian studios. Wishing to move towards the creation of mobile games, the Lagardère group then gave him the opportunity to create the games and mobile applications department, which he developed from 2005 to 2007. He then co-founded Mimesis Republic, a company which specializes in social virtual universes such as Mamba Nation (2008-2012). From 2013 to 2015, he supported various publishers in the development of their mobile and social games including GameDuell (2012) then Bandai Namco (2013-2014), before joining the general management of Microsoft in France. Nicolas Gaume was president of the National Video Game Union from 2009 to 2014, and he is the author of the book Citizen Game published by Anne Carrière in 2006.
Pac-in-Time (Super Nintendo, 1994)
Al Unser Jr. Arcade Racing (Windows, 1995)
Nightmare Creatures (Windows/PlayStation/Nintendo 64, 1997)
The Fifth Element (PlayStation/Windows, 1998)
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