An independent game studio from France

The name Ivoria

Ivoria was a dog. She came from an animal shelter, mistreated and in poor shape, and joined the family just as Jessy Biemy, still a child, started making his first games. She became the emblem of his very first studio, Ivoria Games, whose logo was her head, drawn in Paint.

When the time came to name a real studio, the name was already there. The mark was redrawn, more abstract, and a V now shows in it, but it is still her head. Ivoria has since passed away. The studio carries her name in tribute.

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The studio's origins

I've loved video games for as long as I can remember. When I was about seven, I was already downloading game engines like CryEngine. I would open the demo map that came with the engine and pretend it was my game, War of Radioactivity. I even made trailers for it on YouTube, for a game that didn't exist.

It was a kid's dream: of course, I didn't have the skills to make it. Over the years, it drifted away, the way things do when you can't make them happen right away.

In 2015, at Japan Touch in Lyon, I met Marc Albinet, one of the directors of Assassin's Creed Unity. I was ten. I asked him whether they used an in-house engine or a third-party one. He looked really surprised, and we kept talking after his interview. That conversation really confirmed my passion for video games.

Why games? Because I love building worlds and systems. Games are where I can put all of my creativity to work: visuals, sound, how it feels to play, and a vision of my own. Soft, welcoming visuals on the surface, and underneath, complex systems, the kind I love to optimize. Games are the only medium where I can bring the two together.

Jessy Biemy, founder and Game Director · LinkedIn