Audrey Leprince
Audrey Leprince is a woman in tech. At the head of her studio The Game Bakers, this woman with a firm position the video game industry has nothing left to prove. For all that, she is inspired and committed, participating actively in representing woman in a universe that is still too male heavy.
Published on 24/09/2020
5 min
With a degree in finance, management and marketing, nothing indicated that Audrey Leprince would go into video game production. And yet it was while doing a first work placement in Paris, when the interactive game based on the Petit Prince by Saint-Exupéry was released, that she decided to contact the teams responsible for it. She discovered a vocation, and has never left it.
Throughout her career, between France and China, Audrey Leprince has worked for prestigious games studios like Ubisoft and Quantic Dream. This leads her to set up her own studio in 2010, The Game Bakers, with Emeric Thoa. Used to working on AAA – the classification term used for video games with substantial budgets — as a game designer and producer, Audrey Leprince started concentrating on the whole production chain.
The association Women in Games France (WIG) was created in 2017 — carried by Audrey Leprince and Julie Chalmette, managing director of Bethesda France and chair of the Syndicat des éditeurs de logiciels de loisirs – the Leisure software publishers union (SELL)— to give more visibility to women in the industry and be better represented. To do this the association communicates with middle and upper secondary schools in France. WIG also has a “list of speakers”: women in the industry available to come and speak at conferences, round tables or give masterclasses. They give advice and free training to women who want to gain confidence in this world which has 80% men. The association also showcases female role models in French video gaming to motivate women and students interested in the sector.
Audrey Leprince discovered Pixelles in 2016 while she was touring the world to present the game Furi. This Quebec-based association supported her as a woman in the video game industry, and financed her ticket for the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco. Audrey Leprince noticed that France did not have a structure of this kind and decided to create her WIG association. For all that, she defends the French ecosystem that contributes to creating multiple projects: the Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (National Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image) (CNC) financed almost half of the budget of the first game by The Game Bakers. At European level, her creative Europe programme supports video game design, in order to improve its competitiveness internationally.
- 1997
1997
Audrey Leprince graduated from the ESCP Europe business school.
- 1997
1997
During a work placement at Gallimard, she discovered an appetite for digital productions: the group was working in a digital version of Le Petit Prince.
- 1998
1998
Audrey Leprince joined Quantic Dream for two years.
- 2003
2003
Audrey Leprince joined Ubisoft in Shanghai, as Senior Producer for 7 years.
- 2010
2010
On coming back to France, she co-founded The Game Bakers with Emeric Thoa.
- 2017
2017
Audrey Leprince created the Women in Games France (WIG) association to promote diversity in the video game industry in France.
Audrey Leprince is present the Institut français platform dedicated to independent video games culturegamer.fr.