Nearly a year after sweeping every Game of the Year award possible and sending the gaming industry into a tizzy of self-reflection, it’s hard to imagine Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as anything but a force of nature. But there was a time before the epic RPG had any accolades — a period before release where no one on the development team knew what to expect. Sandfall Interactive had built a passion project, and they felt strongly about the work they crafted. But how would the rest of the world receive this game made by a small studio with no track record?
As initially reported by IGN, the developers of the now-renowned adventure took that uncertainty in a fun direction. In an interview with Expedition 33 writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, the scribe notes that everyone on the team made bets regarding the final Metacritic score for the game. People proposed a score, and if the Metacritic was higher than that, “they have to do some dares or do some things, like get a tattoo, dye their hair, or different things,” Svedberg-Yen says.
The bets got weird, too. Someone on the team bet they’d do stand-up comedy, while another vowed to eat an entire chicken as a colleague beatboxed over the trial. The funny thing is, not a single one of the devs at Sandfall actually guessed their Metacritic score correctly, Svedberg-Yen says. The writer did not share any specific numbers, but given that Expedition 33 currently sits on a 92 overall score, the window for incorrect guesses was large.
To get it right, someone would have had to boldly suggest the game was not only going to be successful, but that it was also going to be one of the best-received releases ever. Most games are lucky to crack a score somewhere in the 80s, and the number of titles that get at least a 90 on the rating platform keeps getting smaller. Data shows that, in recent years, only a handful of games achieve a Metacritic score of 90 or above. And remember, on platforms like Steam, there are thousands of games released every month. Betting that Expedition 33 would reach a score of at least 92 would have been the same as saying it was going to be a statistical anomaly. No wonder so many didn’t win their bets!
According to Svedberg-Yen, some at Sandfall have already made good on their promises. At least one developer dyed their hair pink. I propose that the rest of the bets become live streams for charity.
The best part of all of this, though, is that success (and knighthood!) doesn’t seem to be going to Sandfall Interactive’s head. The studio wants to keep the team small for its next project, which will reportedly be set in the same universe as Expedition 33. By the time that game comes out, I’m sure many people will follow suit and make a market on Kalshi worth millions of dollars or something.
