Inspiring Journey: Valentin Plantard-Wahl

The Inspiring Journeys initiative aims to highlight members of our teams who stand out for their diverse backgrounds and unique experiences.

What is an inspiring journey at Frima?

It’s a career path that reflects both personal and professional fulfillment. This can include career development, involvement that has had a positive impact, alignment with the company’s values, etc.

We invited Valentin, programmer, to share some of his most memorable moments at Frima. He came from France to continue his studies and completed an internship with us. He then officially joined the programming team and has been working there for almost two years now. Discover his journey and day-to-day life.

1. Valentin, tell us about your journey at Frima. 

I joined Frima in July 2023 for a programming internship. It was my end-of-studies internship as part of my Master’s in Computer Science at UQAC and my specialized program in Software Engineering at the École d’ingénieurs in France. I got this internship following UQAC’s career day, where I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Frima’s talent acquisition team. During my six-month internship, I worked on porting the Triangle Strategy game to the Meta Quest VR platform.

I also had the opportunity to attend Unreal Fest in the fall of 2024. I went to Seattle with three of my colleagues to spend a week attending conferences about Unreal. The event gave us a look at new features, inspiring use cases from other game studios and more. One specific talk on the myths in Unreal really opened my eyes to the real-world implications of certain features of the engine. Since then, I’ve been paying more attention to how much code runs in the Tick and to the impact on memory, which helps game performance. We also got to meet our project partner in person. It was a very fulfilling experience!

2. What is your fondest memory of working at Frima so far and why?

Triangle Strategy, because it was the first game in my career that I delivered with a major partner like Square Enix Co., Ltd. The project was technically challenging, but we managed to finish on time and the game was very well received at launch.

3. Which of Frima’s values do you feel most strongly about?

It’s hard to pick just one since they’re all interconnected. I would say cooperation, because we always work as a team. We go further together. It also ties in with our other values: for example, everyone is friendly and respectful, which makes teamwork even more effective.

4. What advice would you give to someone starting out in the profession?

For someone who is not in the video game industry yet and wants to break in: take part in Game Jams and train yourself to gain experience. And once you’re in, have fun! You’re working on a game, you’ll have fun with your colleagues, even if it’s not the kind of game you usually play. For example, I loved my first project: it helped me appreciate a genre I don’t normally opt for.

5. What was your first impression of Frima when you arrived?

When I arrived as an intern, I didn’t really know what to expect. It was my first real job, so I was completely discovering how the game industry works. Very quickly, I found a family-like atmosphere within the team. I work onsite every day, so over time, you get to know everyone, even if you’re not working on the same project. I really enjoyed my first few weeks getting to know my colleagues.

6. What is a typical day like in your role?

For the two projects I’ve worked on, the tasks are more or less the same. We usually start with stand-up meetings. The rest of the day is spent working on bug fixes, code reviews, and discussing with other programmers to figure out how to implement new features.

7. What is the biggest challenge you’ve overcome up until now?

We picked up an existing multiplayer project originally developed for PC. Our goal was to demonstrate that it could be brought to mobile. Over the course of a month, another programmer and I worked on adding touch controls, multiplayer connections between devices, and more.We eventually managed to get the game working properly on mobile. At that point, we shared the results of our work in our team group chat to surprise everyone. Everybody was impressed and thrilled with the outcome!

8. What other departments do you work with the most on a daily basis?

I mainly collaborate with the designers, because it’s with them that we brainstorm the features to add. I talk with them to understand their ideas and figure out how we can make them a reality in the project.

9. What has been your favourite event or activity since you joined Frima and why?

Christmas parties are a lot of fun! It’s nice to see people in a context other than work. Then there are the Social Club activities. For example, we went kayaking, go-karting, curling and so on. It was a great time because you’re just there to have fun and network with the other attendees. We also go out to lunch every Thursday with our project teams, and it creates really great moments between colleagues. When I first arrived from France, I didn’t know anyone. Thanks to all these events, I’ve been able to build friendships with colleagues and we even spend time together outside of work!

At Frima, it’s the people who make all the difference. Whether it’s through their projects, their attitude, or their team spirit, employees are at the heart of everything we create. Want to learn more about our culture ? Take a look at our careers page.