When he left Frima Studio, the video game company he co-founded in 2003, Steve Couture had not said his last word in youth entertainment. The next steps in his journey may even leave an even stronger imprint on the niche.
With Epic Storyworlds, the new company that he co-founded with Canadian producer Ken Faier, the one who very young behaved like the nice organizer of games between friends, aims to build a mass success, comparable to that of Caillou or Pat Patrol.
“I want to develop brands that will have global appeal with seasoned business people. I want to dedicate the rest of my career to this,” says Steve who, with the help of maturity, says he now has a much better idea of how to build a world-class business.
In fact, he is already an executive producer for a project by best-selling author Marc Brown, who created Arthur, a series that ran for 25 years on PBS in the United States.
“Arthur is benevolence and in 25 years, he has left his mark on generations. That’s what I would like to be able to do,” Steve dreams, looking forward to seeing Marc Brown’s new characters inhabit the small screen, video games and amusement parks.
A dozen other projects are in the works at Epic Storyworlds: there is action. And everything happens in a light model, because most of the projects are carried out by partner studios.
From Virtual to Real
Most of his life, Steve Couture has inhabited virtual worlds through fiction and animated characters. But when he left Frima five years ago, he was made all kinds of offers and he accepted that of Go-Élan, a manufacturing company that manufactures play modules for children.
The collision of two worlds: manufacturing and software development. After making the children play on their sofa, now he would make them play in the park!
Steve’s challenge was to bring features from the video game into the outdoor modules. Integrate interactive elements into constructions that must be resistant to children, shocks and bad weather.
“We put screens, animation, voice actors, music and humor. The module laughs kindly at children when they are not very good at the game,” laughs the entrepreneur, who had the pleasure of testing the result with the children of Go-Élan employees.
Roll up Your Sleeves
The bad luck is that the first interactive game module was born just before the pandemic, when playing in a group was no longer an option. But there was no question of abdicating and another concept around the theme of the forest was imagined. The first Go-Élan interactive game modules were finally installed in Rimouski, Donnacona and Sainte-Marie.
Steve Couture lives his life as a great adventure, with the only regret of not having lived abroad.
The Warner in California had offered him a job… but the entrepreneur does not have the fiber of the employee. Also, he is happy to have contributed to the development of video games in Quebec. But the most beautiful role of his life is to be the cool dad who plays with his three children.
This article is originally published on journaldequebec.com
