They want to open a video game museum near Paris in 2026: a collector and a YouTuber have already raised more than a million euros to support their “Odyssey Project” thanks to a crowdfunding campaign on the internet.
From floor to ceiling of a warehouse in Bouches-du-Rhône, shelves full to bursting conceal the precious collection of Ludovic Charles, 49: every imaginable version of consoles from Nintendo, Sega, Sony and Microsoft, or even the Odyssey by the American Magnavox, released in 1972 and considered the first in the world, which gave its name to the project.
These more than 2,200 consoles accumulated over twenty years constitute “one of the largest collections in the world”, estimates Mr. Charles, who attracted attention in the summer of 2022 by putting it up for auction on a site of online sale for almost a million euros.
“I no longer wanted to store it on shelves unnecessarily,” he says. “It was the research that interested me, but the spirit of the collection, the ultimate goal, was really the museum, to present all of that in an exhaustive manner.”
The announcement was noticed by the community of Benoît Theveny alias Tev, a YouTuber based for more than ten years in Tokyo, where he produces videos on Japan and geek culture for more than a million viewers. subscribers to his channel “Ici Japon”, and the two men begin to discuss a common project.
“Leave no one behind”
“The philosophy is to leave no one behind,” slips Tev, 43, during an interview in his recording studio in Tokyo. He says he wants to reach “three-year-old children who play “Minecraft” as much as old-timers who are 50, 60 years old who started with the first “Pong””.
Video games “are worthy of being in a museum and being recognized as a culture in their own right and I think more and more of us agree on that,” he adds. .
It remained to find a place to host it in France, where several similar attempts came to an end such as the Pixel Museum in Schiltigheim, closed in 2020 after three years of activity, or the Video Game Museum launched in 2010 at the Arche de la Defense near Paris and which closed its doors after… ten days.
“We learned from these attempts,” assures Benoît Theveny. “For the project to work, we must already have the support of the municipality which hosts it, this is our biggest asset compared to the others”.
The idea immediately appealed to the town of Bussy-Saint-Georges (Seine-et-Marne), which for its part was planning to attract visitors to an 80,000 m² “fun hub” around e-sport, which should join the “Odyssey Project”.
“Unfortunately, Bussy has a bit of a reputation as a dormitory town halfway between Disneyland and Paris,” explains Fabien Goupilleau, a 34-year-old municipal councilor from this community and subscriber to the Tev channel. “It’s an opportunity for the city,” he said.
A “Japanese village” around the museum
The fathers of the project also believe that their pragmatic approach will guarantee its sustainability: “I am not the biggest collector, the biggest influencer, the biggest business leader, but I am a little bit of all that,” Benoît slips. Theveny, whose company, present in particular in e-commerce in addition to the creation of YouTube content, employs around fifteen people.
Tev has “a reputation that opens all doors for us,” underlines Ludovic Charles. Their crowdfunding campaign, launched on September 20 on the KissKissBankBank platform, had already collected nearly 1.3 million euros on Wednesday, more than 25 times its initial objective.
Aware that this sum will not be enough to keep the museum open, they came up with the idea of a “Japanese village”, in the words of Tev, which will share the 3500 m2 devoted to the museum and will bring together businesses linked to pop culture and restaurants, in order to finance the museum, of which they hope to see construction start in 2025 for an opening in 2026.
Despite the success of the fundraising campaign, Benoît Theveny admits that, “when a YouTuber comes along with a big project, it can be scary”. So, he says, “our role is to talk to everyone and explain that we seek to surround ourselves with everyone, even those who do not agree with our vision” .