Muriel Tramis

Muriel Tramis (born in 1958) is a French video game designer from Martinique. She has written and directed the adventure games Méwilo, Freedom, Geisha, Fascination, Lost in Time and Urban Runner at Coktel Vision. She also co-created the Gobliiins series with Pierre Gilhodes. Tramis was involved in the creation of the ADI range for schoolchildren and college students, and since 2003 has managed Avantilles, a specialist in real-time 3D applications for the web.

Early life and education

Muriel Tramis was born in 1958 in Fort-de-France, Martinique where she attended school at the convent of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny and then at the Seminary College. She moved to Paris to pursue a generalist and polyvalent engineering training at ISEP (Institut supérieur d'électronique de Paris).

Career

Before becoming a French video game creator, she was computer engineer. Tramis soon began a five-year stint at Aérospatiale, where she was responsible for optimizing maintenance procedures for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in addition to, handling remotely piloted aircraft used in missile fire tests and anti-ship missiles. After leaving Aérospatiale, she began to explore marketing and communication, alongside interactive programs.

In 1986, Mauriel Tramis joined the Coktel Vision, a french video game publisher and designing company. She helped Coktel Vision develop some of their most well-known and best-selling games.

In 1991 Gobliins sold almost 1.5 million copies in collaboration with Coktel vision. Another one of her most popular games was Lost in Time. Lost in Time is a computer adventure game developed and published by Coktel Vision in 1993. It was promoted as being "The first Interactive Adventure Film using Full Motion Video Technology" and contained four graphical elements. These being full motion video, hand painted and digitized backgrounds and 3D decor. The plot for this game was based upon a woman exploring a shipwreck which has mysteriously been transported back in time to 1840 when the ship was still intact, she has no choice but to explore. Her sleuthing leads to revelations about her past. She quickly became interested in creating stories and images with computers and collaborated with Coktel to create her first adventure game. The result was Méwilo, in collaboration with Patrick Chamoiseau and Philippe Truca. The plot takes place in Saint-Pierre on May 7, 1902, around the time of the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée.

Building on the success of Méwilo, Tramis directed Freedom, about a slave who has one night to escape from a plantation. The game combines adventure and strategy: persuasion and alliances are combined tactical phases of confrontation, with bare hands or cutlasses. Tramis was soon promoted by Coktel Vision to manage various projects. After that, she returned to directing games with titles such as Geisha, Fascination and Lost in Time. With Pierre Gilhodes, she also created the three episodes of the series Gobliiins, and The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble. She later directed Urban Runner, collaborating with a film crew and overseeing digital editing and the creation of special effects. Tramis was involved in the creation of the ADI range for schoolchildren and college students, and since 2003 has created and managed Avantilles, a specialist in real-time 3D applications for the web.

She helped create the Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble in 1994 which is based after their near-annihilation of Earth during its last atomic war. The surviving human population went back to the center of the planet where the last known traces of life-sustaining warmth remained. Awaiting any surface radiation, centuries passed before the humans finally ventured back into the world above, discovering that their planet has sprouted a beautiful, overgrown jungle in their absence along with various races of obscure living things, including a peaceful race known as the Bouzouk, whom still differ from humans by their tails, pointed ears, and extraordinarily long noses, representing that of a bunny like species. In the societal structure of the Bouzouk, there was a King and a Council of Wisemen, seven mystics who had successfully maintained universal harmony by guarding the Chprotznog, a sacred containment unit used to channel and subsequently trap evil spirits. Having failed to learn their lesson from last time, the humans engaged waged war on the Bouzouk tribe in what is known as "The Great Battle". In a day, the humans destroyed the Bouzouk civilization, hurting many innocent civilians and looting their holy artifacts. The surviving Bouzouks were enslaved and forced to construct a new society for the humans.

She has multiple childhood educational and adventure games including, Abidou 1, 2 (1996). Abidou 1 and 2 are children learning games that is designed to introduce young adolescent children to number, shapes, and colors.

Tramis has also been a major voice in the French gaming community as she started that females in the industry aren't respected enough and that there is a substantial different in the ratio between males and females within the industry.

Distinctions

Muriel Tramis was appointed a Knight of the Legion of Honor on July 14, 2018. The distinction was awarded to her at the opening of Paris Games Week by Mounir Mahjoubi, then French Secretary of State at Digital, on October 25, 2018. She is the first woman and second-ever French game designer (the first being David Cage) to receive this distinction..

Gameography

• Méwilo (1987)
• Freedom (1988)
• Emmanuelle (1989)
• Geisha (1990)
• Fascination (1991)
• Lost in Time (1993)
• Urban Runner (1996)

Co-created with Pierre Gilhodes:

• Gobliiins (1991)
• Gobliins 2 (1992)
• Goblins Quest (1993)
• The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble (1994)