Frima Studio is a Canadian digital entertainment studio. Headquartered in

Quebec City Quebec City ( or ; french: Ville de Québec), officially Québec (), is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the Communauté métrop ...

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

and founded in 2003, the company develops

video games Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...

across a variety of platforms. Frima also produces animation for television and film. In 2010, Frima was noted as one of the fastest-growing companies in Canada by

Profit Profit may refer to: Business and law * Profit (accounting), the difference between the purchase price and the costs of bringing to market * Profit (economics), normal profit and economic profit * Profit (real property), a nonpossessory intere ...

History

The company was founded in

in 2003 by Steve Couture, Philippe Bégin and Christian Daigle in the midst of the

dotcom crash The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compos ...

. Originally, the name Frima comes from the French word
frimas
" which is the layer of frost that forms around windows during winter. This is due to the fact that the studio made its debut in the poorly-insulated apartment that the three founders shared. Frima has notably developed flash games for many famous intellectual properties, including

Harry Potter ''Harry Potter'' is a series of seven fantasy literature, fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young Magician (fantasy), wizard, Harry Potter (character), Harry Potter, and his friends ...

and

Looney Tunes ''Looney Tunes'' is an American Animated cartoon, animated comedy short film series produced by Warner Bros. starting from 1930 to 1969, concurrently with its partner series ''Merrie Melodies'', during the golden age of American animation.

. In 2008, Frima acquired Humagade, a mobile game developer. Shortly after, the studio was merged with the main Frima office. In 2009, with the opening of a second studio in

Matane Matane is a town on the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec, Canada, on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River at the mouth of the Matane River. The town is the seat for the La Matanie Regional County Municipality. In addition to Matane itself, the ...

, Frima had an estimate of 265 full-time employees. Later that year, they became the beneficiary of a $2 million joint investment between the company and the Government of Quebec to fund employee training. This resulted in the creation of 147 new jobs over the next three years, and the maintenance of 201 pre‐existing production‐oriented jobs. In June 2011, the Matane studio was shut down. Frima cited the difficulty of attracting talent to the area as the primary reason. In August of that year, Frima acquired Volta, an animation, concept art and design studio. The division was sold to

Keywords Studios Keywords Studios plc is an Irish video game industry services company based in Leopardstown. Founded in 1998 by Giorgio Guastalla and Teresa Luppino, the company initially provided localisation services for business software before transitionin ...

for $5.25 million in 2016. Frima stated the profit would allow them to further focus on internal animation. During Frima's ownership, the two collaborated on a number of projects, such as the 2015

Bionicle Bionicle was a line of Lego construction toys, marketed primarily towards 8-to-16-year-olds. The line originally launched in 2001 as a subsidiary of Lego's Technic series. Over the following decade, it became one of Lego's biggest-selling prop ...

relaunch, where Volta handled the

animated television series An animated series is a set of Animation, animated works with a common series title, usually related to one another. These episodes should typically share the same main characters, some different secondary characters and a basic theme. Series can ...

while Frima developed the mobile video game. In 2014, the company's Quebec City head office moved to the former television studios of

TQS Noovo is a Canadian French-language terrestrial television network owned by the Bell Media subsidiary of BCE Inc. The network has five owned-and-operated and three affiliated stations throughout Quebec, although it can also be seen over-the-ai ...

owned-and-operated station CFAP-TV in the

Saint-Roch Saint-Roch may refer to: In Canada: *Saint-Roch, Quebec City, a neighbourhood of Quebec City *Saint-Roch-de-l'Achigan, Quebec, a municipality *Saint-Roch-de-Mékinac, Quebec, a municipality *Saint-Roch-de-Richelieu, Quebec, a municipality *Saint-Ro ...

neighbourhood. By then, Frima had grown to over 350 employees. In April 2015, the company received a $7.5 million investment from

Média-Participations Média-Participations is a French media concern, controlled by a Belgian holding concern, specialized in Franco-Belgian comics. It has some forty publishers in its portfolio, including Dupuis, Dargaud, Le Lombard, Fleurus (publisher), Fleurus, La ...

and

Fonds de solidarité FTQ The largest development capital network in the province, the Fonds de solidarité FTQ was created on the initiative of the FTQ, Québec's largest central labour body. As of Novembre 30, 2022, the Fonds held $17.8 billion in net assets and ha ...

. The following November, Frima opened an additional studio in

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

. On February 22, 2017, the Montreal studio was shuttered as Frima laid off 60 employees. The company's total headcount was reduced to 250. The following April, Couture stepped down as CEO. Daigle replaced him until Martin Carrier was appointed as CEO and president in August 2017.

Softography

Original productions

Console games

Virtual worlds and CMMOs

Social and web games

Smartphone games

Animation

Development services

Virtual worlds and CMMOs

Social and web games

Console games

Smartphone games

Animation and special FX

Technologies

Frima has been working with the latest version of

Adobe Flash Player Adobe Flash Player (known in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome as Shockwave Flash) is Software, computer software for viewing multimedia contents, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming media, streaming audio and vide ...

. Frima was selected by Adobe as a Molehill pre-release partner. The SnowStorm Gaming Grid allows the creation of customizable social games and MMOGs. The NorthStar Dashboard is a set of data tracking tools used to monitor key metrics linked to an online application. The IceField 3D Engine allows the creation of in-browser 3D experiences using hardware acceleration. The IceWave 2D Platform is used to easily and seamlessly deploy a project on multiple platforms.

References

External links

Frima Studio's official website

An article on A Space Shooter for 2 Bucks!
{{Animation industry in Canada Canadian companies established in 2003 2003 establishments in Quebec Companies based in Quebec City Video game companies established in 2003 Video game companies of Canada Video game development companies Canadian animation studios