There is a huge amount to say on this; indeed, the whole topic of the strength and effectiveness of the French Resistance, and the amount of public support it did or did not command relative to support for collaboration with the Vichy regime, became the hottest political potato in postwar France. It remains a touchy subject even today.

Historians have spent decades unpicking and analysing the myths created in the immediate postwar period, when it was politically vital for the new Gaullist government to claim that the majority of French people had resisted occupation, that Paris had been freed by French forces "with the help of all France," and that the collaborationists of the Vichy regime were nothing but a "handful of scoundrels". Indeed, a significant counter-narrative did not emerge until the early 1970s, notably with the production of the documentary Le Chagrin et la Pitié, which charged that most French people “had been supine, cowardly, and only too frequently given to collaboration” between 1940 and 1944.

There were of course good reasons for the relative lack of resistance in the early period. Prior to 1943 allied victory seemed doubtful and, at best, a long way away, whereas German retaliation for resistance actions was swift, brutal and certain. Moreover, the powerful French communist party was restrained by the Nazi-Soviet Pact from anti-German action in the period 1939-41, and the 1.5 million French men who eventually did forced labour in Germany effectively comprised a huge group of hostages. (It's possible to argue, in fact, that fear of being deported to do work in Germany almost certainly drove more men into the resistance than simple patriotism did.)

It is undoubtedly the case that the great majority of those who joined the resistance did so after June 1944, and the majority of resistance actions took place after this date. Moreover, there are detailed regional studies that have produced some interesting results. For example, Paul Abrahams uses data compiled from the local archives at Annecy to show not only that more Frenchmen joined the Vichy Milice (collaborationist militia) in Haute Savoie than joined the resistance, but also that the local resistance carried out many more attacks on the district's tobacconists, to obtain supplies of cigarettes, than it did on the Germans.

All this is not to say that some French people did not join the resistance early, and struggle against occupation with staggering bravery in the face of terrible brutality on the German part – some readers may be aware of the career of Marc Bloch, one of the most important and influential historians of the last century, who was a noted French resistance leader and died for his country shortly after D-Day in one of the most touchingly heroic ways imaginable. But the main charges made by revisionists - who decry the Gaullist image of the resistance as all white, all male, and all patriot - are hard to dispute.

Sources

Paul Abrahams, La Haute-Savoie contre elle-même : 1939-1945 - Les Hauts-Savoyards vus par l'administration de Vichy (2006)

Robert Gildea, Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance (2015)

Rod Kedward, Resistance in Vichy France (1978)

Hello!

It's not a dumb question, and I'm glad you're showing interest in history. Given the popularity of the game in question, I'm sure these questions will be pretty popular.

While you wait for an in-depth answer, check this post by /u/CaptainPyjamaShark in a very similar discussion. It's a good starting point, and he cites the source, so you could check that out as well.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4larev/in_ww2_how_did_the_french_resistance_compare_to/d3m4n29/

Cheers.

MikeDash's post is very good. If you take the meaning of "effective" to be the usual military one of destroying the enemy and holding territory, the various Resistance groups were indeed not that effective. When they tried that, for example when the Franc-Tireur group tried to assemble a real army and attempted that in the Vercors without supplies or available reinforcements, it was predictably a complete disaster. Likewise, when the Resistance in Tulle thought that the Allied landing would let them dislodge the Germans there was a massacre. All this should not have been a surprise: the Resistance had no artillery, tanks, supply lines, support aircraft...

There is also a good argument to be made about the general stupidity of any guerrilla movement, because it uses the defenseless civilian population as its shield- the massacre of the population Oradour-sur-Glane was one of many predictable reprisals. The Resistance was also not unified- there were many groups and they were often mutually exclusive ( especially Catholics vs Communists) and directed sometimes by DeGaulle, sometimes by British Intelligence, sometimes by Stalin, sometimes by no one in particular, and they had varying purposes and goals. There was a brief moment when Jean Moulin was able to organize a cooperative movement- but he was betrayed, tortured and shot.

However, if you broaden the meaning of "effective" to mean useful, the Resistance begins to look better. It passed a lot of valuable intelligence on to Britain and the Allies. It manage to sabotage a fair bit of transportation. It also managed to usefully hide some people- not, alas, enough Jews ( though the French did manage to hide a lot) but certainly a lot of downed British pilots, and a lot of young men trying to avoid being sent to work in Germany.

When the Germans were in retreat, also, things changed. After the D-Day landing, the Resistance could fight a battle of movement and not try to hold territory- they were sometimes able to coordinate pretty well with the Allies , for example were very helpful in clearing the Germans out of Brittany. They also became a governing force when the Germans were pushed out, probably reduced some of the possible chaos that came after the end of the occupation.

TL:DR Was the Resistance effective? Not so much as an army, and not as much as they pretended to have been after the War. But they were useful.

Olivier Wieviorka: The French Resistance

Follow-up question: how accurate is this video by popular amateur historian Lindybeige on the subject?

Edit: Video summary-His main contention is that the French resistance could have easily turned into a civil war a la 1917 Russia or 36 Spain, with the various different groups being mostly interested in fighting and raiding each other than fighting the Germans.