Publishing house Ubisoft responded to criticism of their games by players and journalists for the monotony and monotonous gameplay. A detailed strategy of the company was provided by the VCG portal with reference to informed sources.
Council of Elders
For the past 20 years, the development process of all Ubisoft games has been controlled by a team of editors. This is a group of about 100 designers and producers, which is based in a Paris office.
The editorial team influenced the entire production chain within the publishing house, advising developers on design, script, and so on. The growing influence of the group has led to the formation of a unified vision of Ubisoft, when successful elements from one game migrate to another.
It is the editors who are to blame for the fact that most of the games of the French company have an open world, online elements and a plot inspired by real events, but avoiding political statements. It even reached the point of absurdity when whole elements of the interface wandered from one series of games to another.
Grand failure and its consequences
Over the years, this approach has paid off, but in 2019 everything changed. After weak sales The division 2 and failure Ghost recon: breakpoint the publisher’s shares crashed by 20%, and Ubisoft management decided to postpone releases of its flagship projects and do restructuring.
In the fall of 2019, the head of the publishing house Yves Guillaume pointed out three key lessons he learned from Breakpoint and The Division 2 errors:
- the company should increase the pause between releases of new games of a particular series in order to maintain interest from gamers;
- the company should devote more time to the development of projects and the introduction of unique innovations in the gameplay to ensure an optimal gaming experience;
- the company must make each of the games more different from the other.
At the same time, Yves Guillaume actively defended microtransaction system in Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, which allows you to buy for real money almost everything that is in the game. He argued that the developers only wanted to provide players with “options”, and Ubisoft was inspired by the success of monetization. Wildlandsin which players actively used the in-game store.
“We gave more options at the beginning of Breakpoint. We understand that this was too much for the store and that it was not appreciated, but this was due to the fact that the players spent time in the store and bought things in Wildlands, and our teams thought that they could give them more opportunities, “said the top manager.
Guillaume added that the company’s philosophy is to allow players to complete the game 100% without spending extra money.
“We don’t have a P2W mechanic in games,” he claimed.
Crazy atmosphere
The above findings became a signal for action. Thus, the composition of the drafting group will be expanded, and the principles of work will be revised. This should allow its members to become more flexible and interact more effectively with internal studios. The main goal is to make Ubisoft games more diverse.
In November 2019, a journalist Kotaku Jason schreier told that Ubisoft has completely changed its mentality. Now the company requires employees to prove the project’s superuniqueness and the presence of non-standard aspects in it during the pitching of ideas.
“Very insane atmosphere,” the insider said.
Schreyer also talked about the reasons for the transfer of a number of games. So u Gods & monsters There were very tight development deadlines. This is due to the fact that the team was responsible for the project Assassin’s Creed: Odysseythat came out in 2018. More on E3 2019 the developers admitted that with Gods & Monsters everything is very “confusing.”
Concerning Watch Dogs: Legion, then the reasons for its transfer are directly related to the unique opportunity to take control of any non-player character. This mechanics turned out to be very complex and difficult to implement.
VCG sources also said that the project was mothballed from Ubisoft montreal, which was in the late stages of creation due to a reassessment of production processes. In addition, the game services under development were redesigned to stand out from the rest.
The changes also affected the shooter support team Rainbow Six: Siege, which remains one of the most successful games of the French company. In December 2019 was announcedwhat that creative director Xavier Marquisbrand director Alexander Remy and a number of employees will be involved in other Ubisoft projects.
The updated team will be headed by a game director Leroy Atanassoff. He said that he will expand the game universes. Apparently, this is a cooperative spin-off Rainbow Six: Quarantine.
It is known that a new project is being developed by the studio. Ubisoft milanwhich until then is exclusive to Nintendo switch released a great turn-based strategy Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. Reporters noticed that the team is recruiting new employees to develop a new AAA-level game.
New principles for editors
The editorial team will continue to be led by Chief Creative Officer Serge Haskot, but the number of his deputies will be increased to seven. They will be given more autonomy, which will allow Haskot to take a broader look at current projects, eliminating the need to monitor each of them individually.
Each of the deputies will work with a specific franchise – with the ability to make independent decisions. The chief creative director must verify the work done at key stages. As planned by top managers, such a system will give each series a personality. Moreover, the presence of editors will be expanded outside of Paris.
According to the old scheme, one main designer and one main producer were attached to each project, who provided their recommendations while working in the capital of France. But the managers did not have autonomy, and in the end they followed all the instructions of Haskot.
“In the previous editorial system, it very often turned out that the ideas for each game came from just one or two people. That’s why you see so many similarities in games, this is the same taste and opinion that is reproduced,” the insider explained.
Serzh Haskot’s alternate staff will include the current vice president of the drafting group Tommy Francoisas well as a group of creative directors from Canada: who worked on Child of light Patrick Plordas well as working on Splinter cell Maxim Beland. The latter returned to Ubisoft after a year of work in Epic games specially for this post.
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