after careful consideration of the management decisions that brought us here, we concluded that 1600 layoffs of low level employees is the solution. those who stay will crunch harder for the same pay to make up for any lost labor so we can keep churning out slop that definitely has nothing to do with our crisis.
They’ll fire the developers that implemented the unpopular features (that they didn’t want to build in the first place but were forced upon them from executives, who, by the way, are due for their end of year bonuses!!)
What it really comes down to is that this type of “safe” game design where you rehash the same game over and over again for 20 years thing used to make a shitload of money, that’s why they all do it, and now it doesn’t. Or at least, they’re discovering that there’s a mathematical maximum amount of times you can rehash something without innovating. And not doing that is too huge a pivot for a huge lumbering company like Ubsioft to make on a reasonable timescale.
This is what’s supposed to happen though. When not enough people buy games to make them profitable, the games have to change, or Ubisoft goes under. Either is fine.
And I feel like half of that 20 years was based on FOMO. “I better get the next Assassin’s Creed or I’ll miss out”, and then it’s all the same crap but they still sold a million of them. People do eventually wise up to FOMO.
Miss out on what? Unity was a buggy mess on launch, skip, the British one was a snorefest. By the time of the reboots, Ghost of Tsushima, Elden Ring and BotW already came out
Nah in this case this is real. The board is investigating the executive leadership, two separate entities. It’s like corporate investigating stores management, in a way. This could mean executives getting fired
I want to reaffirm that we are an entertainment-first company, creating games for the broadest possible audience, and our goal is not to push any specific agenda.
With more people playing video games than ever before, it is important for us to help build an inclusive entertainment industry that reflects the diversity of our players.
It’s important to have a diverse workforce, especially in entertainment, because people with different backgrounds will have different ideas. Ideas are the lifeblood of how we improve things, and especially creativity. You people who can’t see this are destined to fail. If you think this is evil rather than smart business to ensure you have the greatest strengths through differences of opinion are really blind. All of history has pretty much shown that diversity breeds creativity and growth. Hegemony breeds stagnation.
Nope. It’s important to have a skilled workforce in gamedev. Hiring based on gender and sexuality means you purposefully pick lower skilled workers in order to fill a diversity quota. Being in gamedev and having lead a team of juniors I can say this with confidence. Skill and motivation is everything, and their genders and sexuality mean zero. In fact, you shouldn’t even see their genders or sexuality. Every worker regardless of background has a unique view, and can provide creative solutions without having to be reduced to their genders, sexuality, skin color.
Hiring based on gender and sexuality is discrimination, and illegal for a reason (and these companies get around it by using unpaid internships). It breeds hate and extremism.
Also, going to need to ask for some source of that claim of yours because historically the most creative and successful games have been made by entirely asian male teams or entirely white male teams, and games with diverse teams have been failing miserably.
Hiring based on gender and sexuality means you purposefully pick lower skilled workers in order to fill a diversity quota.
Incorrect. It means that you pick the best candidate, and when they’re equal you don’t just choose the white man like we always have in the past.
I’m a straight white man. I have no issue with diversity because it makes everyone better.
Every worker regardless of background has a unique view, and can provide creative solutions without having to be reduced to their genders, sexuality, skin color.
Sure, that’s true because everyone has a different background. However, a straight white Christian man would likely never think of some of the things a gay Muslim would think of, because they have faced different issues and been taught different things.
For example, there’s an issue with IQ testing, where the tests were designed for typical western education. However, different cultures can be better or worse at certain questions just by how they’re phrased. Some cultures may think of something geometrically. For example, all math by the ancient Greeks were done with shapes, not numbers. They would solve math problems in totally different and unique ways than a typical modern day western educated person would. They aren’t less smart for it. Their brains were just wired differently because of the way they were educated.
Not every person thinks the same. Cultures, education, oppression, trauma, pleasures, and everything else effect how you think and you you’ll think of. Diversity in thought allows us to take advantage of this as much as possible.
I missed when they’ weren’t so focused on development and more publishing focused. They published some bangers in the late 90s/early 2000s. Grandia comes to mind and a ton of Dreamcast games.
All of the big publishers from 20 years ago doubled down on a couple of key franchises that make the most money and appeal to the widest demographic, rather than the old strategy of having a diverse portfolio across most genres.
I don’t recall the name but there was a farcry game on original Xbox that came with a map maker for couch PvP. It literally let you shape the topography and place any asset in the game, easily the best map maker I ever used.
I believe that was FarCry2. It was a really cool map editor. I wish more games still shipped those. I had so much fun with that one and Halo. I don’t know why that’s gone out of style, with the popularity of Roblox, Minecraft, and stuff, clearly kids still want to make things. (I haven’t played console in over a decade, so it might be popular still, but it doesn’t seem like it.)
Because things like black protagonists with hip-hop music in the background make no sense in a feudal japanese setting and people are sick of games being abused as vehicles for morality preaching.
But games about dudes in medieval-looking sci-fo power armor stomping around WW1-styled soldiers do?
And that doesn’t preach any morals? But a black guy in a samurai setting does? How come one does, but the other does not?
Also…
An example from borderlanfs two could be Sir Hammerlock, who was introduced as a normal (for borderlands) character early on and later in a side quest was revealed to be gay in passing.
Maybe don’t make it as readily apparent how much you internalized gayness being abnormal. Telling. You wouldn’t write sentences like this if that wasn’t a normal thought process for you, since you did probably not have to actively consider your wording.
It cannot be front and center and normal at the same time.
Why not? If it’s normal, any possible identity and any possible element will be front and center every so often, no? That’s what normality means after all? Something has to be front and center, and if everything is normal, everything will appear there repeatedly?
I know there are some changes you can do in settings. I mostly did snowboarding and since I snowboard irl I found the controls were close to how you’d control your feet on an actual board. So that probably helped ^ ^
But rider’s republic mixed it all up so I get what you mean
I bet at first it seems like multiple consultancies, but the more they investigate, the more they realize it’s just minor variations on one consultancy copy-pasted around the map, and at a certain point, investigating each one just feels same-y and boring.
How about just the completely entitled attitude of the execs that think they can tell us how to enjoy something. Only to then whine that nobody wants to buy their 70 euro no better than mid game
9 years old is pretty old for a video game. When it first came out, the goofiest thing about it was the guy who could heal you by throwing a syringe at you. Now everyone has goofy super powers and things that would never make sense in the same world as something like a Jack Ryan novel.
My god Siege was good for the first few years. Intoxicatingly good multiplayer. Too bad they fucked it up trying to make it more CoD like. For example, I used to play with a completely hidden hud because it was so immersive and fun. Now it’s like rainbow six and Roblox had a baby and the weird game popped out. I can’t even hide my hud or crosshair any longer
they did a little bit of this to hell let loose. The primary thing that bothered me was how when the game came out there was no hit indicator whatsoever. no visual no sound nothing. it made for some very interesting gameplay. then they added it indicators, even if you’re like 100 yards away from somebody you can hear this bullet go “whap” if it hits them
Honestly, Outlaws has flaws, BUUUUT it’s fun as hell. It’s a 7/10 game, but it’s fun. I enjoy my time with it even though I see some glitches here or there, or that the lip sync is a little jank.
It’s a big ass Star Wars game (with no AC towers hooray!) where you get to rub shoulders with scoundrels and play Sabacc and visit honestly cool locations that are visually impressive.
I feel like most of the issues it has is probably a function of “we need this game out by X date” versus the devs’ ability.
I finished the main story last night and I basically agree with you. It’s got plenty of issues, but overall it’s fun. It is neither the 9/10 game of most reviews I saw nor the 4/10 game that people want it to be.
I think my main issue is that it wants to have a story about the underworld and how you can’t trust anyone and you’re a huge underdog just trying to survive but it doesn’t want to commit to it. It feels thematically janky in places and ways that feel design-by-committee. It fills the shoes of Shadows of the Empire decently enough, but it feels like it was trying to be 1313 and failed.
I have this feeling that once it starts going on more sales and more people play it the general consensus will be that’s it’s a pretty solid game. I also imagine like a lot of these games there will be a patch in the next month that fixes a litany of issues.
You’re right it’s kind of interesting that the factions don’t really add a lot of meaningful gameplay mechanics, but oh well. At first I was like, “I’m not working with the Pykes AT ALL because I know what happens in your spice mines.” But you end up just being friends with all of them as needed (to get their rewards).
Just having this big coat of Star Wars paint over this otherwise fairly standard action/shooter/open world game really does make it more fun, though. I still have a bit to go in the story, but I’m just basting around cleaning up side quests right now because it’s fun to do.
Also to promote a sense of community and close cooperation we’re moving to an open office plan. (I.e. packed in like sardines to glorified picnic tables with hot seating and noise everywhere.)
Finally, let me address some of the polarized comments around Ubisoft lately. I want to reaffirm that we are an entertainment-first company, creating games for the broadest possible audience, and our goal is not to push any specific agenda. We remain committed to creating games for fans and players that everyone can enjoy.”
Creating games for the broadest possible audience is what has made Ubisoft games so lackluster in recent years, and I think players are tired of games not targeting a specific niche. It feels these games are full time jobs in themselves with how much needs to be done to complete/100% it, and I think that formula is now stale.
I’ll be interested to see what results of this investigation. Hopefully better art, but I am cynical
I think I remember Just Cause 2 had it so the top achievement in the game was only for 70% completion because they knew they had such a ridiculously huge map.
Breath of the Wild aims the same way - they like having you come across a bunch of Korok seeds while traveling, but not scouring the land with a magnifying glass looking for them.
This is the part they’re actually getting at. Not that the fundamental game design is for everyone (which, yes, is what they try and fail at), but rather they’re responding to people who think they’re failing because they put a woman as the protagonist in some game or another.
it’s always really annoying when there’s the assumption that the existing team is not aware of and trying to fix problems. I hate when I have a problem and I’m taking steps to fix it and then somebody else steps in to say “let’s figure out how to fix your problem”.
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No, this is going to be one of those “our stocks are tanking and investors want someone’s head on a pike” sort of meeting.
after careful consideration of the management decisions that brought us here, we concluded that 1600 layoffs of low level employees is the solution. those who stay will crunch harder for the same pay to make up for any lost labor so we can keep churning out slop that definitely has nothing to do with our crisis.
Nah, this is about money. They’ll definitely find a group of underpaid employees to fire.
They’ll fire the developers that implemented the unpopular features (that they didn’t want to build in the first place but were forced upon them from executives, who, by the way, are due for their end of year bonuses!!)
What it really comes down to is that this type of “safe” game design where you rehash the same game over and over again for 20 years thing used to make a shitload of money, that’s why they all do it, and now it doesn’t. Or at least, they’re discovering that there’s a mathematical maximum amount of times you can rehash something without innovating. And not doing that is too huge a pivot for a huge lumbering company like Ubsioft to make on a reasonable timescale.
This is what’s supposed to happen though. When not enough people buy games to make them profitable, the games have to change, or Ubisoft goes under. Either is fine.
Honestly the quality of games is the tip of the iceberg.
Well, it also doesn’t help how much they are “accidentally” insulting multiple racial groups trying to make an Assassins’ Creed game.
I don’t think they’re doing that.
Seems like it to me
And I feel like half of that 20 years was based on FOMO. “I better get the next Assassin’s Creed or I’ll miss out”, and then it’s all the same crap but they still sold a million of them. People do eventually wise up to FOMO.
Miss out on what? Unity was a buggy mess on launch, skip, the British one was a snorefest. By the time of the reboots, Ghost of Tsushima, Elden Ring and BotW already came out
“The Board has investigated itself and found no evidence of incompetence.”
Nah in this case this is real. The board is investigating the executive leadership, two separate entities. It’s like corporate investigating stores management, in a way. This could mean executives getting fired
Good fuck em
They’ll get payouts which is more money than you and I will ever make combined. I’m hungry. When do we eat?
Maybe they should try not making crap games. All that money and they can’t get decent voice actors or writers.
Press X to doubt
What agenda is that referencing? I’m out of the loop.
https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/company/careers/interns-graduates/develop-at-ubisoft
Oh look. Unpaid internships.
First of all, discriminatory hiring.
second of all,
Sounds like an agenda to me.
It’s important to have a diverse workforce, especially in entertainment, because people with different backgrounds will have different ideas. Ideas are the lifeblood of how we improve things, and especially creativity. You people who can’t see this are destined to fail. If you think this is evil rather than smart business to ensure you have the greatest strengths through differences of opinion are really blind. All of history has pretty much shown that diversity breeds creativity and growth. Hegemony breeds stagnation.
Nope. It’s important to have a skilled workforce in gamedev. Hiring based on gender and sexuality means you purposefully pick lower skilled workers in order to fill a diversity quota. Being in gamedev and having lead a team of juniors I can say this with confidence. Skill and motivation is everything, and their genders and sexuality mean zero. In fact, you shouldn’t even see their genders or sexuality. Every worker regardless of background has a unique view, and can provide creative solutions without having to be reduced to their genders, sexuality, skin color.
Hiring based on gender and sexuality is discrimination, and illegal for a reason (and these companies get around it by using unpaid internships). It breeds hate and extremism.
Also, going to need to ask for some source of that claim of yours because historically the most creative and successful games have been made by entirely asian male teams or entirely white male teams, and games with diverse teams have been failing miserably.
Incorrect. It means that you pick the best candidate, and when they’re equal you don’t just choose the white man like we always have in the past.
I’m a straight white man. I have no issue with diversity because it makes everyone better.
Sure, that’s true because everyone has a different background. However, a straight white Christian man would likely never think of some of the things a gay Muslim would think of, because they have faced different issues and been taught different things.
For example, there’s an issue with IQ testing, where the tests were designed for typical western education. However, different cultures can be better or worse at certain questions just by how they’re phrased. Some cultures may think of something geometrically. For example, all math by the ancient Greeks were done with shapes, not numbers. They would solve math problems in totally different and unique ways than a typical modern day western educated person would. They aren’t less smart for it. Their brains were just wired differently because of the way they were educated.
Not every person thinks the same. Cultures, education, oppression, trauma, pleasures, and everything else effect how you think and you you’ll think of. Diversity in thought allows us to take advantage of this as much as possible.
I suspect you and I have different appreciations of reality and I’d prefer to avoid further conversation.
I can’t name you a single Ubisoft game that i’ve had any interest in buying, in the last decade
I missed when they’ weren’t so focused on development and more publishing focused. They published some bangers in the late 90s/early 2000s. Grandia comes to mind and a ton of Dreamcast games.
All of the big publishers from 20 years ago doubled down on a couple of key franchises that make the most money and appeal to the widest demographic, rather than the old strategy of having a diverse portfolio across most genres.
The last Ubisoft game I bought was Far Cry 3 in 2012. None of their games since then have even remotely interested me.
Also unpopular opinion incoming; Far Cry 1 was the best Far Cry game in the series and it was made by Crytek, the makers of Crysis.
That’s not an unpopular opinion, that’s just a well known fact.
Far Cry 3 loses all its steam the moment Vaas is out of the picture.
Which shows exactly why it was good: Michael Mando.
I actually really enjoyed Far Cry 3. But Far Cry 1 just holds a special place in my heart. It’s just such a good game and still holds up today.
I don’t recall the name but there was a farcry game on original Xbox that came with a map maker for couch PvP. It literally let you shape the topography and place any asset in the game, easily the best map maker I ever used.
I believe that was FarCry2. It was a really cool map editor. I wish more games still shipped those. I had so much fun with that one and Halo. I don’t know why that’s gone out of style, with the popularity of Roblox, Minecraft, and stuff, clearly kids still want to make things. (I haven’t played console in over a decade, so it might be popular still, but it doesn’t seem like it.)
tbh I bought far cry 4, but because it was at a heavy discount and Ij ended up paying less than (the USD equivalent of) 4 dollars
Prince of Persia came out this year and I would say that it’s one of the best metroidvania games ever made
FC New Dawn was actually really good
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Why would firing DEI consultants improve the work?
In what particular way do they differ?
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But games about dudes in medieval-looking sci-fo power armor stomping around WW1-styled soldiers do?
And that doesn’t preach any morals? But a black guy in a samurai setting does? How come one does, but the other does not?
Also…
Maybe don’t make it as readily apparent how much you internalized gayness being abnormal. Telling. You wouldn’t write sentences like this if that wasn’t a normal thought process for you, since you did probably not have to actively consider your wording.
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But like you say, if you want to normalize it, shouldn’t it be front and center then? Since that’s part of being normal, also being front and center?
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Why not? If it’s normal, any possible identity and any possible element will be front and center every so often, no? That’s what normality means after all? Something has to be front and center, and if everything is normal, everything will appear there repeatedly?
last time i wrote something similar to yours,the left wing nutjobs came rushing in,guns blazing.
god damn wokies.
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Always suprised when I remember that WatchDogs 2 is from Ubisoft. Such a well made game, i played the crap out of it twice
Edit: awe man Steep was super fun too
Did we play the same game?
Maybe they fixed it? I didn’t play day 1 so I’m not sure how it was then (played maybe 2-3 years after it’s release)
I just found it soul less and unbalanced. But then again I was going into it early when they where still calling it the “GTA killer”.
I played it a few months after launch due to the gaming being included with my GPU and I really enjoyed it.
That was my experience. Got it at GameStop in sale after it had released, played through the whole thing, then I went and played the first one.
I think I like the second better, but the first one is good for what it is.
I never played Legion.
I wanted to like Steep but the Controller experience, even on the Steam deck is so horrible I didn’t last a full hour
I know there are some changes you can do in settings. I mostly did snowboarding and since I snowboard irl I found the controls were close to how you’d control your feet on an actual board. So that probably helped ^ ^
But rider’s republic mixed it all up so I get what you mean
I bet they will find embezzlement, possibly funnelled through consultancies.
“The consumers are wrong, it’s those damn Millenials again”
Followed by continuing to change nothing and fading into obscurity like Atari or Commodore. (hopefully)
It needs to happen to all the big developers.
I bet at first it seems like multiple consultancies, but the more they investigate, the more they realize it’s just minor variations on one consultancy copy-pasted around the map, and at a certain point, investigating each one just feels same-y and boring.
How about just the completely entitled attitude of the execs that think they can tell us how to enjoy something. Only to then whine that nobody wants to buy their 70 euro no better than mid game
They do damn near 10/10 work when they give a fuck, Thats probably the worst part.
Siege was damn near perfect as a tactical competitive shooter for the first few years. The Division was great, Just Cause was enormous fun and so on.
The problem is they hit a winner, and then milk it and milk it and milk it until we hate it or them.
I’m old enough to remember when Siege was a Rainbow Six game.
Wait, that’s old now?
9 years old is pretty old for a video game. When it first came out, the goofiest thing about it was the guy who could heal you by throwing a syringe at you. Now everyone has goofy super powers and things that would never make sense in the same world as something like a Jack Ryan novel.
My god Siege was good for the first few years. Intoxicatingly good multiplayer. Too bad they fucked it up trying to make it more CoD like. For example, I used to play with a completely hidden hud because it was so immersive and fun. Now it’s like rainbow six and Roblox had a baby and the weird game popped out. I can’t even hide my hud or crosshair any longer
Yes it was. It was so frigging good.
they did a little bit of this to hell let loose. The primary thing that bothered me was how when the game came out there was no hit indicator whatsoever. no visual no sound nothing. it made for some very interesting gameplay. then they added it indicators, even if you’re like 100 yards away from somebody you can hear this bullet go “whap” if it hits them
I love the division 1 and 2 but the first game had some MAJOR bullet soak issues for the first half-year of the game’s lifetime.
Massive always does good work despite Ubisoft, in my opinion.
Massive are the ones that made Star Wars Outlaws - so it seems the world disagrees with you.
I wasn’t so interested in Outlaws, but I’ve sometimes thought the criticism was slightly overblown. It looks a lot better than some other Ubi games.
Honestly, Outlaws has flaws, BUUUUT it’s fun as hell. It’s a 7/10 game, but it’s fun. I enjoy my time with it even though I see some glitches here or there, or that the lip sync is a little jank.
It’s a big ass Star Wars game (with no AC towers hooray!) where you get to rub shoulders with scoundrels and play Sabacc and visit honestly cool locations that are visually impressive.
I feel like most of the issues it has is probably a function of “we need this game out by X date” versus the devs’ ability.
but it’s third person
I finished the main story last night and I basically agree with you. It’s got plenty of issues, but overall it’s fun. It is neither the 9/10 game of most reviews I saw nor the 4/10 game that people want it to be.
I think my main issue is that it wants to have a story about the underworld and how you can’t trust anyone and you’re a huge underdog just trying to survive but it doesn’t want to commit to it. It feels thematically janky in places and ways that feel design-by-committee. It fills the shoes of Shadows of the Empire decently enough, but it feels like it was trying to be 1313 and failed.
I have this feeling that once it starts going on more sales and more people play it the general consensus will be that’s it’s a pretty solid game. I also imagine like a lot of these games there will be a patch in the next month that fixes a litany of issues.
You’re right it’s kind of interesting that the factions don’t really add a lot of meaningful gameplay mechanics, but oh well. At first I was like, “I’m not working with the Pykes AT ALL because I know what happens in your spice mines.” But you end up just being friends with all of them as needed (to get their rewards).
Just having this big coat of Star Wars paint over this otherwise fairly standard action/shooter/open world game really does make it more fun, though. I still have a bit to go in the story, but I’m just basting around cleaning up side quests right now because it’s fun to do.
It seems like a very polarizing game, you either really enjoy it or not at all.
Ah yes the “sears” method of going out of business.
Ubisoft isn’t making money. That’s something wrong as far as the board is concerned.
Clearly what they need is more management layers and SCRUM masters to streamline the game creation process.
And of course, the preferred way is to do it at the office, 5 days a week.
How else do we foster a sense of team if all the devs are not in the office 5 days a week?
Also to promote a sense of community and close cooperation we’re moving to an open office plan. (I.e. packed in like sardines to glorified picnic tables with hot seating and noise everywhere.)
We will be installing clackball tables every 20 feet
and a dozen more external contractors will def make their games better
Don’t forget AGILE. That should solve all of their problems, right?
They’re going lean so they’re firing half their workforce so the rest can produce more work. Don’t worry though middle management is safe
Creating games for the broadest possible audience is what has made Ubisoft games so lackluster in recent years, and I think players are tired of games not targeting a specific niche. It feels these games are full time jobs in themselves with how much needs to be done to complete/100% it, and I think that formula is now stale.
I’ll be interested to see what results of this investigation. Hopefully better art, but I am cynical
100% is itself a bit of a misleading target.
I think I remember Just Cause 2 had it so the top achievement in the game was only for 70% completion because they knew they had such a ridiculously huge map.
Breath of the Wild aims the same way - they like having you come across a bunch of Korok seeds while traveling, but not scouring the land with a magnifying glass looking for them.
Just Cause 2 was insanely huge.
This is the part they’re actually getting at. Not that the fundamental game design is for everyone (which, yes, is what they try and fail at), but rather they’re responding to people who think they’re failing because they put a woman as the protagonist in some game or another.
it’s always really annoying when there’s the assumption that the existing team is not aware of and trying to fix problems. I hate when I have a problem and I’m taking steps to fix it and then somebody else steps in to say “let’s figure out how to fix your problem”.