When I was a teen, I wanted to grow up and become a game developer and one day perhaps work for Ubisoft. Prince of Persia (2003) was my favorite game as a kid.
Now, I cannot think of a more creatively bankrupt game studio. (Maybe Naughty Dog? They've been releasing the same games for like 12 years) I don't understand how they can fall so low and also remain in business. Who buys/plays their games?!
I worked for Ubisoft for 6 years and theres a combination of:
* the business reality being harder than you think
* certain peoples ego. (notably Serge Hascoet, and his pressure to push games to be the same; towers to unlock the map etc)
* Good intentions being misconstrued (uplay is designed to give people cheaper games while staying within the letter of the law of valves distribution platform)
The majority of people are really doing their best for the players: even the people you think are doing stupid things.
I think AAA game development has to end to be honest, the risk is so high that most publishers play it so safe that in the end everything is milquetoast and overpriced
> Good intentions being misconstrued (uplay is designed to give people cheaper games while staying within the letter of the law of valves distribution platform)
This may have been the official line but I don't buy that the reason that Uplay was created was to "give people cheaper games" or that it had to do anything with "good intentions". No player ever asked for yet another launcher.
> The majority of people are really doing their best for the players: even the people you think are doing stupid things.
The majority of individual developers, sure. They don't call the shots when it comes to deciding the anti-features put into the game though. And some individual developers end up implementing those anti-features.
> the business reality being harder than you think
> I think AAA game development has to end to be honest, the risk is so high that most publishers play it so safe that in the end everything is milquetoast and overpriced
The ever-increasing scope (especially graphics wise) is something that game development studios and/or their publishers decide on though. They could instead choose to have multiple more reasonably scoped but less risk adverse games though. For all its checkbox design in the main titles Ubisoft does do some of that though.
It's also hard to empathize iwth the business reality being harde when the leadership of these giant game companies rake in ungodly amounts of money. That's really the main problem with the AAA industry: the ones in charge generally only seem to care about increasing their own net worth rather than have any pride in the games they create.
Same story with Blizzard - I used to be the biggest fanboy, spending thousands of hours with SC,WC3,WoW and Diablo.
Ever since they got acquired by Activision it’s just been very disappointing.
Now I don’t even check out their new releases anymore.
Assassin's Creed player here. The AC series excels at rendering famous places at specific times in history, and then letting you explore them on your own terms. The historical and environmental detail in each (mainline) AC game is amazing.
It's never perfect, of course. But who else is even trying to offer the same experience? *
I also play lots of indie games (shout out to CrossCode, Soma, Signalis, and Tangledeep particularly) and lots of JRPGs and puzzle/detective games. Never bought any Call of Duty (I will admit to renting CoD4 on Wii once).
Sometimes people like things you don't like, and that's OK. You don't need to feel superior about it.
* While the question is intended as rhetorical, I would like to hear of other games in this particular space.
Behold the Prince of Gosplan written in 1992 and inspired by the original Prince of Persia game published in 1989 by Broderbund. There was no Ubi back then and that the franchise is still being "owned" is an insult.
met someone who worked at Ubisoft once at a party....I realised why their games suck and they are more interested in taking all the money they can get....dude had a coke problem and was bragging about being a senior dev working on their latest title whilst throwing a 'bruh' out in every other sentence and stumbling around the party like he was king of the world because of Ubisoft.....bad culture. bad incentives, and when asked about development couldn't even explain anything other than buzz words and was more interested in how much money their micro payments would get them
