UBIsoft in potential financial trouble

cheapchips said:
You weren't supposed to fact check.
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Thank you for explaining the legal process.

Also, Yasuke is a folk hero at worst, and probably OK to use as a character in a science fiction video game. He's also been in game developed by Japanese developers described as "historical simulation" games, even as a playable character in a game called "Samurai Warriors". Perhaps his stature and adventures have been romanticized and embellished by western society, who knows, but the Assassin's Creed games have have a time travel machine and freedom vs control plot lifted from Trancers. And while Trancers might be the greatest Christmas movie ever produced, it's not a definitive history of anything. Just like Assassin's Creed.
 
Yasuke as far as I can tell historically was basically a fascination for a Japanese lord that included him in his retinue to show off. He was there a only a year and was given an honorary title of "Samurai" by the lord. The depiction in AC is seemingly very different and some extreme liberties taken to make him a main character.
 
eastmen said:
I saw a play in which a black man played Hamilton , does that make the real Hamilton black ?
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Not knowing American history, that really threw me! I thought Hamilton was born to a slave, particularly how his childhood was portrayed with a black mother in a black community.
 
see colon said:
Thank you for explaining the legal process.

Also, Yasuke is a folk hero at worst, and probably OK to use as a character in a science fiction video game. He's also been in game developed by Japanese developers described as "historical simulation" games, even as a playable character in a game called "Samurai Warriors". Perhaps his stature and adventures have been romanticized and embellished by western society, who knows, but the Assassin's Creed games have have a time travel machine and freedom vs control plot lifted from Trancers. And while Trancers might be the greatest Christmas movie ever produced, it's not a definitive history of anything. Just like Assassin's Creed.
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Ubisoft can do as they please. I still think it makes little sense to finally deliver an AC title in Japan and choose a Samurai protagonist who isn't Japanese.

To be clear I know exactly why the choice was made, but from a game design and financial view, it makes little sense. I certainly don’t share the view that anyone here is espousing hate.
 
techuse said:
Ubisoft can do as they please. I still think it makes little sense to finally deliver an AC title in Japan and choose a Samurai protagonist who isn't Japanese.

To be clear I know exactly why the choice was made, but from a game design and financial view, it makes little sense. I certainly don’t share the view that anyone here is espousing hate.
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Yeah exactly. Someone at Ubi obviously knew that this would stir controversy among certain folks but thought it wouldn’t matter for sales or the bottom line.
 
techuse said:
Ubisoft can do as they please. I still think it makes little sense to finally deliver an AC title in Japan and choose a Samurai protagonist who isn't Japanese.

To be clear I know exactly why the choice was made, but from a game design and financial view, it makes little sense. I certainly don’t share the view that anyone here is espousing hate.
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Honestly, I once had this idea that the thing that will solve racism is oddly pornhub. It runs some serious recommender systems, and if you can get people to find someone that they aren’t interested in, ideally over time they would click through until they found what they like and with enough time it would retrain the mind to find them attractive.

Or Maybe they just wanted more cultural exchange, and there’s some sort of untapped market I don’t know about.

 
trinibwoy said:
The industry is getting extremely toxic. Journalists, gamers and developers are all to blame.

www.tweaktown.com

Ubisoft director blames gamers, says they've been exposed as 'non-decent humans'

The Monetization Director at Ubisoft has said industry figures vocalizing their disagreements with Ubisoft revealed themselves as 'clearly non-decent'.
www.tweaktown.com www.tweaktown.com
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Maybe they should start thinking about why gamers don't like their games. I mean, if it's just a "vocal minorities" it shouldn't have much effect on their sales. To be honest, I think the problem with Ubisoft is that their recent games are just not very good, gameplay wise, yet they are too arrogant to admit that.
 
pcchen said:
Maybe they should start thinking about why gamers don't like their games. I mean, if it's just a "vocal minorities" it shouldn't have much effect on their sales.
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Indeed. It only matters if the voices represent the majority, at which point your facing down democracy. I guess the counter being that there's a vocal minority and a lot of brainless chumps who's thoughts are prescribed by this vocal minority and who won't buy a game because they've been told not to and can't make their own minds up. Sales of Harry Potter Hogwarts Legacy suggest to me that's far from true - it was dumped on by toxic ragers claiming purchases were immoral, and even blanketed by some gaming press like EuroGamer who refused to cover it, but it sold very well indeed. The consumers in that case were far from influenced by the vocal minority.
 
iroboto said:
They are still entirely filled with escapism and fun!

Politics aren’t ruining games is what I’m saying. Word of mouth is ruining games. All it takes is for a couple of people to say, yea super boring couldn’t handle the first hour I had to shut it off, and that’s a lot of people turned off by it.

It’s almost like, unless there is universal acclaim, games can no longer succeed, it’s not a political thing, it’s just people being swayed way to easily by keyboard warriors. The reason why I think Sony titles continually get good backing is because Sony fans will prop and back up every game they have. Fandem keeps their games up and PS owns the largest corner of the market.

But For everyone else, studios etc, if you don’t have that level of backing, you’re not guaranteed that level of support in selling to your customers. Everyone but PlayStation is feeling pretty without armor lately, all it takes is the algorithm which is fuelled by YouTube, TikTok, streamers, forums, Twitter to destroy your game.

It doesn’t even have to be about political hate, it’s just some people with enough influence to stop their followers from trying a game out.

TLDR More people spend their time doom scrolling than they actually do enjoying the gaming hobby. And doom scrolling will undoubtedly tint your lens regardless of how neutral or unbiased you think you are.
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From my own experience that is completely wrong.

I was super hyped for spider man 2. In many ways its an amazing game. Really amazing. The writing however is so unbelivable bad I cant bring myself to replay it. I usually replay games if they are good rather than play something thats just ok just to play something different, then I´de rather do something else with my time. I have replayd Tsushima 4 times, I played Miles Morales 2 times, god of war reboot 2 times, etc. But I cant stand the lecturing, the virtue signaling, the condasending tone, etc in spider man 3, which from the look of it was written by people who have no genuine interrest in super heroes.

I hadnt heard anything about this until I played the game so it came as a surprise to me.
 
trinibwoy said:
The industry is getting extremely toxic. Journalists, gamers and developers are all to blame.

www.tweaktown.com

Ubisoft director blames gamers, says they've been exposed as 'non-decent humans'

The Monetization Director at Ubisoft has said industry figures vocalizing their disagreements with Ubisoft revealed themselves as 'clearly non-decent'.
www.tweaktown.com www.tweaktown.com
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Calling your potential customers "non-decent humans" doesnt seem like the smartest move, especially when your company is facing a crisis.
 
ZebMacahan said:
I was super hyped for spider man 2. In many ways its an amazing game. Really amazing. The writing however is so unbelivable bad I cant bring myself to replay it. I usually replay games if they are good rather than play something thats just ok just to play something different, then I´de rather do something else with my time. I have replayd Tsushima 4 times, I played Miles Morales 2 times, god of war reboot 2 times, etc. But I cant stand the lecturing, the virtue signaling, the condasending tone, etc in spider man 3, which from the look of it was written by people who have no genuine interrest in super heroes.
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I actually agree here, SM2 is a bit too woke and Peter is way to wimpy.
 
I think one problem with outlaws (except it being buggy, unpolished etc) is that its a type of game which is mostly played by guys, but the main character and her mascot seem to be designed by/or to appeal to women. Women dont seem to play these kinds of games to the same extent guys. If you want to be succesful I think you should try to appeal to your target audience.
 
ZebMacahan said:
I think one problem with outlaws (except it being buggy, unpolished etc) is that its a type of game which is mostly played by guys, but the main character and her mascot seem to be designed by/or to appeal to women. Women dont seem to play these kinds of games to the same extent guys. If you want to be succesful I think you should try to appeal to your target audience.
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Any statistics on that? What about games like the newer Tomb Raiders, or Control, or Returnal? Are these 'guys games' with female protagonists?
 
Shifty Geezer said:
You've only addressed a part of my post. What about this:


The claim is made Ubi's games are getting worse and that's why they aren't selling. What's the evidence for this if not review scores?
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It's not that I think they're getting worse. I think they're stale, and any answers to that staleness have come from focus groups rather than creative humans.

It's as though they've tried to refine a formula for creating art by removing artistic creatives from the equation: such people are too much hassle and don't immediately bow to trends identified by spreadsheet-brained bean counters.

As for evidence: I argue it's the absence of any organic buzz around almost any aspect of most Ubisoft games. The odd influencer on Twitter/YouTube etc. might make some remark, but it's conspicuously only ever that which Ubisoft's marketing department would seek to push: "a revolution into soulslike territory" with Origins/Odyssey or "it's a return to classic AC" with whatever the recent one was called. Talking points of that nature. Or the "it aligns with me politically, therefore it's good art" or its equally tedious "girls? It's woke and therefore bad" counterpart.

I can't recall the last time IRL or online that I heard or read someone talking excitedly about an AC game or any of Ubisoft's AAA output. Their side scrolling Rayman and Prince of Persia games have generated some buzz, but none of their AAA has.

There's no "check out the way these crowds behave," no "look at the way the world evolves through play," no "try out this really exciting combat," not even "grind through some mediocre gameplay for an interesting story" or "these are really beautiful animations."

AC has long been stale, and has consequently rotted to the point it barely exists; the same goes for each of Ubisoft's AAA franchises that spring to mind. Their bones were long ago picked clean by fat cats who still sold us their scraps, and now they're burdened with stale scraps.

And yet they took these stale scraps of bones, wrapped them in the skin of an inert franchise in the form of Star Wars, behaved mystified when that didn't whip people up into a frenzy, and tried a hail Mary of calling a potential audience bad people for not buying something that bores them.

"It's a bold strategy, Cotton."
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Any statistics on that? What about games like the newer Tomb Raiders, or Control, or Returnal? Are these 'guys games' with female protagonists?
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They can be. The protagonists have to be in some way compelling. Lara Croft is, but the soccer mom from Outlaws isn't. I don't need expensive focus groups to tell me that.

The actual psychological research is that 1/6 men care about female stuff as much as women and 1/6 women care about male stuff as much as men.

It's fundamental.

As long as entertainment studios remain blind to this, they'll keep trying to make female focused games and movies that flop because most women just aren't interested and most men don't have feminine tastes.

Btw, the error conservatives can make is that they believe men and women aren't ever interested in the same things. The error liberals can make is that there is no difference in interests between men and women.

1/6 is what the latest research shows.

It can of course get a little more complicated in the details of any one individual.
 
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