UBIsoft in potential financial trouble

[pcchen]

I think this is a bit like the "Anna Karenina principle." To be a successful game, it needs to be great on many different facets, but one bad thing could turn the entire thing down.
Therefore I think it's wrong to focus on what's people want, because it can be very difficult to do, and different people want different things. I believe it's more likely to be successful if designers focus on what they want (or more accurately "envision"), while avoid pitfalls where people might not like. For example, if it's apparent that players no longer like grinding, it's probably a good idea to avoid making a grindy game. It does not guarantee success, but in an environment where people don't like grinding, making a grindy game is certainly a recipe for failure.

 

[ZebMacahan]

I would disagree with this simply because I don't think they developed those characters looks or personality to be something they didn't think players wanted, but the opposite. Concord smacked of a game developed by committee with the intent of being equally appealing to the plurality of gamers. They were trying to give people "what they want", which turned out to be not what gamers want. It might seam obvious in retrospect that those designs are a mistake, but I think if we are to believe they designed them intentionally to be something people wouldn't like, that doesn't make any sense. And it doesn't fit the narrative of any of the reporting coming out about the studio's toxic positivity. They thought people were going to love the game. And they thought people were going to love the characters so much that a 3 minute animated skit was going to bring them back every week.

It's hard to give people what they want when what we want as a market (ie what we spend money on) and what a vocal minority of gamers say they want are often quite different. I'm guilty of this as well. I said for years I wanted the classic Resident Evil games on PC again. GOG fixed them up and re-released them at what I would consider a fair price, but I haven't bought them.

I didnt mean they intentionally made characters they knew people wouldnt like. As you said, that doesnt fit the reports of toxic positivity.

Maybe it was the culture of toxic positivity that caused it. Im thinking it might have something to do with people working on it lack an intuitive understanding of what their target audience like.

I see pcchen has made a similar point as me as Im writing this. Avoid things that might ruin the whole thing. Or "dont give them what they dont want".
When comparing the character design of concord and marvel rivals its pretty obvious to me which design people will like and why for example.

When it comes to Ubisoft, regardless of what someone personally feel about Yasuke as the protaganist its a controversial and divisive decision and a risky move.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I believe it's more likely to be successful if designers focus on what they want (or more accurately "envision"),

This is how it was in the past. Developers made what they wanted, without the 'guidance' of metrics or user feedback or Big Data, and some gamers shared in their vision. It's arguable that the bigger issue is a shareholder-driven pursuit of massive returns and an attempt to distil game success into a formula, with governance over game development given to economists and Harvard graduates rather than gamers. Plus game development has become harsh and demoralising, with the devs slaving away and losing their passion.

One thing we can all agree on is good games executed well produce a workable business. What makes a good or bad game is up for debate, but for decades devs were able to just have a dream, make it happen, and win/lose on their capacity to resonate. This is better facilitated by smaller budgets and less risk. Perhaps all the discussion is wrongly focussed and should just move onto how to empower game developers to do what they do without corporate meddling?

 

[iroboto]

This is how it was in the past. Developers made what they wanted, without the 'guidance' of metrics or user feedback or Big Data, and some gamers shared in their vision. It's arguable that the bigger issue is a shareholder-driven pursuit of massive returns and an attempt to distil game success into a formula, with governance over game development given to economists and Harvard graduates rather than gamers. Plus game development has become harsh and demoralising, with the devs slaving away and losing their passion.

One thing we can all agree on is good games executed well produce a workable business. What makes a good or bad game is up for debate, but for decades devs were able to just have a dream, make it happen, and win/lose on their capacity to resonate. This is better facilitated by smaller budgets and less risk. Perhaps all the discussion is wrongly focussed and should just move onto how to empower game developers to do what they do without corporate meddling?

I think some constraints are still necessary. I don't think corporate meddling is necessarily bad, provided the people doing the meddling actually know what they are doing. Support from corporate is always necessary, but goal setting and constraints setting is also necessary. People seem to do better when they are constrained, that's where the creativity comes from. When you open things up too wide, you get... a bunch of shit that doesn't work. See Star Citizen and other games that ultimately fail to make it to the finish line.

While I think there are clearly more cases where corporate meddling has caused more harm than good, I also think there are a decent number of examples of where corporate meddling (and support) is what made some games successful.

So I'd rahter have companies follow the insomniac model of making games that ship, and ship consistently, than developers trying to 'revolultionize' the gaming world. Once your studios are capable of shipping well and consistently, which outside of Obsidian and Insomniac, we haven't seen too much of, there's precendent that the games can evolve and get better with each release.

That seems to be a more successful model that handing developers a lot of money and them not knowing what to do with it, so they make a super large scope and fail in the process.

 

[see colon]

I didnt mean they intentionally made characters they knew people wouldnt like.

I guess I don't understand how developers are supposed to give people what they want, then. They must have either thought people would like the characters or not. So they must have either decided they were going to do something they knew people wouldn't like, or they believed they were giving people what they wanted. I really find it hard to believe that they intentionally self sabotaged the game.

Do you see how muddy the "give us what we want" argument gets? How are the developers supposed to know? If they fail to give us what we want, did they do it on purpose? Was the vocal minority too loud, changing the developers perspective? And how do we process developer intent? Are we supposed to assume they are intentionally not giving us what we want when they fail? And are developers not supposed to make the game they want to make? What if they wanted to make a game that was offensive so some portion of the gaming public, perhaps just because it's a story they want to tell. Are we only supposed to get safe games that give us what we want?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think some constraints are still necessary. I don't think corporate meddling is necessarily bad, provided the people doing the meddling actually know what they are doing.

Sure. I chose the word 'meddling' to differentiate from actual 'management'. Creatives need boundaries as you say, and I've said as much in the past, but I fear (or at least postulate!) what we have now isn't creatives being balanced with business thinkers, but business taking over and games being created for the wrong reasons with a detrimental impact on the industry as a result, including failed games and closed studios.

In the Insomniac model you cite, Ted Price was a gamer and game developer who aspired to make games since he was 9, and the studio was private without any shareholders telling them what to do to get better growth. This was true of many classic studios through the 80s to 00s before big acquisitions became the fashion. how many publishers owning a catalogue of acquisitions are run by such people with such ambitions for their art?

 

[iroboto]

Sure. I chose the word 'meddling' to differentiate from actual 'management'. Creatives need boundaries as you say, and I've said as much in the past, but I fear (or at least postulate!) what we have now isn't creatives being balanced with business thinkers, but business taking over and games being created for the wrong reasons with a detrimental impact on the industry as a result, including failed games and closed studios.

In the Insomniac model you cite, Ted Price was a gamer and game developer who aspired to make games since he was 9, and the studio was private without any shareholders telling them what to do to get better growth. This was true of many classic studios through the 80s to 00s before big acquisitions became the fashion. how many publishers owning a catalogue of acquisitions are run by such people with such ambitions for their art?

I suspect largely that most people running studios and the platforms have been part of studios or development for some point in time.

Most of these passionate developers would have become business leaders over time. Whether they have the same passion is at debate, most people who move from individual contributor to management start to get a very different perspective on what results mean. Where one is about the best product, the other is about keeping the business alive and being successful enough that people make their salary and bonuses.

I don’t envy the position. I think the only way forward is to cut the expenditure and project size all the way back. Make games on the cheap and then let the artist come in way late into the process to ship.

 

[arandomguy]

I would say several studios have it down. When has a Naughty Dog game flopped for example?

A few things here.

One could argue that Naughty Dog had it's own Concord, the difference being they just never launched the game and therefore it had much less publicity. It would be interesting to see how much was spent on their live service game before it was cancelled. The interesting thing with Concord is if it were unceremoniously cancelled before launch the optics would be rather different.

Naughty Dog's games are also very budget based and getting progressively more expensive. While they sell a lot keep in mind there is this general industry discourse about the sustainability of this especially for SP games.

There's also been some discourse/commentary about how many games they've actually released over recent years or if they are just banking on past successes.

But despite the above comments that's not what I'm really getting at. We're discussing two different things. Naughty Dog is a studio that has consistently executed (they aren't the only one either). Saying be like Naughty Dog might as well just be saying "make a good successful game." That's way too broad, undefined and generic of a request to be of any use in terms of analysis.

The broader discussion here is whether or not gamers, publishers, and developers know what they want and don't want in terms of specifics prior to the fact. Again circling back to Concord take the character design and aesthetics issue I think it's fair to see they made certain choices, and in post mortem it's being pushed as a key reason for failure. But that would imply games that make that same choice would also be broadly rejected by gamers? I don't want to go too much into social commentary here but if we take a look at Naughty Dog starting with TLOU2 at the very least and also it's upcoming game as well they went and are going with similar design concepts. There's comments online as well panning those choices but they aren't preventing the games successes.

It just seems there isn't very much consistency here.

I'm going to wade into another thing here. If say Ubisoft, or EA or whomever pushed an online game with expensive MTX (that wasn't just cosmetic) and had gamers pay to be involved in the games testing for years before realease to basically prefund the game (remove investment risk) what would the reception be? I'm guessing it wouldn't be viewed the same as Star Citizen.

 

[JPT]

How is this relevant? They release games about as often as most developers their size.

Because if they have not released a game in ages it.might be that they actually do not know what it takes anymore.
Or as Janet Jackson said, what have you done for me lately...

 

[Cappuccino]

Which is all very well, but that wasn't your argument. Tuna's countering your generalised argument that being a successful entertainer is just about giving people what they want. There's therefore two points:

I never made this argument, you have me confused with someone else.

I disagree about this stance in case of The Division 1(flawed gameplay)+2, AC Origins and Odyssey. If these games didn't expand people's minds I don't know what kind of game standards you have? Deus Ex?

I’m sorry but is this a bit? AC Origins is not a thought provoking game in the slightest. It’s the same as every other AC game: insert player character into generic historical fiction plot. Tie the templars (or their predecessors in Origins and Odyssey) and assassins in somehow. There is no overarching message to any AC game besides some of the very early ones.

Ofc doesn’t make it a bad game. Slop can be fine, it’s like pulp fiction (no, not the movie Pulp Fiction, but what the movie is named after: cheap mass produced books with little literary merit, purely for enjoyment).

I haven’t played Deus Ex but from what I’ve read it’s a great example of a game with artistic merit that could expand your mind.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I never made this argument, you have me confused with someone else.

Sorry. That was the train of thought tuna was talking about but it wasn't you who specified it.

 

[arandomguy]

I haven’t played Deus Ex but from what I’ve read it’s a great example of a game with artistic merit that could expand your mind.

Not sure if it's sign of the times or just my age but after playing Deus Ex I went out and found Oalf Stapledon's Last and First Men (and then Starmaker) at a local university library (I wasn't in university yet) and read them. Also some other books like The Diamond Age.

After playing Assassin's Creed I went and read the wiki.

 

[Nisaaru]

I’m sorry but is this a bit? AC Origins is not a thought provoking game in the slightest. It’s the same as every other AC game: insert player character into generic historical fiction plot. Tie the templars (or their predecessors in Origins and Odyssey) and assassins in somehow. There is no overarching message to any AC game besides some of the very early ones.

Well, I surely thought about the greek/roman influence in Egypt and the DLC's covering the different stages of death expanded my knowledge about its mythology. Did you even play the DLC?

Ofc doesn’t make it a bad game. Slop can be fine, it’s like pulp fiction (no, not the movie Pulp Fiction, but what the movie is named after: cheap mass produced books with little literary merit, purely for enjoyment).

I haven’t played Deus Ex but from what I’ve read it’s a great example of a game with artistic merit that could expand your mind.

So if you don't know Deus Ex what kind of games are you talking about here which "expanded your thinking" compared to Origin/Odyssey.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Giving gamers what they want is exactly what devs/pubs should do, but knowing what that is is the tricky part oftentimes.

Also, since games take 5+ years to make, by the time Concord came out the 2019 idea of what design would fly didn't pan out 5 years later.

Naughty Dog has the reputation to be able to tell Sony that something isn't working and Sony will flush $millions already spent down the toilet and tell them to start over. Concord devs didn't have said luxury.

On a side note I have this friend, who doesn't look particularly cool or seem outwardly in tune with the Zeitgeist, but somehow whatever this guy likes turns out to be cool and popular. It's like he has a 6th sense for it.

When Halo was cool he had an Xbox. He had a PSX when Sony was just starting out. He got an iPhone when people barely knew what smartphones were. He got a Wii before anyone cared etc.... he just knows.

Ubisoft needs a guy like that on staff.

I'm pretty sure he would have said: "Almost non-existent bullshit black samurai for the long awaited AC game set in Japan that trashes Japanese culture? Really? I don't think so...." Yet, maybe we all had a 6th sense about that one...

 

[homerdog]

This is how it was in the past. Developers made what they wanted, without the 'guidance' of metrics or user feedback or Big Data, and some gamers shared in their vision.

This is an important point. Let's say back in the Halo 2 days, the Bungie devs and their audience were on the same page. Now the average gamer and the average developer on a game like Concord seem to live in different universes. The dialog in a game like Veilguard is baffling to most of what should be its target audience. I've heard it described as "HR is in the room" and that fits perfectly IMO. And what's cool to HR is not cool at all to most gamers.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

HR having too much influence on a game is like having your grandma plan your teen spring break. The results might be... suboptimal.

 

[homerdog]

HR having too much influence on a game is like having your grandma plan your teen spring break. The results might be... suboptimal.

My grandma had alzheimer's so that might've been interesting.

 

[Cappuccino]

Well, I surely thought about the greek/roman influence in Egypt and the DLC's covering the different stages of death expanded my knowledge about its mythology. Did you even play the DLC?

Yes although I didn’t bother finishing the second one. It gives you essentially a Wikipedia articles worth of trivia knowledge, I wouldn’t consider that particularly artistic or thought provoking.

So if you don't know Deus Ex what kind of games are you talking about here which "expanded your thinking" compared to Origin/Odyssey.

I always go to RDR1 and 2 for this. TLOU is also a very good example.

Let me put it this way: I can recite both of those games stories from memory. Even thought it’s been years, I can probably recite the entire Halo trilogy’s story as well. I cannot for the life of me remember half the plot of AC Origins. And I actually really enjoyed the game, Ubisoft environments are top tier, it was just not a very story-driven game.

 

[techuse]

A few things here.

One could argue that Naughty Dog had it's own Concord, the difference being they just never launched the game and therefore it had much less publicity. It would be interesting to see how much was spent on their live service game before it was cancelled. The interesting thing with Concord is if it were unceremoniously cancelled before launch the optics would be rather different.

Naughty Dog's games are also very budget based and getting progressively more expensive. While they sell a lot keep in mind there is this general industry discourse about the sustainability of this especially for SP games.

There's also been some discourse/commentary about how many games they've actually released over recent years or if they are just banking on past successes.

But despite the above comments that's not what I'm really getting at. We're discussing two different things. Naughty Dog is a studio that has consistently executed (they aren't the only one either). Saying be like Naughty Dog might as well just be saying "make a good successful game." That's way too broad, undefined and generic of a request to be of any use in terms of analysis.

The broader discussion here is whether or not gamers, publishers, and developers know what they want and don't want in terms of specifics prior to the fact. Again circling back to Concord take the character design and aesthetics issue I think it's fair to see they made certain choices, and in post mortem it's being pushed as a key reason for failure. But that would imply games that make that same choice would also be broadly rejected by gamers? I don't want to go too much into social commentary here but if we take a look at Naughty Dog starting with TLOU2 at the very least and also it's upcoming game as well they went and are going with similar design concepts. There's comments online as well panning those choices but they aren't preventing the games successes.

It just seems there isn't very much consistency here.

I'm going to wade into another thing here. If say Ubisoft, or EA or whomever pushed an online game with expensive MTX (that wasn't just cosmetic) and had gamers pay to be involved in the games testing for years before realease to basically prefund the game (remove investment risk) what would the reception be? I'm guessing it wouldn't be viewed the same as Star Citizen.

It’s impossible for us to know if whatever live service game ND was working on would have been another Concord.

Concord development was 400 million if memory serves. That was roughly twice the cost of ND’s most expensive game. There is still quite a bridge there.

I just disagree with the idea that no one knows the formula to a good game. It implies that all developers are just playing darts blindfolded and the lucky ones hit.

I am hesitant to go too far into this topic so I will just say that there is large divide between Concord and ND games when it comes to character design. That is also not the primary reason for Concords failure. How an entire studio could collectively decide those character designs would be what gamers wanted likely speaks to glaring issues in the studio. A good game was probably impossible TBH.

It would not be viewed the same because both of those companies have rightly earned a ton of negative sentiment with PC gamers in particular over the years.

 

[see colon]

Naughty Dog has the reputation to be able to tell Sony that something isn't working and Sony will flush $millions already spent down the toilet and tell them to start over. Concord devs didn't have said luxury.

Based on information we know now, about them being toxically positive, I believe Firewalk really thought they were nailing it the whole time. I don't think they would have told Sony it wasn't working, because they thought gamers were going to love it.