Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And this is a
Speaker 1: continuation on the story of Ubisoft or You Be Soft
Speaker 1: So far now. In our last episode, which if you
Speaker 1: haven't heard, I recommend you do listen to that, I
Speaker 1: talked about how a group of brothers, the Guilement Brothers,
Speaker 1: founded a video game software company after the family business
Speaker 1: of selling farm equipment started to lou Steen, we walked
Speaker 1: through the early days of the company and how most
Speaker 1: of the titles aren't really well known outside of Europe
Speaker 1: until you get to Rayman, which in turn was more
Speaker 1: popular in Europe than in North America. We learned about
Speaker 1: Ubisoft expanding, opening up numerous development studios, first in Europe,
Speaker 1: then later in China and then Montreal in Canada. And
Speaker 1: we heard about how UBI Soft acquired a company called
Speaker 1: red Storm out of North Carolina that had a license
Speaker 1: for Tom Clancy's intellectual properties. We concluded just as the
Speaker 1: company was rebranding, turning UBI soft, which was two words,
Speaker 1: into ubi soft one word, and getting the swirl logo
Speaker 1: that would be associated with the company for more than
Speaker 1: a decade. Okay, that was the super short version of
Speaker 1: episode one, but go back and listen to it if
Speaker 1: you haven't heard it yet, because there's a lot in there. Now,
Speaker 1: let's pick up where we left off. Ubisoft's acquisition of
Speaker 1: Red Storm paid off in lots of ways. First, there
Speaker 1: was that access to licensing Tom Clancy properties, which would
Speaker 1: prove to be quite popular. Second, the development team had
Speaker 1: the skill set to create types of games that the
Speaker 1: rest of Ubisoft just hadn't really tackled before they didn't
Speaker 1: have those skills, and a big part of that skill
Speaker 1: set was based out of multiplayer gameplay elements. Microsoft's Xbox
Speaker 1: console opened up new options for multiplayer games. While multiplayer
Speaker 1: was already going strong on PCs and had been since
Speaker 1: the old Land party days. Land stands for Local Area
Speaker 1: network and even earlier in the days where you know,
Speaker 1: two people would share a single PC to play multiplayer games,
Speaker 1: there were only a few consoles that had attempted to
Speaker 1: work in multiplayer modes over the internet, you know, beyond
Speaker 1: the living room experience where you would just play on
Speaker 1: the same couch. In fact, if I recall correctly. The
Speaker 1: Sega Dreamcast was really the only real console of note
Speaker 1: that also supported play over a modem, and the Dreamcast
Speaker 1: didn't really sell that well, so there wasn't much action
Speaker 1: on those networks. Microsoft launched the Xbox Live service one
Speaker 1: year to the day after the debut of the original
Speaker 1: Xbox on November two thousand two. Ubisoft wanted to embrace
Speaker 1: multiplayer formats. They suspected that these would play a much
Speaker 1: larger role in video games in the future, so the
Speaker 1: company leaned very heavily on red Storm to make that
Speaker 1: dream a reality. An early game that demonstrated this capability
Speaker 1: was Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, a game that the Red
Speaker 1: Storm team had begun developing shortly after Ubisoft acquired them
Speaker 1: in two thousand and Originally, it was for the Windows
Speaker 1: PC platform, and red Storm under Ubisoft would bring this
Speaker 1: to the Mac, uh, the Xbox, the PS two, and
Speaker 1: the GameCube. As I mentioned in the previous episode, the
Speaker 1: splinter Cell game merged the Tom Clancy license with game
Speaker 1: elements that were built for an abandoned project act called
Speaker 1: The Drift. It originally started in a New York studio
Speaker 1: that had been shut down and then kind of migrated
Speaker 1: to Montreal, UH and they had additional features added in
Speaker 1: to create a stealth based game in which players were
Speaker 1: encouraged to take to the shadows and and move with
Speaker 1: stealth in order to achieve mission goals in each level.
Speaker 1: The game was a commercial and critical success, bringing in
Speaker 1: numerous awards like the Game Developers Choice Award for Excellence
Speaker 1: in Writing. Likewise, the Prince of Persia game that came
Speaker 1: out in two thousand three would bring home a ton
Speaker 1: of awards, including eight Interactive Achievement Awards. But while teams
Speaker 1: were celebrating big successes and pulling over a couple of
Speaker 1: failures as well, there was a bit of a crisis brewing.
Speaker 1: In two thousand four, Eve Guilmant, one of the five
Speaker 1: brothers who founded Ubisoft and the company's CEO, received a
Speaker 1: phone call from an Electronic Arts representative. Now, I've talked
Speaker 1: a lot about Electronic Arts or e A in recent episodes.
Speaker 1: For example, in an episode about the three D O
Speaker 1: gaming system, I talked about how e A founder Trip Hawkins,
Speaker 1: took a huge risk that ultimately didn't pay off to
Speaker 1: found a new company, and how e A eventually did
Speaker 1: him dirty and kicked him when he was already down,
Speaker 1: or at least while he was sauntering vaguely downwards. To
Speaker 1: steal a quote from Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Well,
Speaker 1: e A has a long history of making moves that
Speaker 1: rubbed other people the wrong way, and this was another
Speaker 1: example of that. Eve was told by the representative that
Speaker 1: Electronic Arts had quietly acquired shares in Ubisoft. Of those
Speaker 1: shares so one fifth of the company, in fact, which
Speaker 1: made e A the largest shareholder outside of the brothers themselves,
Speaker 1: and with that kind of steak, e A could potentially
Speaker 1: throw its weight around to help determine Ubisoft's direction. The
Speaker 1: brothers and the leadership within Ubisoft talked about the move
Speaker 1: and determined that they would reject an outright acquisition offer
Speaker 1: if such a thing were to follow. Behind this announcement,
Speaker 1: the concern was that e A was at the time
Speaker 1: to business oriented, and they had a reputation for quote
Speaker 1: not caring too much about creative end quote that was
Speaker 1: according to even an interview he gave with Game Informer magazine.
Speaker 1: Now just a side note here, as I think that
Speaker 1: comment is really interesting. See when Hawkins first founded e
Speaker 1: A many years earlier. It was all in a reaction
Speaker 1: to how other video game companies, namely Atari, at the time,
Speaker 1: we're churning out product while not crediting the people who
Speaker 1: were making the actual games. The original ethos at e
Speaker 1: A was that games were a type of art, and
Speaker 1: that the developers were artists who deserved recognition and acknowledgement.
Speaker 1: In fact, at one point, e A was hoping to
Speaker 1: create something like a personality driven business model, and that
Speaker 1: gamers would gravitate towards specific game titles because they would
Speaker 1: associate the particular creators of those games with stuff they liked,
Speaker 1: whether it was, you know, a style of gameplay or
Speaker 1: a particular gift of story or whatever. But over time
Speaker 1: the ethos changed at e A, and what had been
Speaker 1: part of the founding principles of the company was largely discarded.
Speaker 1: Anyway back to Ubisoft. Generally speaking, the mood within Ubisoft
Speaker 1: was largely anti e A around this time, with lots
Speaker 1: of people saying that they would rather leave the company
Speaker 1: entirely than become a part of Electronic Arts. The message
Speaker 1: was loud and clear. The management team, already determined to
Speaker 1: prevent a takeover, really buckled down once it was clear
Speaker 1: that the feeling at large within the company was against
Speaker 1: any sort of e A merger, but it meant that
Speaker 1: they needed to be extra careful in how they did
Speaker 1: business to avoid, you know, opening up an opportunity for
Speaker 1: e A to take control of more shares than get
Speaker 1: possession of the company through you know, a proxy battle.
Speaker 1: According to the management team who spoke in that game
Speaker 1: and former interview I've mentioned, this meant that Ubisoft had
Speaker 1: to pump the brakes a bit when it came to
Speaker 1: expansion plans. Ubisoft itself would put decisions about acquiring other
Speaker 1: companies on hold, or at least slowing them down slightly.
Speaker 1: As we go through this episode, it will become clear
Speaker 1: that Ubisoft has always been expansion hungry. EA for its part,
Speaker 1: wasn't making any aggressive moves at the time. In fact,
Speaker 1: Eve has said that the people from e A with
Speaker 1: whom he spoke they were all quite nice. And in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, a former e A executive who had
Speaker 1: left e A and then returned and became the new
Speaker 1: CEO of eight spoke out. His name is John Richie Taylo,
Speaker 1: and he reached out to Ubisoft and he let them
Speaker 1: know that he had no intention of making any sort
Speaker 1: of acquisition moves without the express approval of Ubisoft. There
Speaker 1: would be no hostile takeover. In other words, and in
Speaker 1: t e A would actually sell off its shares and
Speaker 1: thus in the potential for a hostile takeover. But the
Speaker 1: possibility hungover Ubisoft for six years. EA never really pushed
Speaker 1: for anything more, but it was still a looming cloud.
Speaker 1: In the end, it did more to shape Ubisoft's corporate
Speaker 1: culture and again slow down plans for expansion rather than
Speaker 1: any other kind of outcome. So we know that that
Speaker 1: story turns out okay for Ubisoft. But let's get back
Speaker 1: to what else was going on at the company while
Speaker 1: this specter of a potential hostile takeover loomed over everyone.
Speaker 1: And this wouldn't be the last time this would happen
Speaker 1: to Ubisoft, by the way. That's what we call foreshadowing,
Speaker 1: and we'll learn more a about that in the episode
Speaker 1: that follows this one, because this is a big story.
Speaker 1: One thing that happened with Ubisoft was a collaboration with
Speaker 1: another games studio called cry Tech c R y t
Speaker 1: e K. That company has its headquarters in Germany. The
Speaker 1: company developers had created a game engine called cry Engine.
Speaker 1: You'll you'll get a lot of crying in this episode
Speaker 1: for multiple reasons. And a quick word about game engines.
Speaker 1: These are software development environments that contain the various tools
Speaker 1: and operations that allow developers to build games inside the
Speaker 1: game engine without having to do all the lower level
Speaker 1: programming themselves. You can do stuff like define the draw
Speaker 1: distance and tweak physics and so on, and the game
Speaker 1: engine essentially relays those changes to computer hardware in such
Speaker 1: a way that you get the end result you want. Now,
Speaker 1: that's a super high level overview of what a game
Speaker 1: engine does. It moves the starting point for game development
Speaker 1: further along than zero, though there's always a ton of
Speaker 1: stuff left to do. I don't mean to say like
Speaker 1: the game engine magically does all the work for you.
Speaker 1: It's it's just a helpful environment within which you can
Speaker 1: build games. So anyway, cry Tech builds out this game
Speaker 1: engine and also creates a demo to show off what
Speaker 1: this engine could potentially do, which included some fairly impressive
Speaker 1: stuff like rendering large outdoor spaces. This can sometimes be
Speaker 1: a tricky task and one that requires a decent amount
Speaker 1: of processing power on the game's machine, which led earlier
Speaker 1: game developers to rely on, you know, a little cheats,
Speaker 1: kind of like using fog to limit the draw distance
Speaker 1: of an outdoor area. You know, you'd think, oh, I
Speaker 1: should be able to see much further, but because it's foggy,
Speaker 1: I can't. Well, that helps you get around this technical issue.
Speaker 1: Cry Tex demo, which was called x Isle Dinosaur Island,
Speaker 1: impressed people at Ubisoft when they got a look at
Speaker 1: it at an E three conference a few years earlier.
Speaker 1: The two companies work together with Critech building out a
Speaker 1: full game using this game engine, and it was called
Speaker 1: Far Cry, which Ubisoft would publish. Far Crime is a
Speaker 1: first person shooter game in which the player controls the
Speaker 1: character named Jack Carver in the first game, and he's
Speaker 1: attempting to locate a person he believes as a journalist
Speaker 1: who is on an island after the two of them
Speaker 1: have become separated at the very beginning of the game.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of a one against many style of
Speaker 1: game in which the player can make use of the
Speaker 1: environment and try to you know, hide and use stealth
Speaker 1: to help even the odds against all these enemies that
Speaker 1: are on screen at once. And the game had several
Speaker 1: features that critics really liked, including the capabilities of the
Speaker 1: game engine with those large draw distances, and the enemy AI,
Speaker 1: which seemed realistic. In the batties would sometimes call for reinforcements,
Speaker 1: or they would run to get behind cover, or they
Speaker 1: would attempt to split their forces so that some of
Speaker 1: them could flank you, and so on. The story is
Speaker 1: kind of a mixture of a Rambo movie and the
Speaker 1: Island of Dr Moreau with some sci fi elements. That
Speaker 1: Play and Ubisoft would publish the Critech developed game in
Speaker 1: two thousand four, and subsequently Ubisoft purchased the intellectual property
Speaker 1: that and that build of the cry engine as well.
Speaker 1: So at this point, the cry Engine splits into two pathways.
Speaker 1: The cry Tech path continues to be the original cry engine,
Speaker 1: and then they upgrade that over time. The UBI Soft
Speaker 1: path would eventually be renamed the Dounia Engine, based off
Speaker 1: the original cry Engine, but then tweaked by UBI Soft
Speaker 1: and Ubisoft Montreal would become the primary studio in charge
Speaker 1: of developing future far Cry titles, and I'm sure we'll
Speaker 1: chat about a couple of those further along in these episodes.
Speaker 1: The franchise has been a pretty strong performer in the
Speaker 1: market overall, although some entries have received um more love
Speaker 1: than others. As for cry Tech, that studio is still
Speaker 1: updating the cry engine. It's still developing games, most notably
Speaker 1: the Crisis series c R Y S I S. I
Speaker 1: guess you're picking up on the naming convention by now
Speaker 1: with cr Tech, cry Engine, Far Cry and Crisis. The
Speaker 1: company has opened and frequently closed studios in various cities
Speaker 1: around the world, and maybe someday I will do a
Speaker 1: full episode about them. But let's get back to Ubisoft.
Speaker 1: In two thousand five, the company opened up the first
Speaker 1: UBI Soft campus, and this one is again in Montreal. Now,
Speaker 1: this was actually part of an overall expansion of the
Speaker 1: Montreal studio, and it was helped considerably by some rather
Speaker 1: generous support from the Canadian and Quebec governments. Ubisoft received
Speaker 1: millions of dollars in grants and tag incentives, and in return,
Speaker 1: the company was creating more jobs in the Montreal area
Speaker 1: and was building out a learning center to teach coding
Speaker 1: and game development. And we would see this happen again
Speaker 1: and again with UBI Software. The company would expand, but
Speaker 1: it was doing so very strategically, expanding in places where
Speaker 1: they could get these sweet kind of incentives to put
Speaker 1: a studio there because those studios were employment centers. So
Speaker 1: there was this mutual beneficial relationship, and Ubisoft was very
Speaker 1: good at picking places where the company was benefiting not
Speaker 1: just through expansion but getting this help through incentives, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So the company also established a developer studio in Quebec City, Quebec,
Speaker 1: which is about two KOs or about a hundred fifty
Speaker 1: miles away from Montreal. The early work of that studio
Speaker 1: was largely in support of projects from other Ubisoft studios,
Speaker 1: you know, like porting games that have been develop for
Speaker 1: one platform for other platforms, or developing DLC that's downloadable
Speaker 1: content material for established franchises, and they would later produce
Speaker 1: full titles in one of the company's most popular franchises.
Speaker 1: More on that to come. Around this same time, Ubisoft
Speaker 1: Montreal was working on a new game engine of their own,
Speaker 1: and it was originally called Scimitar, though it would later
Speaker 1: change names and become Anvil, followed by Anvil Next, and
Speaker 1: the intent was to create a foundation for a Prince
Speaker 1: of Persia sequel. This was around the time when the
Speaker 1: next generation of video game consoles was on the Horizon,
Speaker 1: the next generation in this case being the Xbox three
Speaker 1: sixty which came out in two thousand five, and the
Speaker 1: PlayStation three and Nintendo we both of which would come
Speaker 1: out in two thousand six. Ubisoft was hard at work
Speaker 1: building the tools they would need to develop, you know,
Speaker 1: games for those platforms. The team gradually came to the
Speaker 1: conclusion that the engine they were building would allow them
Speaker 1: to create an all new i P that is, intellectual
Speaker 1: property if they could get buy in from leadership. Sara Jaskaway,
Speaker 1: the head of creative, would come on board fairly early on,
Speaker 1: and Haskaway had been reading the novel Alamute, a novel
Speaker 1: set in the Middle East in the eleventh century and
Speaker 1: featuring the historical assassins not just assassins, but assassins with
Speaker 1: a big a. The team built out a concept video
Speaker 1: for a game they had in mind in which the
Speaker 1: player would control an assassin in an ancient setting. The
Speaker 1: video was pre rendered, but it showed off a concept
Speaker 1: of what the gameplay would look like, including how stealth
Speaker 1: could be used in a game, along with acrobatic stunts,
Speaker 1: kind of similar to what they had already done with
Speaker 1: Prince of Persia, and the video ended with the protagonist
Speaker 1: riding out of a city on horseback. The team pitched
Speaker 1: the idea to Eve Guilmant, who was impressed, and he
Speaker 1: agreed that they could build out a new I P
Speaker 1: and that was the beginning of the very first Assassin's
Speaker 1: Creed game. I'll talk about more after we take this
Speaker 1: quick break. Okay, first things first, While I am not
Speaker 1: covering every single entry of every single game ever produced
Speaker 1: or distributed by Ubisoft, because that would take forever, there
Speaker 1: are literally hundreds of them. I do want to take
Speaker 1: a moment to acknowledge a two thousand six title that
Speaker 1: came out for a Nintendo we before we go back
Speaker 1: to Assassin's Creed, and that is Rayman Raving Rabbits, which
Speaker 1: introduced us to these weird little rabbit critters that acted
Speaker 1: like manic antagonists and they're kind of like a rabbit
Speaker 1: version of the minions from the Despicable Me franchise. While
Speaker 1: they began as a spinoff of Rayman, they in turn
Speaker 1: would fuel numerous games, include ing a crossover game called
Speaker 1: Mario plus Rabbids Kingdom Battle, in which rabbids and characters
Speaker 1: from the Super Mario series would appear together and that
Speaker 1: game is a tactical role playing game, as you probably
Speaker 1: would guess from the mixture now. I mentioned it here
Speaker 1: because while Kingdom Battle would come out much much later
Speaker 1: in it was just remarkable to me that Ubisoft created
Speaker 1: some characters that would ultimately crossover when Nintendo's beloved and
Speaker 1: heavily protected i P. That's something Nintendo does not typically do.
Speaker 1: It is very rare for Nintendo to allow their first
Speaker 1: party characters to appear with characters from other companies like that,
Speaker 1: outside of like a Smash Brothers game. Before I jump
Speaker 1: into more Assassin's Creed, let me also talk about intellectual
Speaker 1: property and why the decision to make a new i
Speaker 1: P was actually a really big deal and a lot
Speaker 1: of the is intuitive, but I think it's good to
Speaker 1: just cover it now. When it comes to i P,
Speaker 1: you've got to weigh risk versus reward. When you're building
Speaker 1: out a brand new i P, you have no idea
Speaker 1: if it's going to catch on with the general public, or,
Speaker 1: in the case of video games, with the game playing public.
Speaker 1: So you want to create something that's going to capture
Speaker 1: the interest and attention of your audience, whether it's gamers
Speaker 1: or a TV audience. Or movies or whatever. And again,
Speaker 1: all this is intuitive, So the i P needs to
Speaker 1: make people want to experience the thing like the game,
Speaker 1: and sometimes this can be tough to judge. For every
Speaker 1: game franchise that becomes a big hit, there are dozens
Speaker 1: of games that, for one reason or another just didn't
Speaker 1: catch on, and some of them are just bad games,
Speaker 1: and that in itself is a problem. You have to
Speaker 1: make sure that the actual game is good or even
Speaker 1: the coolest concept is going to fall short cough the
Speaker 1: order eight six cough. On the other hand, if you
Speaker 1: manage to establish an i P, then developing a new
Speaker 1: game in that series represents a much lower risk. At
Speaker 1: least initially, you know that there's already a built in
Speaker 1: audience for that game. So if you're deciding where to
Speaker 1: dedicate resources like talent, money, and time, all of which
Speaker 1: you have in limited amounts, you have to weigh all
Speaker 1: of these decisions. Do you take a risk and try
Speaker 1: to make something new without knowing if there's an audience
Speaker 1: for it, or do you go with the slightly safer
Speaker 1: route then try to give people more of what they've
Speaker 1: already loved. Now, the danger of going with option two
Speaker 1: is that you can overstay you're welcome, or you can
Speaker 1: create a development cycle that proves to be unsustainable, things
Speaker 1: that you could argue would apply to the Assassin's Creed
Speaker 1: series at a certain point where a new title was
Speaker 1: coming out essentially every year. So getting the approval to
Speaker 1: build a new I P was actually a really big deal,
Speaker 1: and once the team behind Assassin's Creed got the green light,
Speaker 1: they dove into deep research. They were determined to represent
Speaker 1: the historical setting and the assassins accurately, since this was
Speaker 1: a game about the historical Assassin's not simply about an
Speaker 1: assassin with a little a According to the developers, they
Speaker 1: even had representatives who trace their lineage back to those
Speaker 1: historic first assassins centuries ago, and they visited the studio
Speaker 1: to make sure that the representation was accurate. I imagine
Speaker 1: knowing that you have the descendants of the original assassins
Speaker 1: looking over your shoulder is a little intimidating. The team
Speaker 1: admitted that actually building an open world game, one where
Speaker 1: the player has freedom to explore regions of the map
Speaker 1: without having to follow a linear pathway, and they can
Speaker 1: go vertically. You can climb up buildings and swing on polls,
Speaker 1: and all this kind of stuff. All of that presented
Speaker 1: big challenges. They would later say that the research part
Speaker 1: was actually easy compared to making the game mechanics work
Speaker 1: within the setting they had designed. In all, the development
Speaker 1: for the first Assassin's Creed game would take four years,
Speaker 1: so they would finally release in two thousand seven. On
Speaker 1: top of that, the team came up with an idea
Speaker 1: that would mean the game wouldn't just be a straightforward
Speaker 1: historical fantasy game. There was a science fiction element to
Speaker 1: it too. Now, according to Sair jasco A, a French
Speaker 1: Canadian developer named Patrice de Sel was well the one
Speaker 1: to insert the science fiction elements into the Assassin's narrative.
Speaker 1: So let me give you a very quick overview. Within
Speaker 1: the Assassin's Creed universe. There are multiple storylines that are
Speaker 1: all unfolding in different eras. In the present day of
Speaker 1: the game, which is a present that has technology more
Speaker 1: advanced than what you would find in our real world.
Speaker 1: Engineers have created a technology called the animus. Now. This
Speaker 1: allows users to enter into a virtual representation of their
Speaker 1: genetic memory. This means that you can relive the memories
Speaker 1: of one of your ancestors. So the parts of the
Speaker 1: game set back in history are in fact virtual representations
Speaker 1: of genetic memories, and it would turn out that the
Speaker 1: conflict you lived out in those historical eras, which is
Speaker 1: a conflict between two ideologically opposed factions, those being the
Speaker 1: Templars and the Assassins, that conflict is still going on
Speaker 1: in the present day, with the storylines from history interweaving
Speaker 1: into those in the present, and it all gets really complicated,
Speaker 1: involves a lot of science fiction technology, it involves in
Speaker 1: ancient race of human noids that predate humans, and odd mythology,
Speaker 1: and honestly, I lose the thread after a while. It's
Speaker 1: super complicated. Now, in my personal opinion, the modern day
Speaker 1: parts of the game aren't that fun for me, and
Speaker 1: I don't really care for that story. I like them
Speaker 1: being kind of more episodic, where they're just self contained
Speaker 1: stories within the historical era. But I also know a
Speaker 1: lot of people who really love the lore and story
Speaker 1: of the game, So again that's just my take. Then again,
Speaker 1: the more complicated mythology woven into the history of humanity
Speaker 1: also gets so convoluted. But I am a simple man
Speaker 1: incapable of following such complicated plots, So that's probably on me.
Speaker 1: Desla would go on to become the early creative head
Speaker 1: of this franchise, because, in case you didn't know, Assassin's
Speaker 1: Creed would in fact become a full series of games.
Speaker 1: I figure it's a good idea to sort of follow
Speaker 1: up with his own personal story with the company here,
Speaker 1: because I don't think I'm going to return to it
Speaker 1: that much in the rest of the episode, so we're
Speaker 1: just gonna find out what happened with right now. He
Speaker 1: had worked on several titles, including Prince of Persia of
Speaker 1: the Stands of Time before Assassin's Creed, and he would
Speaker 1: also serve as the creative lead on Assassin's Creed two,
Speaker 1: and he would work on Assassin's Creed Brotherhood before he
Speaker 1: made the decision to leave Ubisoft. He would go on
Speaker 1: to work at a different game developer called th h Q,
Speaker 1: a company that I definitely need to cover in a
Speaker 1: future episode of Tech Stuff anyway. Desill would work for
Speaker 1: a th h Q for just a couple of years
Speaker 1: because the company was already on unsteady ground when des
Speaker 1: joined in two thousand eleven, and less than two years later,
Speaker 1: the company had to declare bankruptcy and it's sold off.
Speaker 1: It's Montreal office, which is where desl was working. And
Speaker 1: guess who bought it? You got it, It was Ubi Soft.
Speaker 1: So de s leaves Zubi Soft, only for Ubisoft to
Speaker 1: come back and scoop up the company he had been
Speaker 1: working for, so or at least scoop up the assets
Speaker 1: of that company. So de se and Ubisoft could not
Speaker 1: come to an agreement regarding his re employment, and so
Speaker 1: the two parted ways. Now. According to de Sile, the
Speaker 1: parting was rather brusque and he was escorted off the
Speaker 1: premises without the opportunity for him to say goodbye to
Speaker 1: his co workers. And he would go on to found
Speaker 1: another video game company of his own called Panash Digital Games,
Speaker 1: which just last year released a game titled Ancestors the
Speaker 1: Humankind Odyssey. That game has mixed reviews. Anyway, let's get
Speaker 1: back to Ubisoft. The company really got behind Assassin's Creed
Speaker 1: as the game prepared to launch in two thousand seven
Speaker 1: on the next generation of consoles again, the Xbox three sixty,
Speaker 1: the p S three, and the Wii. The PR and
Speaker 1: marketing efforts aligned behind the creative team and there was
Speaker 1: a big push for it. The four years of development
Speaker 1: also happened to coincide with a relatively quiet period in
Speaker 1: the video games market, at least when it comes to
Speaker 1: launching new I p There were a lot of sequels
Speaker 1: coming out, but not a lot of new stuff. So
Speaker 1: Assassin's Creed would benefit from the fact that there just
Speaker 1: weren't many other new ideas hitting the market at that time,
Speaker 1: and it helped the game stand out among the various
Speaker 1: sequels and spinoffs. The reception for the game was largely positive.
Speaker 1: It was a commercial success, and the development team was
Speaker 1: already at work on the sequel, which took a big gamble.
Speaker 1: So the first game featured a modern day character named Desmond,
Speaker 1: who then gets put into the animus and he goes
Speaker 1: through the genetic memories of his ancestor named Altaire. This
Speaker 1: character lived in the late twelfth and early thirteen centuries.
Speaker 1: He actually, in lore lives to the right old age
Speaker 1: of ninety two, which is not bad for an assassin.
Speaker 1: The two thousand nine sequel, Assassin's Creed Too, would still
Speaker 1: follow Desmond in the present day, but the historical setting
Speaker 1: of the game would center around a different genetic ancestor
Speaker 1: of Desmond's. This would be a Florentine named et Ceo,
Speaker 1: who lived in the fifteenth century, and so the historical
Speaker 1: setting of Assassin's Creed two was in the Renaissance, giving
Speaker 1: the game a different style and opening up new possibilities
Speaker 1: for the development team. Assassin's Creed two and the games
Speaker 1: that would spend off of it would go on to
Speaker 1: become a critical success and a commercial success, and was
Speaker 1: seen by many to be a truly superior st worry
Speaker 1: to the original Assassin's Creed. The franchise would become a
Speaker 1: backbone for Ruby Soft, one of the most popular ones
Speaker 1: in their arsenal As I record this episode the most
Speaker 1: recent chapter in the saga Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which follows
Speaker 1: the exploits of a Viking as the historical setting component,
Speaker 1: has broken sales records of all previous games in the
Speaker 1: Assassin's Creed series. Now, I'm sure I will pop back
Speaker 1: to Assassin's Creed a bit as we go on, but
Speaker 1: just in case I don't, my own personal favorite entry
Speaker 1: was Assassin's Creed for Black Flag because it was set
Speaker 1: in the era of piracy, and pirate games are some
Speaker 1: of my favorites. Now, all that being said, I also
Speaker 1: have to admit I have not played most of the
Speaker 1: Assassin's Creed games. I've played like four of them, so
Speaker 1: my experiences with them is still extremely limited. Jumping back
Speaker 1: a bit, while the company was working on the first
Speaker 1: Assassin's Creed game in two thousand and six, it also
Speaker 1: bought some i P from another company. That other company
Speaker 1: was Atari, which was a very different company from the
Speaker 1: one that had produced the Atari Jaguar console. If you
Speaker 1: remember from our last episode, that was the console that
Speaker 1: served as the launch point for Rayman, and that in
Speaker 1: turn was a very different company from the Atari that
Speaker 1: had created the game console. But that's a story for
Speaker 1: a different podcast. In fact, Chuck Bryant of stuff you
Speaker 1: should know, and I did a whole series about Atari,
Speaker 1: because that that is a complicated history. The i P
Speaker 1: that Ubisoft purchase from Attari was for a game franchise
Speaker 1: called Driver, and the deal was valued at around twenty
Speaker 1: four million bucks, a princely some but not a prince
Speaker 1: of persian ly some. The UK studio behind the i P,
Speaker 1: called Reflections Interactive, was part of the deal and became
Speaker 1: Ubisoft Reflections. So they didn't just get the intellectual property,
Speaker 1: they got the development studio responsible for it. Interestingly, the
Speaker 1: Reflections Studio traces its history back to the mid nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: the same time that Ubisoft itself was taking shape. But
Speaker 1: while I'm tempted to give a rundown of Reflection studio
Speaker 1: zone history, I figure I should probably restrain myself and
Speaker 1: stick with UBI Soft. So also in two thousand six,
Speaker 1: Ubisoft would release Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter for
Speaker 1: the Xbox three sixty. This game would break company records
Speaker 1: for most copies sold in the first week than any
Speaker 1: other Ubisoft game up to that point. That would go
Speaker 1: on to get positive reviews and awards as well, making
Speaker 1: another success in the Tom Clancy licensed material that came
Speaker 1: out of the Red Storm studio. Ubisoft opened more development
Speaker 1: studios as well, including one in Bulgaria and another Chinese studio,
Speaker 1: this time in Chengdu, and the company continued to expand
Speaker 1: as well. It honestly amazed me to learn about all
Speaker 1: the development studios around the world that Ubisoft overseas. I
Speaker 1: knew that Ubisoft was a big company, I had no
Speaker 1: clue how many different studios are under the corporate banner
Speaker 1: until I researched these episodes. The company just opened up
Speaker 1: offices everywhere and acquired so many other development studios. Within
Speaker 1: Ubisoft Montreal, a group of developers were hard at work
Speaker 1: on the next Far Cry game, and they were tweaking
Speaker 1: that old Cry engine and converting it into the Dounia engine.
Speaker 1: This game would incorporate some new elements, namely destructible environments,
Speaker 1: which is always a fun addition to video games. There's
Speaker 1: nothing like seeing your actions are actually affecting the game
Speaker 1: world around you, as opposed to games where you know
Speaker 1: you can do something like fire endless clips, say into
Speaker 1: a table, and maybe you'll see a mark up here
Speaker 1: on the table, maybe where it shows where the bullet hit,
Speaker 1: and maybe that mark will even stick around for longer
Speaker 1: than a minute or two. But Far Cry Too would
Speaker 1: let players do a lot of collateral damage, which is
Speaker 1: just kind of fun to watch. Far Cry Too also
Speaker 1: went a little further toward the open world sandbox concept
Speaker 1: than its predecessor did. None of the characters or the
Speaker 1: setting from the first game would make an appearance in
Speaker 1: the sequel, and in fact, this would become mostly a
Speaker 1: feature of the Far Cry series. Each game, along with
Speaker 1: the DLC for each game, would be it's obtained story.
Speaker 1: Occasionally you get minor characters from one entry of the
Speaker 1: series that might pop up in another entry, and some
Speaker 1: features included in Far Cry too, like weapon degradation, would
Speaker 1: be discarded in future entries of the series. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we'll look at how the next few years
Speaker 1: unfolded at Ubisoft. But first let's take another quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's two thousand eight. Assassin's Creed has been out
Speaker 1: for a year and it's a hit. Far Cry two
Speaker 1: has just come out, and it too would be a
Speaker 1: success for the company. Meanwhile, Rabbids are raving all over
Speaker 1: the Wii and laying the groundwork for their own line
Speaker 1: of games and spinoffs. Ubisoft would continue its bid for
Speaker 1: world domination one acquisition at a time by scooping up
Speaker 1: studios like Sunflowers, which was a German video game developer,
Speaker 1: and Hybride Technologies, which was actually better known as a
Speaker 1: visual effects studio that created effects for movie and television projects.
Speaker 1: Hybride was responsible for effects on films like The Faculty
Speaker 1: and Mimic and Battlefield Earth, though they also worked on
Speaker 1: Since City three hundred and the movie that was better
Speaker 1: as a meme than as a film. Snakes on a plane.
Speaker 1: Now I'm poking a little fun here, but the studio
Speaker 1: has legit done incredible work and these days you'll see
Speaker 1: results of their efforts and stuff like the house with
Speaker 1: the clock in its walls, which actually has a connection
Speaker 1: to my family, but that's another story. Uh, the Watchman
Speaker 1: TV series which was legit amazing, and the Mandalorian series,
Speaker 1: among numerous other famous projects. Not first glance, a video
Speaker 1: game company purchasing a VFX studio for film and television
Speaker 1: really seems a bit odd, but the general messaging was
Speaker 1: that Hybrid would continue to operate as a traditional VFX studio,
Speaker 1: which it has, and Ubisoft and Hybride would be able
Speaker 1: to share technologies between the two that have been developed
Speaker 1: for either video games or for VFX, and then repurpose
Speaker 1: those tools for the other industry whenever it made sense
Speaker 1: to do so, which is kind of a cool concept.
Speaker 1: Ubisoft would also acquire a game studio in India that
Speaker 1: had previously belonged to game Loft. Now, those of you
Speaker 1: who have been paying attention in this series know that
Speaker 1: Game Lofts founder was Michel Guilman, the brother to Eve Guilmant,
Speaker 1: who was the CEO of Ubisoft still is. And I
Speaker 1: guess this is where I mentioned that while researching these episodes,
Speaker 1: I came across a couple of instances in which Ubisoft
Speaker 1: would acquire assets from another company that had been founded
Speaker 1: by one of the Gilman brothers. With this example, it
Speaker 1: was just Game Lofts, Indian studio. It wasn't. The rest
Speaker 1: of game Loft was just that one studio. The rest
Speaker 1: of game Loft remained untouched for the time being anyway,
Speaker 1: but we'll get to that. That being said, I find
Speaker 1: the instances where a big, publicly traded company, one that
Speaker 1: trades on the stock market, founded by a group of brothers,
Speaker 1: then acquiring assets from smaller companies that were also founded
Speaker 1: by at least one of those brothers. That's a little
Speaker 1: let's call it unorthodox, to put it kindly. In addition,
Speaker 1: Ubisoft acquired a couple of other studios, one called Digital
Speaker 1: Kids out of Japan and one called Massive Entertainment out
Speaker 1: of Sweden, and they also opened another studio of their
Speaker 1: own in Kiev, Ukraine. While the company had enjoyed licensing
Speaker 1: privileges with Tom Clancy's i P through the acquisition of
Speaker 1: Red Storm years earlier two thousand eight would mark the
Speaker 1: year when Ubisoft would officially secure all i P rights
Speaker 1: to the Tom Clancy name for video games. So two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight was a big year as Ubisoft expanded dramatically,
Speaker 1: and this is also toward the tail end of that
Speaker 1: era I was mentioning earlier where e A was looming
Speaker 1: over Ubi Soft as a possible hostile takeover opponent. They
Speaker 1: also would publish and distribute tons of games in this time.
Speaker 1: Really in the span between two thousand and two thousand ten,
Speaker 1: the list of games that UBI Soft published or distributed
Speaker 1: is enormous, because you know, you had the games not
Speaker 1: just from Ubi Soft and it's dozens of studios around
Speaker 1: the world, but also games that Ubisoft was publishing on
Speaker 1: behalf of other developers. In two thousand eight, Ubisoft Montreal
Speaker 1: had a couple of games come out. One of them
Speaker 1: was Lost via Domos tie into the television series Lost,
Speaker 1: and another one's Rainbow six Vegas too, so another Tom
Speaker 1: Clancy title and a continuation of the popular Rainbow six
Speaker 1: shooter series. The Rainbow six Vegas shooter series in particular
Speaker 1: is really popular. In two thousand nine, Ubisoft announced it
Speaker 1: would open a studio in Toronto the following year, so
Speaker 1: the studio would open in The studios in Quebec were successful,
Speaker 1: prompting Ubisoft to expand again in Canada, but this time
Speaker 1: of course in Ontario rather than in Quebec, and initially
Speaker 1: most of the employees of Ubisoft Toronto were transplants from
Speaker 1: Ubisoft Montreal and the first title that the studio would
Speaker 1: take on was another Tom Clancy property, splinter Cell Blacklist,
Speaker 1: which wouldn't be ready until but they were hard at
Speaker 1: work in. Ubisoft would also acquire a French game developer
Speaker 1: studio called Nadio, which was the company behind a series
Speaker 1: of multiplayer car racing games that were really popular in Europe.
Speaker 1: I had never heard of them before, but they are
Speaker 1: big news in Europe and was when Michelle on Sell,
Speaker 1: who was the creator of Rayman, began development of Beyond
Speaker 1: Good and Evil, to the sequel to his critically acclaimed
Speaker 1: but commercially disappointing game from two thousand three. So development
Speaker 1: on this project started in the company wouldn't announce anything
Speaker 1: until e three sen giving a a sneak peek at
Speaker 1: this prequel game, and now in the game is still
Speaker 1: not out. Game development cycles frequently take several years, particularly
Speaker 1: as game scope increases, and then developers have to deal
Speaker 1: with problems like feature creep, where a creative lead will
Speaker 1: add more elements to a game after it was already
Speaker 1: supposed to be kind of feature locked for development. But
Speaker 1: going more than a decade in development is a little
Speaker 1: unusual unless you're you know, Duke Newcomb or Star Citizen
Speaker 1: or something. Oh. Shots fired. In the next episode, we
Speaker 1: will follow up on the Beyond Good and Evil saga,
Speaker 1: as well as what happened to michel on self because
Speaker 1: but for now, we'll wrap up this episode with a
Speaker 1: few other points. We're now up to eleven and at
Speaker 1: this point e A had divested itself of the shares
Speaker 1: that it had once held in Ubisoft. That allowed everyone
Speaker 1: to kind of breathe a sigh of relief for the
Speaker 1: time being. As we've learned the company had started to
Speaker 1: expand aggressively over the last couple of years, and would
Speaker 1: be a continuation of that trend. For one thing, Ubisoft
Speaker 1: would make its own film division called Ubisoft Motion Pictures.
Speaker 1: In the goal of this division is to take I
Speaker 1: P from the various video game franchises that Ubisoft owns
Speaker 1: and then convert them into television and film projects. I'm
Speaker 1: sure I'll talk more about that in the next episode. Also,
Speaker 1: Ubisoft acquired a studio from Finland called Red Links, which
Speaker 1: is most famous for developing the Trials series of games. Uh.
Speaker 1: Those are a kind of side scrolling, motorcycle racing and
Speaker 1: stunt games. So big shout out to Jack Potillo from
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth who loves those games and he's wicked good
Speaker 1: at them. Ubisoft has continued publishing the Trials series since
Speaker 1: they acquired Red Links. Red Links, by the way, that's
Speaker 1: l y in X, not l i in k s.
Speaker 1: Ubisoft acquired a Paris based studio called Alliant in Alien's
Speaker 1: specialty was developing free to play games, and this marks
Speaker 1: an important turning point in the general scope for the
Speaker 1: games industry. The transition had begun probably about a decade earlier,
Speaker 1: but it was a very gradual and slow transition, and
Speaker 1: this is generally the idea behind it. So traditional games
Speaker 1: are essentially pay once and then play forever kind of things,
Speaker 1: or at least play as long as the game or
Speaker 1: hardware that you're playing on continues to work. So you
Speaker 1: would go and you would purchase a game, and that
Speaker 1: would be the end of the monetary exchange, right. Game
Speaker 1: studios would have to balance out the budget for the
Speaker 1: games they were working on with whatever expected number of
Speaker 1: copies they thought they were going to sell, and the
Speaker 1: more ambitious the game, the more copies you would need
Speaker 1: to sell in order to recoup your investment. You'd be
Speaker 1: spending more time and money developing the game, so you
Speaker 1: need to sell a lot of copies to cover your
Speaker 1: costs and make a profit on top of that. At
Speaker 1: least in the older days when we were all using
Speaker 1: physical media exclusively, game studios also had to contend with
Speaker 1: the fact that some of their games were going to
Speaker 1: be in the resale market. People would play them and
Speaker 1: then sell their used games to a store, which would
Speaker 1: then sell them off again. The game studio would see
Speaker 1: none of that money, so that complicated matters as well. Now,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, it wouldn't be very difficult to
Speaker 1: reach a tipping point where the amount you were spending
Speaker 1: to develop a game is more than you would ever
Speaker 1: earned back from the sales of that game without i
Speaker 1: don't know, selling a copy to literally everyone on the planet,
Speaker 1: or raising the price of the game beyond the normal
Speaker 1: market value for games and hoping that that doesn't turn
Speaker 1: people away. But the free to play model takes a
Speaker 1: different path. Now, as the name suggests, it is entirely
Speaker 1: free to play these games, but within the games are
Speaker 1: elements that entice people to spend real world money in
Speaker 1: order to enhance their playing experience, and there are a
Speaker 1: lot of different approaches to this. You might offer up
Speaker 1: items within the game that give your character certain advantages,
Speaker 1: and that kind of falls into the derisively nicknamed paid
Speaker 1: to win category of games, which is generally frowned upon
Speaker 1: by gamers, particularly for multiplayer titles. Then there are items
Speaker 1: that are just purely cosmetic, which allow you to customize
Speaker 1: the look of your player character or avatar or whatever.
Speaker 1: And then there are games that have a limited number
Speaker 1: of turns per day or a cool down associated with
Speaker 1: some aspect of play, and these often allow gamers to
Speaker 1: spend real money to get another turn or bypass the
Speaker 1: cool down or limit. And a game can have any
Speaker 1: combination of these things. Now, that last strategy can be
Speaker 1: particularly profitable if you make your game tempting enough. So
Speaker 1: think of a game like the Civilization series. Civilization is
Speaker 1: famous for creating a just one more turn mentality, leading
Speaker 1: to endless gamers just staying up all night while trying
Speaker 1: to nullify that total jerk. Gandhi. Seriously, Gandhi in the
Speaker 1: Civilization games is a homicidal maniac because of an error
Speaker 1: that has made in an early game code for the
Speaker 1: first game in the series, and since then it has
Speaker 1: been made a feature of the series. Now Gandhi is
Speaker 1: homicidal in all the games because of a mistake from
Speaker 1: an early game. Alright, so imagine you've got a game
Speaker 1: that is addictive like Civilization, only you put up a
Speaker 1: gate on the number of turns each player gets to
Speaker 1: play per day, and if that player were to pay
Speaker 1: a small amount, like a dollar, they might get a
Speaker 1: few more turns. Now, these are called micro transactions because
Speaker 1: each individual transaction is very small, but they can also
Speaker 1: accumulate quickly. So the game itself is free to play,
Speaker 1: but there are incentives in the game to encourage players
Speaker 1: to spend money to continue to play the game. This
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be insidious. I play a couple of
Speaker 1: free to play games, and I have spent money on
Speaker 1: one of those, not so much to get an advantage
Speaker 1: in the game, but rather to reward developers who created
Speaker 1: an experience that I really enjoy. I'm like, this is
Speaker 1: something that's worth paying for. I got it for free,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to go ahead and put some money
Speaker 1: toward it. But it's also easy to abuse this model
Speaker 1: and create a parasitic relationship with gamers. So this model
Speaker 1: would later find its way into paid games as well,
Speaker 1: namely in the form of stuff like loot boxes, in
Speaker 1: which players pay real money to get in game rewards,
Speaker 1: and those rewards are randomized, so you're not even buying
Speaker 1: a specific thing, you're buying the chance to get that
Speaker 1: specific thing, or you might get one of numerous other things. Ubisoft,
Speaker 1: like a lot of game companies, has used lootboxes to
Speaker 1: create an ongoing revenue stream after people have already purchased
Speaker 1: a game, so now games revenue is not solely dependent
Speaker 1: upon those initial sales. There's a long tail stream of
Speaker 1: revenue as well. And you could argue that this has
Speaker 1: become a necessity with video games growing so large and
Speaker 1: so complicated and so expensive to develop. Those costs have
Speaker 1: skyrocketed over the last few years. You could also argue,
Speaker 1: and many people have, that the practice of loot boxes
Speaker 1: can exploit people who get addicted to the cycle of
Speaker 1: rewards that loot boxes create. There's a longer discussion to
Speaker 1: have about this topic, and I will likely do a
Speaker 1: full tech stuff episode about the history, the psychology, and
Speaker 1: the potential harm of loot boxes, not just on people,
Speaker 1: but on the game's industry itself, plus a discussion about
Speaker 1: perhaps alternatives we could take when it comes to game design,
Speaker 1: but that'll have to wait for another episode. The point
Speaker 1: being that this was sort of Ubisoft's entry into that world,
Speaker 1: and that those philosophies would find their ways into future
Speaker 1: Ubisoft titles. Uh. The big title from al Leon being
Speaker 1: howerse It's a horse game where you would raise horses
Speaker 1: and take care of them until and I am not
Speaker 1: making this up, the horses would die in the game
Speaker 1: and then you would get to see them go to
Speaker 1: horse Heaven. Yeah. Okay, maybe that one's a Taylor made
Speaker 1: for the McElroy brothers. Alright, guys, that wraps up this
Speaker 1: chapter of the UBI Soft saga. In our next episode,
Speaker 1: we will continue, I'll try to get up to present day.
Speaker 1: I'll be packing a lot in because I know there's
Speaker 1: a lot that's going on here, and uh, within that tale,
Speaker 1: we'll hear about another potential hostile takeover bid, and we'll
Speaker 1: also hear about a massive scandal that ran through all
Speaker 1: of UBI Soft. It's still unfolding as I record this,
Speaker 1: and how the company is handling that, uh in some
Speaker 1: cases not so great, but we'll get to that in
Speaker 1: our next episode. If you have suggestions for topics I
Speaker 1: should tackle in future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's
Speaker 1: another company, a specific technology, a trend in tech like
Speaker 1: the loot boxes trend, or whatever, let me know. Send
Speaker 1: me a message on Twitter. The handle is tech Stuff
Speaker 1: H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. M.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.