• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Ubisoft Studios have freedom to create low cost (200-300E)games without Exec approval

P

PranooY

Member
Ubisoft's internal studios have begun skipping the pitching process for its experimental projects, as long as production costs remain cheap enough.
In an interview with The Guardian, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said that the company's studios have begun to forego the pitching process altogether for smaller projects, with Ubisoft Reflections starting development of Grow Home in secret.
Click to expand...

Videogamer.com: Ubisoft studios have freedom to create low cost games without exec approval

Also Full article @ The Guardian
[The Guardian] Ubisoft chief: 'We learned from the mistakes we made with Watch Dogs'

Found this interesting.
Lock, if old or not interesting. ;)
 
A

Auctopus

Member
I'd like to know what Ubisoft considers 'low-cost'.

Edit: Sorry, article seems to suggest between $500k-3m.
 
pants

pants

Member
ubisoft not being shit? Vive la révolution!

Auctopus said:
I'd like to know what Ubisoft considers 'low-cost'.
Click to expand...

When a project costs more than $5m we need to look at it because it can go wrong. But when it's €200,000 to €300,000, they can make all the decisions they need to to make it happen."
Click to expand...
 
A

Alienous

Member
I imagine consultation would also be required to utilize existing Ubisoft IP?

It makes sense. It seems to me that it's just Ubisoft opening themselves up to the possibility of a small team of employees making a mobile game that catches on.
 
J

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
I suppose this explains why Grow Home doesn't use Uplay despite being an internal project.
 
K

KHlover

Banned
Good. Child of Light was great and from what I've heard Valient Hearts (or whatever it was called) wasn't bad either, so if this decision results in more games like them more power to Ubisoft, I guess :D
 
S

Steroyd

Member
pants said:
ubisoft not being shit? Vive la révolution!
Click to expand...

To be fair, between Ubisoft, EA and Activision, I've always thought they were the most... "humane" out of the three because they did Ubiart pet projects like Child of Light, this is them expanding on that in a positive manner. Hell we've seen glimpses of EA doing the same thing with Unravel, we might be seeing the birth of an "indie" scene within the confines of AAA publishers, and I can only give my thumbs up to this even if I shit on these publishers as a whole.
 
S

Shaanyboi

Banned
More small experiments from Ubi is fine by me. Valiant Hearts, Child of Light, and Grow Home were by far the most interesting things Ubi has done in a while.
I mean aside from the fucking glorious Rayman Legends
 
C

cw_sasuke

If all DLC came tied to $13 figurines, I'd consider all DLC to be free
Not bad, might be the incentive for some people to stay at established dev studios instead of going indie to fulfill their dreams.
 
R

rjc571

Banned
Michel Ancel and his team should go ahead and create Rayman 4 (in 3D), then. Rayman 2 must not have cost more than $3 million to make, right? (And Rayman 3 probably wouldn't have if you ignore the ridiculous marketing and celebrity voice acting budget.)
 
A

Alo0oy

Banned
Shaanyboi said:
More small experiments from Ubi is fine by me. Valiant Hearts, Child of Light, and Grow Home were by far the most interesting things Ubi has done in a while.
I mean aside from the fucking glorious Rayman Legends
Click to expand...

Valiant Hearts > Rayman.
 
A

Americanmushroom

Banned
Valiant Hearts 2 would be amazing, WWII, Vietnam War, ... I dunno just any war with a new story but the same ambiance and music style as the first one pls. This game was amazing.

'Bon chien'
 
A

Akai__

Member
If that's the case, then please release more UbiArt Framework games?! They are pretty good.

@Watchdogs: I thought the game was pretty fun for a new IP, but there's like so much room for improvement. So many things were missing and I say this every time, but there's videos out there which show missing features/effects that they should better add in a sequel. So, with Gameplay being pretty good actually (side missions aside), the only problem was the story and Aiden's personality. Shit, I liked Clara and T-Bone way more than this asshole personality of Aiden.
 
N

Nightbird

Member
This is awesome. I love to see smaller Games from the big Guys.


Are more Developers doing this?
So far I only know that Nintendo and Game Freak do similar stuff.
 
V

Visualante2

Member
I always found it a bit absurd that some editorial team in Paris approves all their ideas. When I read that it really was no wonder why Ubisoft AAA titles have become so homogenous. Grow Home is one of my favourite titles this year, and if it allows Ubisoft to release things off UPlay then great. Hope the next RedLynx and Nadeo games can release this way.
Rainbowgun said:
Are more Developers doing this?
Click to expand...
Frontier were one of the first I heard of doing this, with Lost Winds on Wii. You have Double Fine with their Amnesia fortnights.
 
H

Hot Coldman

Banned
This is assuming these studios have enough spare time and resources to develop games between/alongside working on the all-hands-on-deck AAA projects like AssCreed, Watch_Dogs 2, etc etc.

If they do, that's great, but I imagine a lot of Ubi's studios don't.
 
H

hobblygobbly

Member
That's cool, there's a few companies that do similar things as well. For example CCP allows employees X amount of hours per month that they're allowed to do anything they want at the workplace regarding games, and that's how EVE: Valkyrie which is a poster child for proper VR development came to be. It's also how EVE gets small other nice features outside the main planned features. It's not exactly like pitching a new game but thought I'd share.
 
K

kiguel182

Member
This is an amazing initiative on the part of Ubisoft and explains why they produce really great smaller games.

Ubisoft might be criticised by a lot of their practices but compared to other big publishers they really seem to value the more experimental side of games and the freedom that comes with it.

Even if they don't apply that to their blockbuster titles.
 
P

PotionBleue

Member
I can't find the article, but I'm pretty sure that's what happened with Just Dance.


EDIT: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ub...ecret-development-of-just-dance/1100-6415332/

I think it's OK to say now that people within the Paris studio never thought it would be a success.

So we pitched Just Dance, but we pitched it very late in process compared to what we do usually. We pitched it, I think, six months prior to the launch when it was actually already developed. […]

I was, let's say obliged, to keep a small team in terms of costs. Even it was a small risk it was a risk, because the game was not officially pitched. The idea was to keep it very low profile until we were sure about what we had.
 
D

Drencrom

Member
Ubisoft doing something good for once, hopefully this initiative can spawn more games like grow home and valiant hearts.
 
A

A Link to the Past

Banned
Well that explains why Gone Home is such a stand-out title for me from Ubisoft, haha.

Really, the whole situation reminds me a lot of how Link's Awakening was conceived.
 
D

dex3108

Member
Yeah for example many people doesn't know but Ubisoft had 3 or 4 VR prototypes on E3 and they had more in development. So yeah Ubisoft is not only AAA machine they allow smaller teams to do experimental games too for new and experimental technologies.
 
Alx

Alx

Member
Steroyd said:
To be fair, between Ubisoft, EA and Activision, I've always thought they were the most... "humane" out of the three because they did Ubiart pet projects like Child of Light, this is them expanding on that in a positive manner. Hell we've seen glimpses of EA doing the same thing with Unravel, we might be seeing the birth of an "indie" scene within the confines of AAA publishers, and I can only give my thumbs up to this even if I shit on these publishers as a whole.
Click to expand...

I agree, Ubi may have the bad habit of milking its AAA franchises to death, but they also are very productive in the "small creative games" category. Even huge successes like Just Dance started as a spin-off of a spin-off (it's a recreation of the dancing minigame in the first Rayman Raving Rabbids).
 
Majukun

Majukun

Member
wait,200/300k?
can you even make a game with that much money?
at best you can make a mobile app,a shitty one
 
B

BumblebeeCody

Member
Wait so Ubisoft have been putting out high cost titles? Since when?
Alx said:
I agree, Ubi may have the bad habit of milking its AAA franchises to death, but they also are very productive in the "small creative games" category. Even huge successes like Just Dance started as a spin-off of a spin-off (it's a recreation of the dancing minigame in the first Rayman Raving Rabbids).
Click to expand...

Dunno. I can't think of any other "small indie title" from Ubisoft other than Child of Light and Valiant Hearts. Child of Light had terrible DLC and I had to delete friends off my friends list on Xbox One just to unlock an achievement. I didn't play Valiant Hearts but that's only because I gave them £15 for a copy of Tetris that didn't even work. Valiant Hearts I'll happily miss out on. Even with their smaller titles they get it wrong.
 
S

Steroyd

Member
Hot Coldman said:
This is assuming these studios have enough spare time and resources to develop games between/alongside working on the all-hands-on-deck AAA projects like AssCreed, Watch_Dogs 2, etc etc.

If they do, that's great, but I imagine a lot of Ubi's studios don't.
Click to expand...

Oh they definately do, Ubisoft has an insane number of people working under them making such AAA titles I think they quoted over 300 people in one of their studios and they spend such stupid amounts of money they can waive €200,000 to pet projects without an overlord giving the OK for pete's sake, also all of Ubosofts game credits are so goddamn long, they better have a million people working on their games for me to sit through a long period of time with their credits.
 
P

Palette Swap

Member
Majukun said:
wait,200/300k?
can you even make a game with that much money?
at best you can make a mobile app,a shitty one
Click to expand...
Yeah, where I work we usually quote one man year of internal development as costing roughly 100k€, so I don't know how much you'd do with 2-3 man-years.
 
S

Storm360

Member
The "AAA indie" policy is great, I hope that other company's adopt it soon, the reaction to grow home was great!
 
B

bobbytkc

ADD New Gen Gamer
Majukun said:
wait,200/300k?
can you even make a game with that much money?
at best you can make a mobile app,a shitty one
Click to expand...

No? You can make a perfectly good game with 200-300K. That is a team if the salaray is like 60K a year, that will fund up to 6 people for a year. Very reasonable for a small game.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

CD Projekt exec pokes fun at Ubisoft's "AAAA" game Skull and Bones, says the studio will now make "AAAAA" games
News Cringe Game Dev 2
82
4K
Dr. Claus replied
[Insider Gaming] Inside Ubisoft – From Low Morale To Internal Tensions
Game Dev
26
2K
BacklashWave534 replied
GIBiz: After 200 unsuccessful pitches in 2 years, Deliver Us Mars dev Keoken Interactive says the way games are funded is "failing"
Business Game Dev
24
1K
SmokedMeat replied
Phil Spencer on what the hell is happening in the games industry and why exclusives have become a risky business
Business Game Dev 3 4 5 6 7
301
18K
ProtoByte replied
Report: Private Equity Eyeing Ubisoft As The Next Big Gaming Acquisition
News
30
2K
Craig of War replied
Top Bottom