As I brace for what my local television station calls the “Snowpocalypse” (we are getting a lot of snow over the weekend assuming the storm hits the way it’s predicted), I was scrolling video game business news, well, because I am a huge nerd about these kinds of things. Some Ubisoft news crossed my social media feed, and it generally was not too good. Then after reading and perusing the financial statements after their last shareholder meeting, I am convinced of one thing: Ubisoft is starting to embody a lot of wrong things in the modern game industry.
The long and short of the article was that Ubisoft wants to invest in generative AI (something I wrote about last time), cancel some games including a few long running series, layoff staff, and scale back on innovation. As a gamer, reading this hurt my soul as Ubisoft has historically published some of my most favorite titles of all time. I have fond memories of building maps in Far Cry Instincts: Predator with my brother and spending hours playing Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six on the Nintendo 64. When I was growing up, I always looked forward to the next great Ubisoft game.
In the future, those amazing new Ubisoft titles will probably be pretty few and far between.
What their business plan essentially is now is to no longer value creativity and instead focus on chasing trends while hoping to make a quick buck. Before we get to the announcement of them investing in generative AI for gamer facing situations, let’s look back to Ubisoft Quartz where their genius idea to engage gamers was to sell NFTs for in-game items. I wish I was joking, but the well-paid executives thought that gamers would think it was cool to buy what was essentially jpegs of items from their games. Those items would have been limited edition cosmetics that would do nothing except say that you own them. After the initial integration with Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, it has not been used in any title since 2021.
Quartz did not work, but bad ideas keep coming. Fast forward to today and we find Ubisoft trying to implement large language models for NPCs, something that they touted as an investment. They also admitted that they are focusing only on open world games and games-as-a-service. These are essentially the same type of titles they always make now, and live service games meant to squeeze as much revenue as possible is all we can expect from Ubisoft in the future. Even the NPCs will be cheap, just AI-models that no human programmer or developer helped to fit into a title’s plot.
As a longtime Ubisoft fan, this is depressing. I feel like there are already too many live service games on the market. Even well-known publishers and developers are not able to make live service games that stick (like Anthem or Babylon’s Fall), and yet Ubisoft wants to double down on these types of titles. Even though surveys have consistently shown that most gamers prefer single player games over live service games, that does not seem to matter to their future plans.
To at least some extent, this is how much of the AAA industry is operating now. Rather than listening to what gamers want and enjoy, they instead keep serving us the same inferior products. I feel bad for gamers, but even more so for developers. These people put their heart and soul into trying to build games that make people happy. But instead, they are being forced to make what are essentially fancy money generators.
What made Ubisoft great in the past and actually one of the best publishers was their being willing to take a risk on new games while trying to be cutting edge. I still believe Far Cry 2 and Far Cry 3 were way ahead of their time. The original Assassin’s Creed was a unique idea and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag was revolutionary with its ship combat. Sure, not everything Ubisoft did was a hit, but at least they tried to push the envelope. That is how games get better or live on as cult classics (like The Legend of Dragoon or Chrono Trigger).
The only salvation to this situation is that we are starting to see more offerings from the AA sector, basically smaller developers and publishers who may not have unlimited resources, but who are willing to take a chance. AA games have really improved in quality over the years, with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 probably being the best and most recent example.
I would argue that at this point Ubisoft is almost like a canary in a coal mine. Large AAA publishers (possibly excluding Nintendo) are losing all understanding of what gamers want. They spend most of their time thinking about ways to make their titles generate revenue instead of coming up with great new ideas, which also could help to increase sales. Until these companies reset their focus or this new approach crashes and burns, I’m not sure we can expect much better from many formerly amazing AAA publishers.
During the coming snowstorm, I for one plan to bundle up with some innovative indie and AA titles assuming the power stays on. I wish you all warm and safe gaming time as well.