Here’s something interesting. Ubisoft games have this samey feeling where game mechanics from their various franchises just blend together. While some of the carry-over ideas make sense, it also ended up making all Ubisoft games to feel too samey. How many open-world games with games-as-a-service mechanics have the studio pumped out as of late.
According to VGC, this will change soon as Ubisoft is restructuring its central editorial team based in Paris, which oversees all Ubisoft games. This editorial team don’t make games themselves, but has the influence to push certain game mechanics or themes to the various Ubisoft studios across the globe.
This is a direct response to recent titles like The Division 2 and Ghost Recon Breakpoint not selling well, which also resulted in a few of Ubi’s 2020 games like Watch Dogs Legion getting delayed.
The report by VGC indicates that the new editorial team will now have various vice presidents reporting under Ubisoft chief creative officer Serge Hascoet. Before this, there are a few personnel in the editorial team that are embedded to various projects. But final say has to come from Hascoet himself.
The change will see these vice presidents having more autonomy to make their own calls, while Hascoet retains his current role, albeit with less hands-on. The vice presidents will also be personnel from outside of Paris this time too.
While many of these details come from a report based on sources, Ubisoft confirmed the editorial team restructure is true. “We are reinforcing our editorial team to be more agile and better accompany our development teams around the world as they create the best gaming experiences for players,” Ubisoft said to VGC regarding this.
Ubisoft has been criticised for its samey game design as if it’s fulfilling an arbitrary checkbox of gameplay elements just for the sake of it. Hopefully, the changes will see their upcoming games be less so and stand out more.
Source: VGC