Problems with Huge AAA Gaming Projects - Former Ubisoft Dev Speaks

[JEMC]

DonFerrari said:

JEMC said:

DonFerrari said:

JEMC said:

Looking at Ubisoft Montreal (which is huge with +2,700 employees): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubisoft_Montreal#2009.E2.80.93present

they have been involved in every single Assassins Creed game.

And the same goes for Ubisoft Quebec and Ubisoft Romania, for example.

And do you think Ubi Montreal is a single team? Nope. They probably have like 10 teams and they alternate in the releases. Even with huge team a 1 year timeschedule for those type of games is crazy, it isn't sport game with only rooster changes.

I doubt they alternate between releases. The Assassin's Creed team (or teams in Montreal) work in AC games and the Far Cry team work on FC games. Mixing them would cause extra problems that Ubisoft can't afford in an annual franchise.

As for your second part, that's exactly why they use several studios and what causes some of their problems and ultimately make the games end up being like they do: uninspired and "more of the same".

There may be an AC team or department, but they don't necessairily work all on the same game together. They could have subdivision. But that doesn't matter, their biggest problem is communication not tight timeline.

But the tight timeline is what causes some of those communications problems. The yearly releases force that several studios have to work together to get the game done in time, and that causes the communication problems.

If the game was bi-annual, the number of studios involved in the development could be lowered, maybe to only Montreal and Quebec, and that would simplify the communications while also speed up other tasks like making the right choices and the set up of priorities.