If anyone has a good memory, you'll remember me talking ~7 months ago about a Ubisoft dev and their experience working on Assassin's Creed 3. To be more specific, the dev responded to a question on AskReddit on what really happened with AC3's development. In their response, they talked of poor coordination and terrible communication between all of the various hands worldwide who worked on the game. Basically, an insight into what can happen when huge AAA games are worked on with enormous teams. For those who have not read that story, you can find it here.

Now, a few years later, a former Ubisoft dev who had worked there for ~10 years has left the company to go indie. Fortunately enough for us, he has written a blog post which glosses over his time at Ubi and the various projects that he had worked on; and ultimately, why he decided to leave a stable job Ubisoft after 10 years to pursue his own dreams. Keep in mind that this is one point of view (although it coincides with the AC3 dev's claims to a degree), and other devs at other companies may have had differing experiences. He isn't inherently negative about his experience either; and he does talk fondly of a fun and challenging experience working with new techs in AC Unity. All the same, to me his claims make a lot of sense.

Since it is his blog, I'll only take a convenient scrap of the write up to paste here and leave a link for those who want to read the whole thing (which I recommend for a better context). Anyhow, without further ado, here you are:

Why I quit my dream job at Ubisoft - Subheading: AC Syndicate

Taken from http://gingearstudio.com/why-i-quit-my-dream-job-at-ubisoft

"After a few months, Syndicate started for real. The team was getting bigger and bigger as we entered production. For me, this is the root of all issues on AAA games: big teams. Too many people. Syndicate was created with the collaboration of about 10 studios in the world. This is 24 hour non-stop development. When people go to sleep in one studio, it’s morning in another one.

With so many people, what naturally occurs is specialization. There’s a lot of work to do, and no one can master all the game’s systems. So, people specialize, there’s no way around it. It can be compared to an assembly line in a car factory. When people realize they’re just one very replaceable person on a massive production chain, you can imagine it impacts their motivation.

With specialization often comes tunnel-vision. When your expertise is limited to, let’s say, art, level design, performances or whatever, you’ll eventually convince yourself that it’s the most important thing in the game. People become biased towards their own expertise. It makes decision-making a lot more complicated. More often than not, it’s the loudest voice who wins… even if it doesn’t make much sense.

On large scale projects, good communication is – simply put – just impossible. How do you get the right message to the right people? You can’t communicate everything to everyone, there’s just too much information. There are hundreds of decisions being taken every week. Inevitably, at some point, someone who should have been consulted before making a decision will be forgotten. This creates frustration over time.

On top of that, there’s often too many people involved in making a decision. Usually you don’t want to make a decision in a meeting with 20 people, it’s just inefficient. So the person in charge of the meeting chooses who’s gonna be present, and too bad for the others. What it’s gonna be? A huge, inefficient meeting where no decision is taken, or a small meeting that goes well but creates frustration in the long run?

Being an architect, I had a pretty high level view of all technical developments on the project. While it sounds cool, it has its disadvantages too. The higher you go up the ladder, the less concrete impact you have on the game. You’re either a grunt who works on a tiny, tiny part of the game (“See that lamppost? I put it there!”), or you’re a high-level director who writes emails and goes to meetings (“See that road full of lampposts? I approved that.”). Both positions suck for different reasons. No matter what’s your job, you don’t have a significant contribution on the game. You’re a drop in a glass of water, and as soon as you realize it, your ownership will evaporate in the sun. And without ownership, no motivation.

I could go on and on. There’s tons of other reasons why AAA projects are not satisfying. Don’t get me wrong: it’s nothing specific to Ubisoft or Assassin’s Creed games. This is an inevitable side effect of creating huge games with an enormous team.

I have to add that, obviously, some people are motivated. Those are usually juniors and people who never got the chance to work on a AAA project before. But when you’ve done it a couple of times, the excitement disappears, and you’re only left with the sad, day-to-day reality. That’s a huge problem for studios working on AAA projects one after another. Senior staff gets tired and leave."

-Written January 21st, 2016

So there you have it. With bigger games and bigger budgets come more hands on the project. This does result in wonderful games, but there does seem to be a degree of inefficiency and lack of communication in this instance. Is this a huge reason why so many indie devs are popping up now? How can AAA projects be reshaped and remodelled to be more efficient? Can they? Is there anything else you would like to talk about surrounding this subject?

Thanks for reading. Discuss.

It happens when you work in a big company.. It's no different in any other work environment.. Still better then that worker in China who says "see that screw in your iPhone.. I put it there for 2 bucks on hour" or that India kid "see that Nike emblem, I put it on that tshirt for 1buck an hour"

That's why good producers are extremely important for large scale games. They are the ones keeping everything together and they are the ones who need to make the decisions. If someone tells you that someone like Kojima or Miyamoto aren't making their games themselves, they are right. But those people have the most influence into their games, which is why they deserve all the credit they can. Just imagine how hard it must be to assure quality with hundreds of people working on a project.

There are people who are very talented in that regard. Dan Houser time and time again does an excellent job with Grand Theft Auto. Although the game is surely one with the biggest budget and most manpower of all time, he still is able to get the feel that everything has been thought through by one person. It's truly amazing.

But yeah, single developers indeed are replaceable. I wouldn't call that a problem though. It's only natural. You're working for making the vision of someone else true. If you want to do your own thing, you need to make your own game. Which this dude here did. It's not a problem, it's just how things work.

Yeah, it does seem like a first world problem.

Besides all that AC:syndicate turned out surprisingly well.

It still sounds better than: "i made this whole game that no one cares to play", wich it seems where he is headed to.

With that said, japan has been developing games that aren't AAA aswell. Lets call them A? Usually quirky games or anime games. I would like to see more of those, because some of us don't care as much about graphics over an enjoyable game.

The problem is ubisoft showing off their games on a certain console and then signing a exclusive contract with a second console and having to do a massive downgrade as a result of the second console being unable to handle what the first console could.

~User was moderated for this post StarOcean

Well, honestly, it sounds like the real problem is time and annual releases. Trying to get a game finished in a year so it can hit that holiday season sales period means you farm out more work to more people. Meanwhile, smaller teams are working on games for two or three years or more, which sounds like a better experience.

That sounds like all large scale software development, not just games.

$1/2 an hour? These sweat shop kids are in the big money compared to the rest! Ballin

Naughty dog.

Just shows there is a right and wrong way to do anything

Naughty Dog is a good example, but I think a better comparison would be Rockstar. They create huge big vbudget games across multiple studios (correct me if I'm wrong) and the only problem with their games seem to be bugs or glitches. Perhaps they communicate better?

Naughty Dog has great leadership and stays within one building. I don't think they outsource anything except for remasters