Ubisoft Considers Beyond Good & Evil a Mistake

[roseofbattle]

Ubisoft Considers Beyond Good & Evil a Mistake

For Ubisoft to pick up an experimental title, the pitch had better persuade management the game will be a commercial success.

Ubisoft is known for big series like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and the upcoming game Watch Dogs. The AAA studio makes big games with a lot of money. Profits are important, and despite the love a dedicated group of people have for Beyond Good & Evil, Ubisoft calls it a mistake. When creative director Patrick Plourde pitched his personal project Child of Light, a future title with RPG and platforming elements starring a young girl in a coming-of-age story, Ubisoft was wary of a game that wouldn't bring success. Ten years have passed, and Beyond Good & Evil still weighs heavily on Ubisoft's mind.

"If the game is a missed opportunity, then it's going to be a missed opportunity for years," Plourde said in a GamesIndustry interview. "Even when I pitched Child of Light, they mentioned Beyond Good & Evil. They said, 'Beyond Good & Evil was not a success, and we made that mistake once.' "

Beyond Good & Evil is an action adventure game released in 2003. The player controls Jade, an investigative photographer working in a resistance movement to reveal a conspiracy. The game scored well in reviews but did not sell well. Ubisoft wants to stick to safer guarantees of financial returns seen in popular franchises like Assassin's Creed. Convincing Ubisoft management to take a chance on a smaller title is tough work, but Plourde managed to do it.

Referencing games like Journey, Bastion, and Limbo as examples of indie games with high returns, Plourde persuaded Ubisoft Montreal to take on Child of Light. Plourde says Ubisoft Montreal greenlit the game because he has some pull in the company and knew what management needed to hear. He recommends developers to go indie when they have an idea that a large studio doesn't want to pursue.

"If somebody tries something and fails, there are going to be repercussions for other people," Plourde said. "I don't think people are malevolent or evil about that. It's just if it fails, they're going to be careful greenlighting other projects like that."

Source: GamesIndustry [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-11-05-ubisoft-montreal-convincing-a-aaa-studio-to-try-indie-games]

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[snekadid]

I had to read the title twice after reading the article, because I could swear the article was about EA. Between their crappy steam rip offs and their franchise management, you'd think Ubisoft was trying to become EA.

 

[Andy Shandy]

Well fuck you too then, Ubisoft.

Wonder what this means for BG&E2 if they consider the first a mistake. D:

 

[synobal]

This is almost the only argument I have a hard time with when discussing games as art. The profit motive of the larger corporations honestly makes me want to argue that games can't be art because they are under these pressures to sell and so you can never get a pure peice you always get something designed to sell at the store.

That isn't 100% true, plenty of indy games aren't victim to these treasures or at least don't cave into them. These larger corporations that have shareholders screaming at them for returns on their investment though? At best they are the equivalent of hollywood block buster action flicks. Fun to watch and play with but they can almost never do anything of substance.

I think this trend is only going to grow worse in the ripple A industry as well, and is why we see so few new IPs out of the triple a industry and more and more remakes, reimaginings and sequels. They want safe and profitable above all else.

 

[blackrave]

Fuck you Ubisoft!
Your face is a mistake!!!

 

[Product Placement]

But... I liked that game.

Seriously, why didn't people buy it?

 

[rcs619]

Well fuck you too then, Ubisoft.

Wonder what this means for BG&E2 if they consider the first a mistake. D:

The same thing it always meant, Ubisoft is never gonna let it get made. It's far more useful for them as a tease to dangle in front of gamers like they've been doing for years. All of that 'if the studio doesn't do well, games like Beyond Good and Evil 2 could never get made' and so on. Ubisoft, it seems, has fallen very hard into the EA (Although they have gotten slightly better) and Activision models. They have 2, maybe 3, flagship series, and they refuse to make anything else because those sell well and they can re-use assets to push them out yearly.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

A mistake? A MISTAKE?!

Really? Just....I need to lay down for bit. My brain hurts.

Well fuck you too then, Ubisoft.

Wonder what this means for BG&E2 if they consider the first a mistake. D:

I'm beginning to think nothing.

The way they've been teasing it and doing fuck all about it makes me think they're not gonna make a sequel.

Which sucks because I love that game.

 

[Falterfire]

I was going to say that 'a platforming RPG that tells the coming of age story of a young girl' doesn't really sound that interesting, but then I remembered I have something like twenty hours logged in a game best described as "Generic JRPG mixed with two player Bejeweled" so I'm probably not the best person to judge such things.

That said: Games not selling if they have a female protagonist becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling loop: Nobody puts effort into making one, so the games aren't that good, so they don't sell, so they don't get full effort if somebody does actually greenlight one.

 

[Covarr]

If the game had received the marketing push it deserved, it might've done better.

P.S. Thanks

 

[Ragsnstitches]

But... I liked that game.

Seriously, why didn't people buy it?

The world wasn't ready for non-cocktease female protagonist.

EDIT: Should be clarified that this was a joke.

 

[sdfasdfhfgfgjtyisdgdfdfj]

A game being a mistake profit-wise does not mean a game is a mistake design-wise, I suppose.

 

[nightmare_gorilla]

I can't help but think there is a better way to handle niche games like this. because in a way they are right, if it didn't sell enough copies to turn a profit then it is a failure in that sense. but with all the information companies are capturing from sales and just consumers in general about our preferences and play styles, is there not a way to "manage" expectations of a game and play to that. I guess going indie is the term for it, but how hard would it be to put a small team of people on a pet project or a labor of love and work on it sort of in the "down time" there's a big to do in the industry about the crunch time mentality where people work 80 hr weeks to get a game out the door but then to avoid those people sitting with their thumb up their ass during certification and waiting for street dates they put them to work on dlc that often goes on the disc and pisses everyone off. why not let them work on personal projects during that time when you have really already paid for their time one way or the other. then release a digital only copy with a small inexpensive social advertising campaign. even if it took 3 or 4 years of working on it "in-between" games for passion projects that have this cult following what's to risk with an all digital approach and just making a Facebook page or tweeting about it. i'm sure there is a lot wrong with my example I don't know the games industry that well but come on people, where is it written every game has to cost 100 million and be advertised during the super bowl. how hard is it to simply say, we only expect to sell a couple thousand copies so lets make the game cost be X so we can turn a profit if it only sells half that.

 

[synobal]

This is almost the only argument I have a hard time with when discussing games as art. The profit motive of the larger corporations honestly makes me want to argue that games can't be art because they are under these pressures to sell and so you can never get a pure peice you always get something designed to sell at the store.

That isn't 100% true, plenty of indy games aren't victim to these treasures or at least don't cave into them. These larger corporations that have shareholders screaming at them for returns on their investment though? At best they are the equivalent of hollywood block buster action flicks. Fun to watch and play with but they can almost never do anything of substance.

I think this trend is only going to grow worse in the ripple A industry as well, and is why we see so few new IPs out of the triple a industry and more and more remakes, reimaginings and sequels. They want safe and profitable above all else.

All art is made for the person making it to make money, the difference is that a lot of "classical art" was made on commission i.e a rich dude wants a painting/sculpture to show off with.

And you have to remember AAA games like with summer blockbusters cost more to make than any single painting/sculpture/book or piece of music ever has. Hell a single game takes all the older arts and puts them together several hundred times over if you think about it.

True but I think it matters just how much the profit motive compromises the artistic vision.

 

[Sixcess]

Wonder what this means for BG&E2 if they consider the first a mistake. D:

Perhaps they'll 're-imagine' it as a first-person-shooter. That always works well...

 

[Kyogissun]

Plourde should find a way to secretly fund a kickstarter to buy the rights to Beyond Good and Evil's copyright back from ubisoft.

Then he can tell them to go FUCK THEMSELVES and make BG&E2 through crowdfunding as well.

Fuck you ubisoft and fuck your concept of 'mistakes'. YOU fucked up that game with its shitty release window and god awful marketing. You've run Assassin's Creed into the ground, you've made it VERY clear you plan to do the same with Watch_Dogs, A GAME THAT ISN'T EVEN OUT YET, and you're PROBABLY getting ready to do the same with far cry 3!

Don't fucking act like you're some kind of patron saint of gaming industry wisdom and act like BG&E was some end all be all mistake, because the QUANTITY of mistakes you are making outweighs the 'badness' of what YOU think is a mistake.

Man, I really don't like to throw shit fits and rant like this when it comes to the gaming industry but god DAMN does that piss me off. I want to speak with my wallet but it's fucking infuriating that there's actually stuff I want from them.

I'll be buying Child of Light at the least but until say, a demo for Stick of Truth is out (and maybe watch dogs) they're not getting another fucking dollar out of me.

 

[Vaccine]

Just like Ubisofts budget control and expectations are a mistake.

FRANCHISE, FRANCHISE, FRANCHISE, GRAPHICS, GRAPHICS, GRAPHICS.