Jimquisition: Ubisoft - A Sad History of PC Failures

[Strain42]

As someone who doesn't play Ubisoft games...and someone who doesn't play PC games, I was merely smiling and nodding through most of this video.

But I do want to say I totally agree with the "iconic" thing. That bothers me. It's like when you go to the store and you see a DVD of some low budget film you've never heard of, but there's a critic blurb on it that says like "destined to be a new cult classic." ...that's not how cult classics were! You can't just KNOW something is gonna be a cult classic. It has to exist and fall into obscurity and then somehow become loved. When Troll 2 came out, it was just a bad movie, you didn't have people from Entertainment Weekly or Huffington Post going "Oh yeah, guaranteed cult classic."

 

[Lovely Mixture]

So why is Steam ok when UPlay isn't? I mean, imo, both are unnecessary barriers towards your games and ya... Origin, UPlay, Steam, etc are systems/ideas that need to die. Yes, I know Steam has some nice features, but why do they need those features while still being a wall between you and your games and not letting you own your own game?

Because needing multiple clients and accounts to run your games is stupid. Especially when you have account systems within clients (Uplay within Steam, GFWL in Steam) in your games. That's two barriers.

Steam at it's heart is ultimately disadvantageous, but people have gotten used to it because it works well after having been around for while. Forcing customers to register ANOTHER acount system to use programs is dumb, Google did it with youtube, Microsoft is attempting to do it with all of their platforms, etc.

The best part is that Watch_Dog's is about how a central account system network is bad, and it forces you to run uplay.

 

[KungFuJazzHands]

Fuck Ubisnot right in their reeking butthole. They disrespect their fans and talk down to them like retarded kittens. They release the same crappy rehashed material year after year. They use piracy as an excuse to disregard a large percentage of their customers. They get caught doing underhanded things and then try to lie their way out of taking responsibility for their actions.

They also have the worst customer service I've ever experienced in my 30+ years of video gaming. Not only do they outright refuse to offer support for certain "legacy" PC titles like Peter Jackson's King Kong (a game still being sold on the market, BTW), Ubi's support staff have treated me with barely-disguised contempt every single time I've contacted them regarding an issue with one of their games. It's like they train their agents specifically to verbally reject anyone who may have a challenging question or concern.

The sooner this shitty company goes out of business, the better off us gamers will be. Too bad that will never happen though, thanks in large part to those of you still stupid enough to buy Ubi products.

 

[Antsh]

God. Any search on Google will show that the argument about the success of their DRM is complete BS.

 

[Tony2077]

God. Any search on Google will show that the argument about the success of their DRM is complete BS.

I'd be surprised if there is any success stories when it comes to DRM

 

[Vicioussama]

So why is Steam ok when UPlay isn't? I mean, imo, both are unnecessary barriers towards your games and ya... Origin, UPlay, Steam, etc are systems/ideas that need to die. Yes, I know Steam has some nice features, but why do they need those features while still being a wall between you and your games and not letting you own your own game?

Because needing multiple clients and accounts to run your games is stupid. Especially when you have account systems within clients (Uplay within Steam, GFWL in Steam) in your games. That's two barriers.

Steam at it's heart is ultimately disadvantageous, but people have gotten used to it because it works well after having been around for while. Forcing customers to register ANOTHER acount system to use programs is dumb, Google did it with youtube, Microsoft is attempting to do it with all of their platforms, etc.

The best part is that Watch_Dog's is about how a central account system network is bad, and it forces you to run uplay.

But my point is we should attack the idea as a whole, just because people are used to shit doesn't mean it isn't shit or that it is ok.

 

[Aitamen]

Yes, I know Steam has some nice features, but why do they need those features while still being a wall between you and your games and not letting you own your own game?

You can still modify your game, you can still copy your game... and they regularly charge you less for lesser versions of "ownership". I think that such an exchange is fair, and since it's frequently a choice instead of a mandate, especially since they're upfront and honest about it.

It might be a system that bears flaws for what benefits it offers, but between the honesty and the fact that it does give some things in return for those flaws (whereas UPlay actively harms many of it's games, regularly lies, etc.) means that it's acceptable for those who don't find the flaws to be negation of the benefits.

Personally, I support Steam because I support Valve, its technology research, and their take on gaming and corporate integration. When they made the system, they wanted something better than having selfmade sites, and wanted to be able to pull a great many games together. They actually *want* something good, and want to continually improve it. IIRC UPlay was created as DRM, to harm customers actively (through ineptitude). Rather different, no?

 

[Vicioussama]

Yes, I know Steam has some nice features, but why do they need those features while still being a wall between you and your games and not letting you own your own game?

You can still modify your game, you can still copy your game... and they regularly charge you less for lesser versions of "ownership". I think that such an exchange is fair, and since it's frequently a choice instead of a mandate, especially since they're upfront and honest about it.

It might be a system that bears flaws for what benefits it offers, but between the honesty and the fact that it does give some things in return for those flaws (whereas UPlay actively harms many of it's games, regularly lies, etc.) means that it's acceptable for those who don't find the flaws to be negation of the benefits.

Personally, I support Steam because I support Valve, its technology research, and their take on gaming and corporate integration. When they made the system, they wanted something better than having selfmade sites, and wanted to be able to pull a great many games together. They actually *want* something good, and want to continually improve it. IIRC UPlay was created as DRM, to harm customers actively (through ineptitude). Rather different, no?

But it's not "your" game. read the ToS. It's their game and you're essentially just renting it. Sure, Gabe might be running things fairly for now, but how long until a new CEO or board comes around that is more like EA and fucks us? We shouldn't let the system get set up in the first place that makes it easy to screw the consumer.

 

[Antsh]

God. Any search on Google will show that the argument about the success of their DRM is complete BS.

I'd be surprised if there is any success stories when it comes to DRM

Those old tests that required the manual were probably fairly effective. At least until the WWW became popular.

Those things were annoying... sucked so bad if you ever lost the manual or w/e other device they managed to come up with.

 

[Folji]

It's bold claiming UbiSoft has always been an utter piece of crap to PC development without end, as though they have been since their inception, with years and years of evidence to prove just that... and then start the story at 2010. Yeah, UbiSoft has been a helltrain of a company for the past 4-5 years, but are people really that quick to just completely forget about history beyond the recent half-a-decade scope? UbiSoft in the 90s and early 2000s developed, published and co-published a whole slew of great titles with a variety of iconic names and figures.

Many of them have since been apparently forgotten in the eyes of both the public and the eyes of the company itself, but they still did it. They still made those games and they were good, some of them even better yet on PC than on any other platform (or downright exclusive to PC). UbiSoft as it is right now is really unpleasant to say the least, but to say they've always been just godawful at it as though they have been so without fault, that's just pissing down the back of some two decades of company history.

Buuuuut, it's the here and now that matters. Who cares about the old days when you got 2014 and a company is offering lottery tickets as a pre-order offer, right?

 

[hydrolythe]

I am still wondering what kind of shitstorm would happen on the internet if you were suddenly able to play as a furry in the next assassin's creed.

I am still wondering though what Ubi Soft's early PC output looked like. They used to only develop for the Amstrad CPC in their very first year as a company.

Well, it depends on what you mean by "Furry". If your talking about setting the game in an entirely world of anthromorphs and claiming it's part of the main series, there would be an outcry over that, and it would be justified. Of course they might be able to mitigate that a little bit by making it a "false record", sort of like how "Liberation" arguably never happened, or at least not like the game shows, because it was presented as a piece of Templar propaganda. As they launched an entertainment company in "Black Flag" they could use a similar justification claiming they are building a Disney-esque fantasy around historical events to "teach children about history while using anthromorphs to avoid outcry from parents over the more extreme elements". Either that or do memory regression with a hero who is a kid, with everything filtered into a cartoony environment in order to disturb him less.

As far as the character being a furry, as in an a sexual deviant or cosplayer, a lot would depend on how I was done. I can't see someone parkouring around in a fur suit, and I can't think of many historical time frames where that would work, unless they go totally modern, since if anyone found that one out we'd probably see the guy in question burned at the stake. Today people might talk crap to you for not being normal, in previous generations they would kill you (horribly) and to be fair through most of the world they probably still won't tolerate it (people tend not to realize how tolerant the first world is compared to the rest of it). On the other hand if they decided to make the 20th/21st century character hooked up to the machine, having him be a Furry might not even be noticed if it was done right, as the general environment of these things (labs, offices, etc...) aren't cases where you can really justify the guy wandering around in a crotchless mascot costume or whatever. The dude might have some pictures on his desk or whatever showing himself in costume, or make a couple of comments, but for the most part it's not likely to come up in the fore front. It's sort of like having an S&M fiend, it's not like the dude is going to come to work (or be captured and held in a lab) where he's running around with a suitcase full of pervy toys or whatever.,,, and really if the guy is just a cosplayer, again it's a situation where it's just not likely to come up, as the dude isn't likely going to say "Okay, well I'm going to work, or trying to elude these dudes killing me, to fit in I'm going to go change into my Badger costume".

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if Ubisoft's new game has S&M elements as it's apparently dealing with a place and time period where the Marquis De Sade and his writings and such were at a peak. If Ubisoft isn't afraid of the ratings I could easily see them exaggerating like they usually do and having the hero get involved/infiltrate a party based heavily around the one from "101 Days Of Sodom". Though I'd imagine to avoid things getting too risqué they would do it by having the PC not be into that stuff, and mostly use it as a backdrop, thus they don't have to show him (or anyone else) participating, maybe just some people in bondage, a few corpses hanging around (let's just say the story involved lethality, indeed there is a whole appendix section at the back about lethal pleasures), or something disturbing being interrupted or about to happen when our friendly assassin intervenes. That said it wouldn't be the same as having the hero be part of an "alternative life style".

If I had to guess as to the next trigger Ubisoft will pull, it will probably be having a gay character. I could see them getting a lot of positive attention if they say had a straight modern character projecting into the mind of a (mostly) gay historical figure (can't be 100% gay because the genetics were passed on from an earlier time frame) and having to reconcile this for sync purposes. Either that or the could have a gay guy in the modern age dealing with the pressures, and say talking about it with a corporate shrink in between missions and plot relevant sections. The old game "Phantasmagoria 2: A puzzle of the flesh" already did that and got away with it at a much earlier time, so I'd imagine Ubisoft might do that in a gesture towards being progressive.

All told though, my basic point is getting in Ubisoft's face for not having a female leading option in one of their games is kind of ridiculous, especially when directed at this company which has been among the more open minded. As I said, by all means, attack their business practices, but if your a progressive you shouldn't be attacking them for social reasons, this is one of the companies that is firmly on your side, and all that's being done here is damage.

The main reason why I said it is because I expected that there would be a moral outcry from the same people because appearently Ubi Soft is being too progressive, from the same guys that said before that Ubi Soft was way too traditionalist in its values, similarly to how Hideo Kojima was angry at the fact that people did not realise that Solid Snake was in fact a deconstruction of a hero and thought of him as idealistic person and thus created Raiden which is meant to have many opposing traits so that he could hear people with the moral outcry that he is not idealistic, not understanding that Solid Snake himself was that as well.

So yeah, I agree with you (and perhaps I could indeed have used a better example to prove my point). This however does not mean you can or can't have a furry or gay character in the next assassin's creed (Phantasy Star 3 took place in a medieval setting despite the fact that the sci-fi setting differentiated it from any generic RPG at the time and they still managed to convince fans through the storyline that it should be part of the franchise it originally should have belonged to.

 

[Therumancer]

The main reason why I said it is because I expected that there would be a moral outcry from the same people because appearently Ubi Soft is being too progressive, from the same guys that said before that Ubi Soft was way too traditionalist in its values, similarly to how Hideo Kojima was angry at the fact that people did not realise that Solid Snake was in fact a deconstruction of a hero and thought of him as idealistic person and thus created Raiden which is meant to have many opposing traits so that he could hear people with the moral outcry that he is not idealistic, not understanding that Solid Snake himself was that as well.

So yeah, I agree with you (and perhaps I could indeed have used a better example to prove my point). This however does not mean you can or can't have a furry or gay character in the next assassin's creed (Phantasy Star 3 took place in a medieval setting despite the fact that the sci-fi setting differentiated it from any generic RPG at the time and they still managed to convince fans through the storyline that it should be part of the franchise it originally should have belonged to.

Well, the thing is that in some cases a game or series has a premise that prevents them from going with what modern morality might dictate as being possible. For example, you could probably never have a gay or lesbian character in Assassin's Creed unless it was the absolute final chapter, because by definition gays are not only treated poorly through most of history, but the series itself mandates that the ancestor has to breed, in order to pass on the
genetic memory through the ages. Especially before the development of modern technology and the possibility of artificial insemination and the like. Adoption wouldn't explain passing on the genetic memory. Let's say for the sake
of argument that you make a game during the "Dark Ages" a decade or two after the fall of rome, and have a gay or lesbian character since that kind of thing wasn't looked down on by the Romans, and it being the dark ages (where a lot of history was lost) it explains why nobody had heard of this, and of course also explains why the Templars might be particularly interested in "memory diving" things that happened during the period. At the end of the day unless your going to have the character raped by a heterosexual as the conclusion of the story (since by definition the genetic memories you relive presumably have to be before conception of the next ancestor in the chain) which would hardly be
the big "politically correct" statement they are looking for, you really can't do it. Of course in a more modern
setting (which the devs have been staying away from other than bits between memory dives) possibilities open up due to artificial insemination, cloning, and similar things.

Being part of a fetish subculture like furries all depends on the timeline as well, but of course if they are going to be PC about it this would only come up once in a while or be mentioned, largely because say having some dude running around in a fur suit or S&M garb would be silly and mocking the group they are supposed to be being nice to. I mean it works in a game like "Saint's Row" or old school "Grand Theft Auto" which are setting out to be absurd (a furry leading a gang of S&M gimps and beating people to death with a dildo is pretty much expected and even outright encouraged in Saint's Row) but not for something like "Assassin's Creed" or to make a serious statement.

Now, to be honest it occurred to me that the upcoming Assassin's Creed game DID have a unique opportunity to do some things with the BDSM scene, since while it pre-dated the period of pre-revolutionary France it was alive and well due to the writings of guys like The Marquis De Sade (who wrote "101 Days In Sodom" while he was in prison, with the manuscript saved by the guards allegedly). Given that he travelled through high society (the title was not an affectation) and apparently had decent numbers of followers, tying him and his merry little band of social revolutionaries to the Templars, or Assassins (if they wanted you to sympathize with them) could potentially have worked. I look back to how
he was used in "The Invisibles". I'm not saying they definably should have gone here of course, but it DOES surprise me when people go to epic lengths to project a progressive agenda, and insist on focusing on one of the least likely possibilities (playable women) as opposed to other things that could match the agenda that could potentially fit into the game better. One can demand DLC for something like this, and one can't say it doesn't match the period, because the guy existed, was active, and was even arrested for the stuff he was up to, as well as becoming the face of a movement, and one of the more common fetishes that people fight for. One could argue women didn't go swashbuckling around, and nobody had even heard of a fursuit, never wound up being turned on by mascot sex or anthromorphics, but they did run around doing kinky things to each other in leather costumes and erotic torture chambers. Of course then again Desade himself was probably a maniac seriel killer as well, but that was never proven ("101 Days Of Sodom" has been taken as a sort of confession albeit exaggerated) and it depends on which stories about the guy they want to use.