Ubisoft Considers Beyond Good & Evil a Mistake

[the7ofswords]

Maybe if they had spent any money and effort on promoting the damn game, it would have done better.

I ended up buying a copy out of a bargain bin just because I had remembered a friend talking about it a year or so before. I would never have heard of it if he hadn't told me about it. I remember him looking all over town for a copy at one point, but he couldn't find one at retail. It seems hardly anyone had stocked it.

I'd never seen an ad or TV commercial for this game, but hey, it was only $10, so I picked it up when I saw it. I was surprised at what an enjoyable game it was. My kids really loved it, too?they each ended up playing through it 3 or 4 times?something they'd only ever done with a Zelda title before.

Stupid Ubi suits ...

 

[Proverbial Jon]

Urgh, this is the very thing I hate about this industry. It's another reason I also avoid Ubisoft games in general now. Assassin's Creed was just sucked dry because of this attitude and I refuse to buy any more of their souless cash-grabs. Meanwhile genuinely smart and unique games are left to fester and die because they "didn't sell well."

Their focus groups would probably say they wouldn't play Beyond Good and Evil because Jade isn't half naked and wielding an automatic weapon on the box cover. Makes me sick.

 

[Genocidicles]

Fuck you Ubisoft! You're the mistake!

Are they planning on stealing the golden poo from EA or something?

 

[josemlopes]

We all know that it has nothing to do with what gender the main character is, BG&E was released at a time where adventure platformer games just werent all that profitable, thats it, there is also Psychonauts that had the exact same fate.

As usual, the suits only see statistics so for them it will seem reasonable to make a relation between the protagonist gender and the profit.

"All our other games stared a male protagonist and made profit, this one had a female protagonist and it didnt made profit, thats probably the reason why" - suits train of thought since suits are trained to only look at statistics. If these guys had also published Psychonauts they would have an example in their database that showed that the key for it to not make profit was the genre and not the gender.

 

[Callate]

Well, they're kind of right.

From a strict, spreadsheet-based perspective, Beyond Good & Evil was not a success.

I think they're missing some things, though.

As I think is amply demonstrated by the other comments on this article, it's possible for a game to earn a company goodwill even if it doesn't make mad bank. Rather than simply leaving all the less commercial (and potentially more innovative) works to the "indie" scene, I think the larger companies might be well advised to come up with a way to do them in-house, perhaps with a smaller team and a limited budget. Just as large movie studios may have spin-offs to develop and/or exploit films that aren't $200-million blockbusters, there's no good reason why a company like EA, Activision or Ubisoft couldn't have sub-studios to develop games that might be promising but aren't guaranteed platinum hits.

If one was willing to look past the quarterly spreadsheets, such a sub-studio could reap all manner of benefits. With looser strings, developers can create more risky, imaginative, and innovative works- and potentially, bring some of those innovations that are proven to work back into play when it comes time to make the next AAA title. It could also function as a sort of "light duty" rotation to prevent burn-out; top designers and programmers who have grown weary of churning out by-the-numbers shooters could work on passion projects with a real chance of seeing them actually come into being. Further, such a studio could give new and up-and-coming design staff a place to learn the ropes and spread their wings without the onus of a potential $50 million failure to make them fear for their future employment.

I don't think there are a lot of good reasons big producers couldn't create "quasi-indie" shops within their campuses. With a couple of million dollars and a dozen people (think Kickstarter levels), there's no reason talented people shouldn't be able to have a $20 game on Steam within a year. Unlike a lot of start-ups, these major companies have the infrastructure already in place. I'm inclined to suspect the only thing preventing them is not a lack of funding, but a closed-off way of thinking.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

Welp, if I had any inclination to buy a Ubisoft game left after the Uplay debacle, it's gone now. How big of a dick do you have to be to tell people that their favorite game was a mistake? Well, maybe this will convince more people to boycott them. Since Uplay was apparently not a big enough dick move already to get people to stop giving them money. And keep in mind, Ubisoft has abandoned Uplay's always-on DRM (I think), but has refused to come out and say that it was a mistake. So, to recap: Kicking people out of their single-player games if their Internet goes down for half a second: not a mistake. Greenlighting a game with a strong female protagonist: mistake.

Fuck you, Ubisoft. Fuck you forever and always. You can go bankrupt and starve to death in a gutter for all I care.

 

[McMullen]

Dear Ubisoft execs,

You released Beyond Good and Evil in 2003. The first time I heard of the game was in 2007. I was a member of a forum devoted to discussing games at the time, and I never heard of your game. I think your decisions on marketing the game might have some relevance to the question of how much of whose mistake it was.

 

[kael013]

Well, I guess it makes sense that Ubisoft would be unwilling to think of a game with poor marketing and a poorly timed release (a new, niche IP cast out with a bunch of existing cash cow franchises? What did they expect?) as nothing but a failure, but a mistake? I can think of a couple of mistakes surrounding this critically acclaimed game and [i/]none[/i] of them had to do with the game. But, then again, this is coming from "We're-not-making-games-unless-we-can-turn-them-into-yearly-cash-cow-franchises" Ubisoft, so FUCK YOU TOO UBI!

 

[00slash00]

With all due respect...FUCK YOU, UBISOFT! Beyond Good & Evil is literally the only game of yours that I really liked. If that game was a failure then I really wish you would make more failures, rather than re-releasing the same Assassins Creed game every year, but in a different setting.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Fuck you Ubisoft! You're the mistake!

Are they planning on stealing the golden poo from EA or something?

Come on guys.....BG&E was a great game, but in the end a game has to sell....
I dont blame publishers for greenlighting COD Modern gunbro racism 3 or Super Mario World 29186.
If there are millions of gamers who buy the copy-paste version of a game, why invest millions to make something new and interesting that doesnt sell even half as good?
Whenever something new and interesting comes up, all my friends go "Shut up and take my money", but when its actually released they are like "Dude, the new Mario is out, so why buy Rayman?".
Gamers brought this on themselves. Publishers are just giving people what they want. Just look at the new COD numbers.

Here's the difference between that.

When I first saw Call of Duty, it was in game stop. It was the display game near the game. Everyone had a turn in it, most people found it fun. I didn't.

When I first heard of Beyond Good and Evil, it was a forum website in 2009 entitled "What games needed a sequel"

There's something to the mindset of a controlled burn. It's like a forest fire. you ruin one section of the forest to make sure the raging fire doesn't over take the entire woods. To get backing away from the visionaries and people who want to experience, sometimes people produce things just to let them fail. If so many avid gamers here never heard of Beyond Good and Evil until years after the game's release, that's solely the fault of the producers.

I didn't hear about Call of Duty until every video display in America put one up.

I didn't hear about Smite until the Escapist put up these ads about it.

I nor other people can not keep our eyes open for things we don't know exist. If someone makes a product, you and I, we can't sit in a basement buy a phone and wonder why no one is buying it IF we didn't tell anyone it existed.

How many times when game stores were still relevant did we all see the nice bright covers of a multitude of games and go 'Never heard of this, not going to buy it'? I'm almost sure I did that with Beyond Good and Evil at least a few times. Gamers can not be thought of as psychic and believed to just pick up everything without a real stitch of detail.

And I put this argument to a friend of mine. He said just read the back. And I looked at him and said this; "If that's the only games' marketing, do you think it's going to be honest to you? 'this game is kind of bland, you played something like it before. but we want the money'? No, they are going to hype themselves up. And we all fell for that once in our lives." That's why gaming sites like the escapist and others exist. Because we want to know.

 

[teh_Canape]

there's no mistakes
only happy accidents

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

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.

Let's not forget that they released BG&E less than a week after they themselves release Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

F#&*ing Prince of Persia!

Releasing a small title against their own flagship of the time & acting surprised it didn't sell well. Sure

 

[Psychobabble]

Oh well, I consider ever giving money to Ubisoft a mistake so whatever.

 

[Doclector]

Wow, ubisoft, are you actively TRYING to appear as the industry's biggest dickhead? I mean, EA's trying to reform its image, and we're just kind of ignoring activision at this point, so did you see a shot at the big position of gamings most hated company, and decide to go all out?

Oh, and those indie games that did well, I wanna point something out. Are there any sequels? No? What about plans for a sequel I mean, hell, making one game that fits together as a complete product and story is just a waste, why not spin out sequel after goddamn sequel, the story never truly ending, just following up twist after twist until you give up on any resolution? That's the only kind of game welcome at ubisoft!

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

Gold. Simply Flawless.

 

[Yuuki]

Maybe back in 2003 the dominating chunk of the consumer base wasn't ready for a female protagonist? Not enough marketing perhaps? Maybe the concept/theme/style of the game was not familiar enough to gamers to guarantee huge sales?

There's definitely multiple factors behind why a game can be good but still not sell well.

 

[TheDoctor455]

Well fuck you too then, Ubisoft.

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

That they've already given up on it and have already cancelled it without telling anyone...

or...

they're not giving it the resources it needs to be truly great...

or...

they trolled us.

Either way...

Ubisoft is pretty much the French EA at this point.

 

[Casey Bowen]

I was working at EB Games the holiday season this game came out. There were some 80 HUGE titles to come out between the PS2 and XBOX that year... and ya know only the top 10-15 of them had huge marketing so of course BG&E got lost in the shuffle since it wasn't marketed at all.

If the suits would pull their heads out of their asses and release solid titles like this when they have a chance of success, rather than in the midst of SCORES of other titles, it would sell. By February it was selling. Not just because it had dropped to $20, but because people had played their other stuff and so were catching up on things they missed. If UBI had released it in Feb, or the summer before that Christmas.

Oh well, for being successful business people, they sometimes don't seem very bright.

 

[josemlopes]

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.

Let's not forget that they released BG&E less than a week after they themselves release Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

F#&*ing Prince of Persia!

Releasing a small title against their own flagship of the time & acting surprised it didn't sell well. Sure

And even Prince of Persia got the success it got for being nothing short of amazing, Psychonauts sold like shit and most other action adventure platformers sold like shit too (since the AAA exclusives dominated the platformer market by being bundled with the consoles and having more face time then any other games)

 

[MCerberus]

>Release game against your other big game for the season
>Spend a quarter as much as advertising as the other game because protagonist had boobs
>Obviously a failed game

 

[Another]

I love Beyond Good & Evil. And as much as I want to hate Ubisoft for saying something like this. They aren't wrong...at the end of the day, a game is a product with investment in it, and the producers need to see a return in that investment.

As a game BG&E was most certainly not a failure, but as a product it was.

Of course it doesn't help when you release another great game within the same week Ubisoft. Seriously, you let Sands of Time come out within the same week. Absolutely mental.