Ubisoft Considers Beyond Good & Evil a Mistake

[otakon17]

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.

This makes me laugh so much. The hate against EA is so ridiculous.

Let's make this clear. Every single publisher wants to make money. Period. That's what they care about. All of them. EA is no different from any other publisher out there. It's not special in any way.

True but it should be the only damn thing they care about. They should also care for the content they push out. They should care that they make quality products, not just products that sell well.

 

[EvilRoy]

I don't know why people are finding this to be so tremendously awful, or even really all that surprising.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't find this surprising. I know it didn't sell very well and at the end of the day, they do need to make money. I understand that. And if that was all there was to it I wouldn't be upset, just a little sad.

But that's not all there is to this. They keep getting our hopes up that there might be a chance to see a sequel. They have brought it up multiple times over the years, saying it's in the planning stages, it's in development, showing a teaser trailer, showing screenshots...hell there was even a picture of one of the main characters, Pey'j, on their Facebook page for E3 this year. That's what I'm upset about. If it's not worth the money to invest in a sequel, fine. Just stop jerking us around pretending you might actually put one out, Ubisoft.

If that's what they've been doing, I can tell you its not meant to be jerking around. They've probably set it up as an overhead project.

That is, when a programmer or artist working on one project runs out of stuff to do, they get shunted into the overhead project pool where they can work on chargeable projects, rather than having their hours go to unchargeable overhead. Meaning that they totally intend to sell the product eventually. In fact, if they put enough hours to it they will have no choice but to release it regardless of profit potentials because if they don't all the time spent becomes retroactively unrecoverable/unchargeable and takes profit directly off the bottom line.

I know it seems weird, but many companies in many fields do this in order to help stock price and avoid profit loss due to poor scheduling (whether or not the poor scheduling was avoidable). In fact right now that's what I'm (supposed) to be working on. Just a backburner project that will likely break even eventually, in order to keep my unbillable time from going directly to the bottom line.

Unfortunately it simultaneously means that the project may take years longer than normal, and the level of polish of the project will be directly proportional to how interested the people working on it were.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

There are plenty of game developers out there that dont pull the money making tricks that ubisoft and EA pull. Game developers with...dare i say it, LESS money and profit margins. Its not all about money. Look at the music industry, There are people who are in it for the money, then there are people who are in it for the music...
EA and Ubi are just some long running boy band producers who see franchises as guaranteed cash cows with anything else as heathenistic fund drainers.

Rockstar have plenty of money, but i certainly dont see them selling one use/one game passports and having to do yearly releases in the name of profits. They said themselves they want their games to be messages, to show people ideas etc.

Its just all bollocks, i like ubisoft games, but they do take the piss a little. Only marginally better than EA in a lesser of the two evils sort of way

 

[Brian Tams]

Funny, I didn't think I had any faith left in the AAA industry to lose, but good ol' Ubisoft comes along and proves me wrong.

Oh, by the way? Fuck you, Ubisoft. K, just wanted to make sure you understood my feelings about you.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

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.

Spoiler: Warning! Gets into black humor territory towards the end

Anyways, yeah. I agree with you. People have a tendency to use sales to justify any of their positions, not just suits, though. I've heard more than one person claim that any game under EA not selling well is a sign of EA screwing the game over, and any game under EA selling well is a sign that people are mindless sheep, buying stuff just because they were told to.

 

[Lightknight]

Well fuck you too then, Ubisoft.

If you get mad at a company considering a financial failure a... well... failure, then you're going to be upset a lot.

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.

I've generally begun to see Ubisoft as an EA in training. We'll see how they do.

 

[Ishal]

Well fuck you too then, Ubisoft.

If you get mad at a company considering a financial failure a... well... failure, then you're going to be upset a lot.

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.

I've generally begun to see Ubisoft as an EA in training. We'll see how they do.

But this is the problem with the games industry now. There are no more low to mid budget games being made. No games (outside of indie studios and kickstarters) who work on a medium sized budget and expect a medium sized return. No companies want that anymore, all they care about is huge inflated dev costs and (expected, not guaranteed) huge returns. After all, that casual holiday X-mas time market is a potential gold mine!

 

[Allspice]

I don't know why people are finding this to be so tremendously awful, or even really all that surprising.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't find this surprising. I know it didn't sell very well and at the end of the day, they do need to make money. I understand that. And if that was all there was to it I wouldn't be upset, just a little sad.

But that's not all there is to this. They keep getting our hopes up that there might be a chance to see a sequel. They have brought it up multiple times over the years, saying it's in the planning stages, it's in development, showing a teaser trailer, showing screenshots...hell there was even a picture of one of the main characters, Pey'j, on their Facebook page for E3 this year. That's what I'm upset about. If it's not worth the money to invest in a sequel, fine. Just stop jerking us around pretending you might actually put one out, Ubisoft.

If that's what they've been doing, I can tell you its not meant to be jerking around. They've probably set it up as an overhead project.

That is, when a programmer or artist working on one project runs out of stuff to do, they get shunted into the overhead project pool where they can work on chargeable projects, rather than having their hours go to unchargeable overhead. Meaning that they totally intend to sell the product eventually. In fact, if they put enough hours to it they will have no choice but to release it regardless of profit potentials because if they don't all the time spent becomes retroactively unrecoverable/unchargeable and takes profit directly off the bottom line.

I know it seems weird, but many companies in many fields do this in order to help stock price and avoid profit loss due to poor scheduling (whether or not the poor scheduling was avoidable). In fact right now that's what I'm (supposed) to be working on. Just a backburner project that will likely break even eventually, in order to keep my unbillable time from going directly to the bottom line.

Unfortunately it simultaneously means that the project may take years longer than normal, and the level of polish of the project will be directly proportional to how interested the people working on it were.

Interesting, I've never heard of something like that. Does what various people at Ubisoft have said about it (mostly Michel Ancel, I'll put a * next to what he's said) sound consistent with that kind of project to you?:

"it's in pre-production and has been for a year" (2008)*
"it's been put on hold" (2009)
"it has not been put on hold, development is still ongoing" (2009)
"we want to keep the team as small as possible to preserve it's artistic spirit" (2010)*
"we need more power than current gen provides" (2011)*
"the entire team took a break to work on Rayman Origins" (2011)*
"it's in an active creation stage" (2012)*

The years next to them are the years those statements were made to the public, just to be clear.

That's pretty much all they've said. I was also slightly wrong on what I said has been shown. There are actually two teaser/concept trailers that were released/leaked years ago that are probably largely irrelevant now, and one screenshot that was released last year when it was announced to be in an "active creation stage", whatever that vague statement means.

To be honest, I really don't think we're going to get it at this point. I think it will keep being pushed back until Ubisoft just pulls the plug on it.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

Someone needs to slap them over the face with a shovel for saying such heresy as "Beyond Good and Evil was a mistake".

The only way to repent these heinous words is to invest money and force Michel Ancell to make BG&E2, please? q.q

 

[EvilRoy]

Snip

Interesting, I've never heard of something like that. Does what various people at Ubisoft have said about it (mostly Michel Ancel, I'll put a * next to what he's said) sound consistent with that kind of project to you?:

"it's in pre-production and has been for a year" (2008)*
"it's been put on hold" (2009)
"it has not been put on hold, development is still ongoing" (2009)
"we want to keep the team as small as possible to preserve it's artistic spirit" (2010)*
"we need more power than current gen provides" (2011)*
"the entire team took a break to work on Rayman Origins" (2011)*
"it's in an active creation stage" (2012)*

The years next to them are the years those statements were made to the public, just to be clear.

That's pretty much all they've said. I was also slightly wrong on what I said has been shown. There are actually two teaser/concept trailers that were released/leaked years ago that are probably largely irrelevant now, and one screenshot that was released last year when it was announced to be in an "active creation stage", whatever that vague statement means.

To be honest, I really don't think we're going to get it at this point. I think it will keep being pushed back until Ubisoft just pulls the plug on it.

Those announcements look pretty close to what we would say... Keeping in mind I work for an engineering firm so we rarely do public announcements of course.

Basically if it was us and a potential/interested client asked about how one of our OH projects was rolling the official response would come out as "Currently we're devoting a small team to the project while we complete a few higher value projects." This is a nice way of saying "if you write a check now we'll have it done ASAP, if you don't wanna nut up it will be done when its done." The 'small team' is made up of whoever ran out of billable work.

But you can basically see what the guy is doing now that the quotes are all lined up. Not a lot of people, and they get pulled to work on higher priority projects screams overhead pool to me. The rest just seems like 'poking stick' announcements, which is kind of a meh practice but I guess it makes sense for an entertainment to continually recheck interest in slow burn projects. If people lose interest totally, that OH project gets burnt and replaced with something else. If we talked up a potential OH project and absolutely nobody cared it would stop then and there and we would find something else.

 

[Lightknight]

Well fuck you too then, Ubisoft.

If you get mad at a company considering a financial failure a... well... failure, then you're going to be upset a lot.

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.

I've generally begun to see Ubisoft as an EA in training. We'll see how they do.

But this is the problem with the games industry now. There are no more low to mid budget games being made. No games (outside of indie studios and kickstarters) who work on a medium sized budget and expect a medium sized return. No companies want that anymore, all they care about is huge inflated dev costs and (expected, not guaranteed) huge returns. After all, that casual holiday X-mas time market is a potential gold mine!

I agree that that's a problem and would love to see these big companies having a small-games budget. But I'm not sure how that applies to a company that took a risk on a smaller game and took a hit commercially considering it to be bad.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

You know what - this proves that "art" and corporate interests often don't mix. As an artist, I know that mistakes can push people forward if you're smart enough. I just don't understand how they could be thinking that this game is a risk when so many talk about it. It's actually a good game.


You're calling this a mistake?

I call BS.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

You know what - this proves that "art" and corporate interests often don't mix. As an artist, I know that mistakes can push people forward if you're smart enough. I just don't understand how they could be thinking that this game is a risk when so many talk about it. It's actually a good game.


You're calling this a mistake?

I call BS.

Wow, is that video real? I never seen that before. Only The first CGI video they did. This is hurting now so much more than ever!

 

[Lightknight]

You're calling this a mistake?

I call BS.

What else would you have a company call a financial failure? A success?

Personally, I think they established an IP and a sequel would be easier to develop and make more money thanks to the brand awareness it now has. That would be good but that still wouldn't make the first game a success. There's no BS. It's basic math.

That Video is great. Is that what the HD remaster on the 360 looked like? I find that hard to believe considering it was a 2003 game but I'm off to look around.

I'll point out to everyone, that Ubisoft is supposedly working on the sequel and is planning on a next gen release (if they are to be trusted):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Good_%26_Evil_2

If that video is of a basic tech demo of the sequel. Then that's not what they're calling a failure. They're calling the first game a financial mistake and are now trying to leverage the IP to make it better. If they do a good job and it works out, then who knows how Ubisoft's practices may change.

 

[UltimatheChosen]

They're not necessarily being unreasonable.

Ubisoft is a company. Their goal is to make money. This means that they want to make good games, yes, but not every good game will sell well.

It sucks, but it's true.

 

[WindKnight]

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.

but film studios don't put out nothing but summer blockbusters - they use the profits from them to fund riskier or small scale project not likely to draw in the megabucks. Game publishers are not prepared to do this though - they want everything to bring in the megabucks or its trash.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

You're calling this a mistake?

I call BS.

What else would you have a company call a financial failure? A success?

Personally, I think they established an IP and a sequel would be easier to develop and make more money thanks to the brand awareness it now has. That would be good but that still wouldn't make the first game a success. There's no BS. It's basic math.

That Video is great. Is that what the HD remaster on the 360 looked like? I find that hard to believe considering it was a 2003 game but I'm off to look around.

I'll point out to everyone, that Ubisoft is supposedly working on the sequel and is planning on a next gen release (if they are to be trusted):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Good_%26_Evil_2

If that video is of a basic tech demo of the sequel. Then that's not what they're calling a failure. They're calling the first game a financial mistake and are now trying to leverage the IP to make it better. If they do a good job and it works out, then who knows how Ubisoft's practices may change.

The fact that the original game didn't sell well has nothing to do with how good the game actually was. Why would this video exist if they were not interested in a sequel, based on 'plain math' (as you say).
I totally hear you, but if a sequel debues and people buy it, then the original game is no longer a financial failure. People would be buying BG&E2 because of the lore and gameplay that had already been established.

I really hope that you're right about the business practices changing though!