Ubisoft Considers Beyond Good & Evil a Mistake

[Redd the Sock]

Ah, gotta love all the armchair / hindsight quarterbacking.

Speaking as someone in finance a lot of the comments sadden me. A company's bottom line is not just about shareholders, it's about being able to pay their workers and produce future product. Projects that don't make their money back hurt that prospect, and if done too often, you're left unable to pay people or make any more games. The more you want to spend, the more you have to sell to put back, and doubling sales isn't worth it if you also triple the cost. It's all risk assessment and judgement calls that are easy to chastise ten years later when it wasn't our money, jobs or company.

The old fart in me also shakes his head at how we blame others for our laziness. We still seem to wait for the TV or internet to tell us what to like and it hurts whole genres, and it was no different back them. Okay, I'm unique in that I'm not as afraid to buy blind on occasion. I like going through the upcoming lists looking for niche and indy games that look cool. If I'm curious I can look stuff up online and come back in a few days once I know more. Back then I could even rent a game at blockbuster and then buy it if it was fun enough (and did more than once). No one can know about everything, but expecting everything to have heavy marketing is just acceptance of sheephood waiting to be told what to buy next.

And the sad part is, even if excuses back then were justifiable, Beyond Good and Evil got an HD remake that probably also considered part of the game's failure, so the game has underperformed twice.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I don't blame Ubisoft for Beyond Good & Evil's flop; they made a great game, I saw it advertised, and it flopped because audiences didn't care in 2003.

But I do blame them for cockteasing fans for years with hints of a sequel and then saying this.
The only logical thing I can take away from this statement is that Ubisoft is shit canning all notions of a sequel to BG&E; there's literally no other reason why they would come out and say this otherwise.

Well, what else should I expect from a company who says that only milkable blockbuster franchises matter. *shrugs*

I'll just jot this little statement of theirs down so the next time Ubisoft tries to brag about their relevancy or wank anything resembling "creative merit". Because I think more people need to see the bitter irony in their business model, laid bare.

 

[edgecult]

But... I liked that game.

Seriously, why didn't people buy it?

Because nobody had heard of it before or even till well after it had come out...?

It got zero marketing and dumped out onto the shelves in the middle of november with all the other games with far better advertising or brands to make them stick out. By the time anyone had actually heard of the game it was sitting in bargin bins with the fail label stuck on it's forehead. (where I found it about 2 or 3 years later..)

 

[VoidOfOne]

"'Beyond Good & Evil was not a success, and we made that mistake once.'"

If I remember correctly, the mistake was Ubisoft's, not the game's. The game had no promotion, as they were too busy focusing on Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, and they released it at a time of which there were a ton of other, more established, games coming out. Ubisoft didn't give the game a chance.

Ugg...

This only cements my decision to never buy any of their games again, as it were.

 

[Something Amyss]

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.

Come now. EA and Ubisoft have been in a race for the bottom for a while. EA just did a better job at it.

 

[1337mokro]

Oh that was hilarious! Why would you sometimes patronize the arts and make one of our most critically acclaimed games ever? It's best to wallow in consumer grade garbage like COD or NFL games.

If creativity and taking a chance that didn't pay off is a mistake, then I suggest you just change your name to EA France and get the transformation over with Ubisoft.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

The game was fantastic. Maybe their marketing of it was a mistake? If they want to "not make that mistake again" they should work on that, not solve it by ceasing to make anything experimental and potentially good.

Lesson for mankind: We need more mistakes! Bring on the HP Lovecrafts, Van Goghs, Kafkas and Nick Drakes.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Look, when your niche game doesn't get greenlighted for a second round because it was a niche game and didn't sell well don't be surprised. It might suck, but its the way things work as long as money is involved. Time and cash invested must see a significant profit when the product is released, you folk know this but ignore it and when a company decides the time and money invested in said project was a mistake because it didn't make money, you get mad?
Wow... Also its not always about marketing, shit games that had great marketing still turn out to be shit games. I don't mean what you might consider shit because it doesn't appeal to you, but actual crappily made games.
Its like the fact that Scott Pilgrim the movie didn't do well pissed off a lot of folk on here, but failed to make the point that it was pretty much a niche movie and didn't do well because of its status as niche. Sorry folks but not everyone in the world thinks your diamond is anything more than cubic zirconia.

 

[michael87cn]

THIS is the problem with games today. ALL they care about it profiting - nothing else. It's a job, that's all. If it doesn't make money, its a failure and not worth while.

I personally think games should be made by people who want them to be FUN. And if they're FUN they will be SUCCESSFUL.

However... they prioritize SUCCESS first, and don't care if the games are fun or not. They just want

1) To hype games up as much as possible via advertisements

2) To sell a ton of copies, regardless of customer satisfaction

3) To repeat the process (or stick to the mold) of game design that works. In other words, Call of Gear of Duty War.

 

[Nazulu]

Why does this sound like they're just going to play it safer and safer and make this industry even more boring than it already is?

Yeah, put me in the with the 'fuck you Ubisoft' crowd as well. I've played it and it's very functional, I don't see how they could call this game a mistake. This current trend of theirs is the real mistake. Plus I didn't hear about this game till I watched one of Yahtzee's old reviews not long ago, so there is that.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Gee, let's think here. How much marketing did Ubi do for BG&E? Not very much at all obviously because when I found out about its existence, it was on a bloody message board about 3 years after its release. >_>

 

[Saulkar]

Well then it is a good thing I do not have any brand loyalty to you fuckwits and will gladly withhold all of my money from all of your future titles.

 

[The_Scrivener]

This is why Valve continues to win at everything. Because the rest of industry cannot help but shoot themselves in the foot. As someone with zero marketing experience, let me market better than you morons at Ubisoft:

"Although sales were initially disappointing, we're thrilled that BG&E found its audience. We spend a lot of time making modern titles that meet or exceed our expectations that we forget about the underdogs of yesteryear that made us what we are today. I think its important to not just look at BG&E's sales or what the numbers say but to look at its legacy and its popularity now. That's a good indicator to me that we need to do a better job marketing our innovative new IPs. We need to look at fresh new ideas and characters as challenges and not risks. It's crucial that we don't let our next Jade take as long to be appreciated as our previous one."

 

[Mr C]

I like going through the upcoming lists looking for niche and indy games that look cool. If I'm curious I can look stuff up online and come back in a few days once I know more.

If gaming is your primary hobby, I don't understand if you do not do this. I dig around as this fellow does and go after intersteing new titles.

I have lived in China for over a decade, when BG&E came out there were obviously no ads for it here. Yet I heard about it because of interest in my hobby. I bought in for the Xbox on my next visit to the UK and loved it. I think I'll buy the game on Xbox Live or PSN later when I get home from work.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

And just when I thought I could respect Ubisoft for their HD remake of AC: Liberation on it's way (with bonus content with it!), and Child of light... this. It's a miracle they're going forth with these projects aren't they?

They're kinda dense aren't they? I mean, they're well capable of games that don't have a huge budget that are awesome, and aren't sold for 60 USD. And really, they don't understand the buzz and desire for a BG&E2?

 

[Frankster]

Classy PR ubisoft, classy.

I know game devs are afraid to take risks but surely BGAE has garnered enough fan support through digital distribution to recoup its losses over time right? Bleh, I see it mentioned so much nowadays maybe I just think BGAE is more popular then it actually is.

This is why Valve continues to win at everything. Because the rest of industry cannot help but shoot themselves in the foot.

To be fair...That' kinda a BS comparison for a lot of reasons but particularly how few games valve has released compared to ubisoft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_developed_by_Valve
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ubisoft_games

Easy not to shoot yourself in the foot when you have far less opportunity to do so..And even then valve has done it with l4d2 if you recall the brouhaha surrounding it

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I like how Ubisoft are "known" for a game that's not even out yet, but not for Prince of Persia or the Tom Clancy titles. WTF?

Anyway, BG&E wasn't a mistake. It was however, a masterpiece of story, game design, characterisation and gameplay. I understand that "mistake" and "masterpiece" both begin with an "M", so it's an easy mistake (boom tisch) to make. It's a tragedy that the game didn't succeed financially as it did with critics and players alike.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

To be fair...That' kinda a BS comparison for a lot of reasons but particularly how few games valve has released compared to ubisoft

So...quantity is more valuable than quality? The state of the industry now is such that companies just churn out sameish sequel anually and chumps buy it up. Personally, I prefer quality over quantity. A studio that releases fewer titles all of which are successes (Blizzard, Valve, pre-EA BioWare) IMO are better than those that mass produce "entertainment products".

Valve's success is in releasing only quality games that attain legendary status. Blizzard can claim the same. BioWare used to before EA put them onto the "other" track, that of churning out entertainment products. From a consumer perspective, I imagine a studio with 8/8 hits beats one with 8/50 (though shareholders may disagree).

HL2, Unreal Tournament and their ilk were the pre-eminent games of their day and lasted years upon years. Quake II was played more than Quake III was. Now you and most of us have been sold on the notion of upgrading our games anually and buying them in pieces...games as a service, something many in the industry wanted and now have managed to do on consoles, without a subscription charge. Quantity does not beat quality, except maybe financially.

Still, perhaps there's a place for both. In a way, it takes studios that churn out re-releases of the tired cover-based shooter stuff to make us appreciate the truly great games, the genre defining ones like L4D2, Portal, TF2 and Diablo, Starcraft and Warcraft.

Another way to look at it is this. How many copies of the next AssCreed or Dead Space or whatever will sell? Now, how many copies of Halflife 3 would sell, if it ever came into existence?