Ubisoft Explain Real Reason Behind Their Biggest Failures

The "Ubisoft formula" dies with this generation.

Assassins Creed Odyssey
Ubisoft

We’ve all been there. You’re playing through the shiny new video game of the day, and yet it all soon starts to feel eerily familiar.

While several game developers have a habit of delivering games that begin to feel like knock-offs of previous releases, no company is likely quite as guilty of this as much as Ubisoft. But hopefully, this is all about to change.

According to Video Games Chronicle, Ubisoft is currently in the midst of a major revamp that should lead to more originality in the company’s releases.

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Going forward, studios will be assigned a particular project which is to be overseen by Ubisoft’s editorial team of designers and producers. Considering this editorial team consists of over 100 staff, this opens up the scope for more people to have more of a creative input in new releases.

To highlight just why this is such an important change, so many of Ubisoft’s prior games were developed based on the ideas of just one or two people. Now, with so many more people having a voice and the chance to offer up genuine input to a game’s story and design, that should mean that gamers will be served up new games that don’t just feel like a retread of an existing release's premise or mechanics.

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Ubisoft Chief Creative Officer Serge Hascoet will still have ultimate control over new releases, but Hascoet will have several vice presidents – such as Splinter Cell’s Maxime Beland and Child of Light’s Patrick Plourde - operating under him, who will be designated specific franchises and properties.

Of course, so much of this recent change proving to be successful will be down to how much these new voices are actually listened to. For gamers, here’s at least hoping that we don’t get the same map layouts and larger, overplayed plot points by the time the next Far Cry or Assassin’s Creed offering is released.

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Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main day job, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg. Where his beloved Wrexham AFC is concerned, Andrew is co-host of the Fearless in Devotion podcast, which won the Club Podcast of the Year gong at the 2024 FSA Awards.