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The French-Canadian Connection: A Q&A With Yannis Mallat, Ubisoft Montreal
Orvoine did admit however that Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, which had a team of up to 300 people at points, did do “some” crunch time. Despite the branding of Campus Ubisoft, Mallat affirmed that the students are free to pursue their own futures after graduation; “It’s a university and college campus, so they’re following training there, but they’re not Ubisoft employees at all. Of course, we’re hoping that they’ll join Ubisoft. After the program is finished it’s up to us and other videogames companies to show up and propose, as we do at other universities in Canada.” Orvoine added, “When the first group graduated back in last spring, 2006, all the companies in Québec basically hired a few people. EA hired people from the campus, A2M did, Activision did. So it’s an open market. I think they had over 92% of them in a job within the first two months.”
The Market LeaderThough the motion capture studio is in a separate studio, with 1,400 staff the studio tends to complete every section of a project without outsourcing; “sometimes we work on a portion of the game and another studio works on another part,” Mallat said, “but most of the time we take the product from A to Z.” In order to do that, the studio across several floors has everything from the cinematic division (populated with many staff from Québec’s renowned film and animation industry) over 100 support staff (that support the whole Ubisoft network), a recording studio in which all five languages Ubisoft work with are recorded, and even a foley studio for realistic sound effects. “The slash sound in Prince of Persia is a grapefruit being cut,” Orvoine revealed. The offices also hold space for consumer playtesting. The studio is “Big, creative and full of talent and passion,” according to Mallat. “It’s very challenging to make sure that we have the conditions under which creativity can happen. I come from a production background and I know that this is an industry in which we need a certain amount of chaos; so that ideas can bounce and change, people can argue, and managing this on several projects and making sure that everyone is working towards is relevant is my job.” Expanding on his role as the Chief Executive Officer at the studio, Mallat said, “It’s fun. I myself am a passionate gamer, and man, I have the best job on Earth. I have a chance to talk to all the creators, to challenge all of the producers, to see all the products and to be there with them on the production floor. It’s fun, and the games are really fun. But games also have rules. And I’m here to try to define the best rules as possible so we can get to our objectives.” Mallat also makes sure to be available to the staff that need him. “I put responsibility and accountability on people who should have it. I also make sure that they can have access to me when they want; so every Thursday actually I don’t have meetings at all; that day I reserve to be on the production floor and connect with all the producers, and I think that’s something they like.” “I think we are the market leader and I think our products speak for themselves,” Mallat concluded, “and I’m sure Ubisoft is seen in many eyes as a major player who’ll take the sometimes necessary risks to come up what’s new and fresh, even in our existing brands. We’re going to keep our winning strategy which is keeping creativity and innovation at the heart of our creations, thus making good quality games that surprise the market and the consumers.” |
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The reality of working at Ubisoft Montreal, Gamasutra was told, was a little different from the reality at working at many other studios. With a firm but flexible schedule (employees are expected to arrive between 7am and 10am and work an 8 hour shift, to ensure most employees are available for meetings between 10am and 4pm) we were informed that Ubisoft does their utmost in scheduling to ensure there is little to no crunch time. “We just shipped Open Season for Xbox 360 and that was completed with no crunch time at all,” Orvoine said. “That was a team of 80 people.” 
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