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As what the company calls the 'CEO' of Ubisoft Montreal, Yannis
Mallat -- formerly producer on several games in the Prince Of Persia series -- is responsible for managing one of the biggest single game development studios in the
world.
Mallat, who has been working at Ubisoft since the year 2000, is responsible for managing a 2000-person studio that has the
responsibility to create games for all audiences and across all platforms -- and is actually developing titles all the way from the most casual (My Weight Loss Coach) to the more 'core' (Prince Of Persia), all under one roof.
Gamasutra recently sat down with Mallat to discuss the ways in which a studio
that produces games ranging from Dogz
for Wii to Far Cry 2 for PS3, 360 and
high-end PCs approaches production.
Ubisoft
Montreal a very large studio that produces a wide range of games. At this
point, the challenge is doing really good casual games at the same time as
doing really good, solid core games like Assassin's
Creed or Prince of Persia. Having
a studio that can carry that breadth must be pretty challenging.
Yannis Mallat: It is challenging, but I
used to say and I love to say... in a way, we're not a 2000-person big studio.
We are an "X projects" studio. We have a project-based team
structure, and we want to make sure that we respect that. We want to make sure
that the studio is in fact at the service of the creators' vision.
And that helps us in the very early stages
of any production, so the creators actually get that ownership on what they're actually
doing before staffing and either becoming a big project or a smaller project in
terms of staff.
Now regarding the casual games, I used to
say as a joke that when you have 2,000 people, it's twice the necessary size
for surveys, so that the results are meaningful -- which means of course that
you're going to find people that are going to love to work in casual, and stuff
like this.
Our structure is at the service of the
product, thus it helps us to not preformat the way we are managing projects, so
you can have projects like Assassin's
Creed and smaller projects like the casual games.
We
had a recent interview with Benoit Galarneau, who is working on Dogz for the Wii. We think of most
developers as being interested in working on high-tech, hardcore games. Many
developers come from a gaming background. But he found it really gratifying to
work on a game like Dogz. I was
wondering if you were finding it's easy to recruit people and keep them
interested in these projects? How does that affect the process?
YM: Yeah, absolutely. It's a different
challenge. It's a different way of approaching production and creation. For
sure, casual people, especially casual games on the Wii and DS, attract people
with different challenges such as, "Okay, it's not going to be the big
tech demo thing."
The challenge lies more in the game design and how we
nail the concept that is accessible. It's psychologically very exciting. It's a
nice, brilliant challenge, because it's a nice, brilliant platform for those
products. It attracts a lot of people.
Nintendo's
success has been based around not just the fact that its games are accessible,
but the company also does have a really intrinsic understanding of gameplay.
YM: True.
The
games wouldn't be successful if Nintendo didn't have that real kernel of
understanding gameplay.
YM: True. That's true, and they were the
first one to nail down the recipe in a way. But this is what we're doing on all
of our projects, not only on the casual side -- give room early in the
production to prototyping.
Nailing down what's the behavior of the main
interface and what's fun. How is it well-rounded? Where does the pleasure come
from? Is it something that is meaningful in terms of the experience? Doing that
early, and making sure you nail down the gameplay. It's a good way.
What
kinds of tools do you use for prototyping games? I guess it would differ based
on the intended platform, obviously, and maybe even the intended target audience.
But what kind of prototyping do you do?
YM: Everything can be prototyped -- that, I
want to mention. Sometimes we even prototype game structure with Flash, for
example. When it comes time to prototype the gameplay, we have our own internal
engines that are very flexible and easy to iterate on. That's in-house
technology, so there is no tech barrier to prototyping.
Ubisoft's Far Cry 2
Well,
I was talking to Dominic Guay about the new engine that's driving Far Cry 2.
YM: Dunia.
Yes.
I spoke to him at the NVIDIA Gamers Day. One thing we're talking about with the
engine is that game has many different types of gameplay, and that sort of
helps drive the feature set of the engine, to have a back-and-forth. That makes
it a more flexible engine to work with in the future, too.
YM: Absolutely. If there's one thing we
could say about our internal engines, it's that they are native next-gen
technology. It's not an engine that we refactored from previous technology onto
next-gen.
It took us a while, obviously, because we wanted things to be
well-done, but now the results are exactly what you say. We can easily come up
with different gameplay and easily address the open-world stuff. And actually
now, some of our engines are used by other projects, which is a really good
sign.
Do
you have several internal engine projects?
YM: Yeah.
And
do you share them between the studios elsewhere in the world?
YM: Yes, absolutely. We promote sharing a
lot. We want to make sure that before we share the engine, we've reached a
certain maturity level, because there's nothing worse than sharing something
that's not in an appropriate state. But yeah, we encourage sharing for sure. We
have several technologies within Montreal,
and there are different technologies in other studios.
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"hardcore gamers on that console, and casual gamers on this console. We'll make games for everyone, because that's our job."
you're totally ignoring the Wii userbase, who isn't small and has turned against Ubisoft previously, all this publicly taking those profits and investing elsewhere (making the platform more viable than some, since it's money aparently comes in handy) so why the crap treatment? more than that, the phrase he said at the end can only be taken as a big jab as in "you wain't getting anything from us"
Seriously, their games, aren't even showcasing any quality, that shawn white game looks like out of a mobile phone, do they thing "casuals" want cartoony stuff? nah, they relate easier with realism, but I guess they're just lazy to attempt that.
Bunch of third rate developers I say.
I mean, not even one question like "Do you have hardcore titles coming for it? Do you know people are growing insulted by your strategy?" etc. But no.
I mean... that's as irresponsible and insulting as developers like Ubisoft themselves, stupid elitisms I say.
During the Wii launch, they knew very few high profile games would be available, especially for hardcore gamers, and decided to put everything into Red Steel (€10m according to some rumours). The game was not perfect, but had both things you expected games to have after watching the Wii trailer: gun aiming and sword fighting. They correctly measured the market opportunity, and profited from it.
Anonymous at 18 Aug 2008 at 12:44 pm PST, a "Do you know people are growing insulted by your strategy?" question is not polite, and has no basis. Mr. Mallat could have easily sidestepped with "How can you assume that?" If you point to gaming forums, he would say sales say otherwise, or he may say that hardcore titles like No More Heroes did not achieve as much success as some Imagine or Petz title, for example. Internet has a hardcore minority that is very vocal, but does not reflect the business world (the one where Electronic Arts posts losses and Ubisoft profits, for example).
The market is very clear: Wii is a friendly console, and no gaming community will change that. No developer will exclusively focus on hardcore gamers on the Wii just like they will not focus on casual gamers on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. Right now, the Wii install base is bigger than the Xbox 360 one, but if you remove the casual base for each console, you notice the Xbox 360 has a higher hardcore base. Until the amount of hardcore gamers in the Wii gets bigger, this will continue to happen. Even if Wii sells twice as many Xbox 360 consoles, it is likely the later will have the advantage. Also, have you watched Nintendo E3 presentation? Did it satisfy you? Not a single hardcore game, you still like it? I am betting no. Nintendo speech is pretty simple: if we develop a casual title, it will sell. So why can't other developers do the same? If there is someone to fault here, it is Nintendo for not competing in the hardware race. But then again, they are here for the money, and this strategy was the best for them (as proven for almost two years now).
I remember reading a note where they stated the casual branch was funding hardcore titles. That would mean developing some quick simple titles give enough money through time to develop a 3-year long title. How long do you think they will continue to do that before they go "Wait... why don't we just develop casual titles?" They are here for money, not Metacritic or GameRanking averages.
Inteligent? they think they are, but all they're doing is salvaging the name they took years to build.
They're also making profits out of the Wii, and you say, bigger than elsewhere, so why not reinvesting those into high profile Wii games? That's the way the market should work actually, if you're taking money from a more profitable market and digging it into a smaller more specific one, you're contradicting the whole argument of going for the most profitable console and giving it preference, instead... they're flooding it with crap; not casual games, but crap.
This whole separation thing is just stupid. Wii is as casual as PS2 was, and yet, PS2 and PSone didn't get ignored by Ubi, they couldn't ignore it. Hell and DS? DS is getting a flood of RPG's, wgere is it casual now? but Ubisoft, is still bringing a kid prince of persia game that looks like a hoax made by a amateur in order to joke.
Best strategy for them? it isn't making them loss money, yes, but I don't think they're making the most they could, or even giving worthy support for the platform, quite the contrary. And you should never ever enrage a userbase, which they did.
Mallat could run yes, but how do they know? how about that 50 page thread with people registering on their forums and making headlines in under 24 hours about how crappy their support was and making an ultimatum?
And... No More Heroes wasn't even publicized!!! Certainly not what they do with their own titles on other platforms, NMH still sold pretty well though, it is Suda51's best selling game ever... Certainly not thanks to Ubisoft though.
Wii is a friendly console yes, just like PSone and PS2 where, who leaded and thus had more variety, that includes pony's, dogz, crapz and whatever... power ranger games, eye toy and buzz, and a market for them... but also a place for developers to grow and appeal to more people.
Square-Enix jumped ship with Nintendo at the right time, if they weren't in the leading console in 1997 with FF7... FF7 would have been a fraction of what it was... why? because PSone was a new public, it was considered casual next to Sega Saturn who, in japan despite having a smaller userbase it would sell more multiplatform titles, for instance.
All that changed with FF7. was it that the platform was mainstream? hell yes! and that opened doors for a bigger public. It's not with dumbed down games and crap coming out, and announcing they're spending the profits doing real games elsewhere that is the right strategy, not at all. it's being self concieved. If Wii is profitable it should be getting all the support developers can give it. Including hardcore titles, of course.
Nintendo? Nintendo is still delivering good titles, hardcore ones, even if they do stuff like Wii Fit. Wii Fit though is a good casual game, something no Ubisoft game can claim, they're just retarded and look like they were done by a bunch of trainees, look at dogz for instance, the animation is like... you can count the animation frames, it's just staggering.
All this said... Nintendo is still doing hardcore titles, and selling them at a faster pace than before, Mario Galaxy sold faster and more than Mario Sunshine did, Smash Bros Brawl in mere months surpassed GC's melee all-time sales, Resident Evil 4 already sold more than the original on the GC (and with no publicity), and we could go on and on and on. No market for hardcores? that's a joke, and being lazy. They just want to make crap here to invest elsewhere, that's being pretty incompetent in my book and if anything... pretty irresponsible and partial on their part.
Seriously... The whole separation thing... is bullocks. there were always casual games, and if anything that's just an excuse for the Wii, or in this case, to not support it, and do crap instead.
The Wii is a very strange marketing piece because it was not supposed to work like that. Books like "Crossing the chasm" by Geoffrey Moore state one should first attract the early adopters, those willing to experiment and accept new ideas (in gaming conventions, the "hardcore"), and once they have accepted it, spread the idea to the mass market (or "casual"). However, this time the hardcore and the casual base grew from the beginning, which is easily demonstrated by the amount of sales Wii Play gets. Publishers and developers don't really know how to target items, and go the safe route (which is why I say it makes sense in a business point of view).
When Capcom closed Clover Studio they stated something like it "has met the goal of developing unique and creative original home video game software" but since the games did not sell, it made no sense to keep it open. Okami, Viewtiful Joe, were all good innovative games, but did not sell. You may say Capcom is supporting Wii, but everything must be put into perspective: Zak & Wiki is not a high budget game, Umbrella Chronicles is on rails, and they decided to port Dead Rising after both Resident Evil games in Wii sold a million units each. It could almost be said that those two games selling a million copies funded the Wii version of Dead Rising. And they are releasing Street Fighter 4 for the high end consoles, with a few hints of a Wii port in the future. Their movements are just as conservative as Ubisoft ones, only they are able to port from the high end consoles.
Again, consider how many companies have invested over €10m in a single game like Ubisoft for the Wii, and you will understand they are just playing it safe. Money moves the world. Money was one of the reasons about why Dragon Quest IX ended in Nintendo DS, and why Capcom's definition of "exclusivity" has a footnote attached to it.
And I still feel that the term casual is wholly inappropriate and scares core gamers out of trying something that apparently isn't hardcore.
I also disagree the risk is that big when 10 million is nothing next to a next gen investment (flops like Stranglehold costed 30 million) and certainly poorly used, seeing the final result Red Steel is. I mean, the risk is a lot higher on those other platforms and on the Wii you can have a really conservative budget for something big nonetheless, so that's why "being risky" while taking that money and investing elsewhere is not a valid option for me, it's cashing in and spitting on it. that's certainly where I put Ubisoft.
I also disagree Capcom is doing the same as Ubisoft, for one they're doing ports, yes, but quality ports, or at least attempting to be quality ports, and have one of their big guns coming over, Monster Hunter 3. Ubisoft? nothing of the sort, cashed in with rushed hardcore products at launch, and have only done crap since. Capcom's support could be better yes, but it's not nearly as bad as Ubisoft, Ubisoft's is just downright bad.
Wii play sales... it comes with a Wiimote, shows nothing to me, it's like Wii Sports, everyone has it, casual or not.
Money dictates the market, yes, but developers are going against that same notion on the Wii, otherwise we'd have a market shift already. I understand those who were and still are stunned and trying to figure it out, but it's time to get out of it and go all out. Ubisoft though, has decided to give Wii nothing but one type of thing, that is not even good enough for it's own purpose.