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Ubisoft CEO Guillemot Explains What Went Wrong With Avatar
by Chris Remo [PC, Console/PC, Exclusive]
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January 15, 2010
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Despite the box office records of James Cameron's recent CG-heavy film Avatar, Ubisoft Montreal's corresponding video game failed to make much of an impact as either a critical or commercial success -- not placing in the all-formats Top 20 for December 2009.
So what happened? According to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot in a recent company conference call, the game was materially harmed by the film releasing so late in the year.
"We knew we were taking [some risk]," Guillemot said. "The fact that the movie was coming in December was a potential problem, and it did result in a problem."
"We thought the game would continue to sell after the new year," he said, but instead the game followed a more typical post-holiday declining sales curve.
"It will be difficult in the future to buy rights to a movie that comes in December, because it's too risky, and it cannot [capture] Christmas season [sales]," the CEO added. "It doesn't work as well for a video game company."
Such issues, combined with the frequently compressed development cycles that accompany rigidly-scheduled Hollywood films, make movie tie-ins less desirable than one might think, according to Guillemot. Ubisoft plans to reduce its involvement in that segment, although it will not abandon it entirely.
"The goal is to reduce the investment in licenses, and put more emphasis on making our brands bigger [and appear] more often, with very high quality," the executive said. "It doesn't mean we will stop, but we are going to spend less on licenses in the future."
Guillemot did also tacitly admit that quality may have suffered on the title due to constrained deadlines: "We want to make sure with those kinds of games, we have time to polish as much as we want. The pressure of the release of the movie is always difficult in our industry, so I would say our goal in the future is to make sure we can have those games ready a long time in advance."
Still, CFO Alain Martinez was quick to point out that James Cameron's Avatar: The Game can't be seen as a genuine failure. "Avatar is not a loss-making project," he stressed. "When we lose 1 million sales [from our projections], that's about 30 million euros in sales and 65 or 70 percent of gross margin that has been lost."
Those losses have been largely made up by greater-than-expected sales of Assassin's Creed II, he explained, adding, "Where we really had most of our hit has been on the loss on DS products, and on the loss of the non-casual Wii [market] that we feel has been down."
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I was tempted to check out the game after I saw the movie, but skeptical of both game and movie having only seen Avatar's (film) trailer. Even though the game is a prequel to the movie's story, allowing the movie to lay the foundation of the Avatar world to sink into the customer-base mind, might have strengthened sales.
If the first IP related product is a poorly made game, guess what I'm not seeing the movie no matter how "awesome" some say it is. That's why I wait to rent it later, doesn't give money back to the studio and allows me to see the merits of it.
It just seems a little strange to be blaming this on the timing of the movie when you didn't even produce a good game to begin with, but I guess that's how you have to spin it when you're the CEO.
I believe that was the mentality behind Wanted: Weapons of Fate by Grin -- delay the game for the sake of "polishing." That didn't work out as well as it could have.
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As for the article, since most publishers decided to wait it out this past holiday season, I don't see how being released late in the year made a difference, since there was unusually little competition. Also, Avatar had been in production for over a decade, so wouldn't the development schedule for the game have considerably more breathing room than movie-games typically have?
I had high hopes for the game, after seeing what Mattel did with Augmented Reality for the toy line. After watching some clips and reading the reviews, it seemed, unlike the toys, that the game brought nothing new to the table, other than being a competent movie tie-in. Perhaps if the game was more focused on simulation than action, I would have been more excited.
Like all other recent games...
Seriously, fire those game designers (I know even some in person, the description that they gave me of Ubisoft internals made me change my mind about Ubisoft being a dream job to Ubisoft being a nightmare job...) and bring back the team that made Beyond Good and Evil and RainbowSix Rogue Spear, THESE dudes knew how to make games... All RainbowSix after Lockdown (that had bad scores too) were crappy, All Prince of Persia but Sands of Time were not great as Sands of Time itself, even the "Classic" remake to PS3 suck (I had a friend that asked me to come to his house only to show me how crappy PS3 POP Classic is... We laughed much seeing the crappy animations, that in 3D had less frames than the original PC 2D animation, and how the gameplay got broken because of it, with some bizarre instant jump, and new habilities that were not intended to exist in the original levels...)
When Ubisoft logo was that coloured stuff, I tought of them being a joke already (because their site was highly broken, and after a month trying to figure how to contact them to ask somehting, I gave up), the rayman games were not that good (in fact, I hated them, but some people like... so...), BGE and Sands of Time gave me hope... But after seeing so much bad games in a row, specially from montreal studio, and after hearing the description of Ubi São Paulo from some friends, I think that Ubisoft don't changed at all, they are still the bad company that they were when they had the coloured animal logo.
I am sorry to say all that, but it is true... Altough they indeed pushed industry forward on montreal, and had some good ideas and all, Indies and (gasp) EA kick Ubi ass squarely.
How about what happened with the Avatar game was that it wasn't very good piece of software.
"Hey we can do a game too! It's alright if development starts late, who cares. It'll help fill theater seats!"
Honestly, it was the most expensive coaster I ever purchased.
"Guillemot did also tacitly admit that quality may have suffered on the title due to constrained deadlines"
So, we have learned nothing from Atari and E.T.?
I've been thinking about it lately, I think this is partially why EA is pushing for fewer licensed products and more original IP?
I've always wondered how much freedom developers have in these types of games to actually expand on the universe and make real games rather than rehashes of the movies themselves?
1) We released a mediocre product.
2) We didn't advertise our game before the movie played. e.g. You are about to watch Avatar, if you like movie, buy the game; in stores now.
I didn't see advertisement for a game until 2 weeks after I saw the movie, at which point the film high had worn off and I was back in my conservative tight wallet spending / review research before buying mode.
Game publishers (marketing), should strike a deal with movie theaters to sell movie based games at the theater when people are walking out, and or at the concession stand. If grocery stores can do it, why not a movies theaters. Catch people when they are in a weakened state of awe from a great film and make a lot of additional sales.
Genius marketer out there reading my comment, send me 10% of your big bonus when you implement my idea. Thanks.
For me the movie was all about the Na'Vi and would have been way more cool to play in the demo then some lame solider thats like every other solider game out there. I suffered though playing the solider in the demo thinking I'd get rewarded with trying the Na'Vi after. NOPE! I guess UbiSoft figured Guns Sell and Aliens don't and picked to go with what they thought was safe, which was guns and soldiers. I would have bought the game on boxing day for $30 if I had a chance to play the Na'Vi, now I may get around to renting it sometime to just see, but I can't say I'm very motivated now.
As for coming out in December the problem, well that wasn't it at all. Unless it's the fact the people working on the game didn't see the movie until then and was working blind. Well then that could be said about any movie game. So blame is not the timing, but rather the poor decision to make it the type of game that it became. When I've enjoyed movie games, its always come from interacting or playing the characters from the movie, not just playing some anonymous character that could have been in the movie, but you never saw. Thats just laaaaaaaame. Make it either an action adventure game were you play the main characters, not just some cheep shooter. The environments did look nice though.
Don't blame the December. In fact, the "HOLIDAY" time was maybe 10 years ago a huge and very important moment for sales - but in 2009 time changed. You could release an IP during the summer and sale a LOT, unless the game has no publicity, etc.
This just isn't a really good strategy neither for a game to stand alone, or to promote a movie. Tim Carter's idea about strategy/tatics game is good, but would only theorically suceed if the game itself stands out from other RTS/RTT/Squad games. The same *old* traps for games based-off movie would stay there.
The two basic paths to take are:
a) make a good game based on the movie/book's universe.
In this case, any studio or publisher would be better having it's initiative and licensing the IP for itself to make a title already having a good project for it forehand.
b) use games to promote movies:
This cames into the case where the movie studios hire game developers to help building hype. Then don't make a full mediocre title trying to stand against full realized and polished genres and franchises. I'd be happy in having a Na'vi as DLC for Soul Calibur IV, or the Avatar's characters, weapons, vehicles and flying creatures as expansion for say Halo or UT3, where they fit well, and would benefit from already awesome gameplay. Just thoughts.
December had nothing to do with it.
Shipping before (or after) had nothing to do with it.
You made a shoddy game. That had everything to do with it.
Judging by the number of copies sold, not many.
MOST film-to-game IP is pretty bad and unsatisfactory to the player. I'm more surprised that anyone's surprised by the poor performance.
This is too simplistic. It's a reductive answer.
Without distance you're forced to make a shoddy game. You're being given a top-down design directive from the money people, command-economy style. That "throw money at it" method rarely works in other fields, why would it in games?
What works is to make a game that needs to be made, and that is being driven bottom up - because a game designer sees a way to do it.
You need to have time and space to develop this, conceptually.
So I could see if some guy comes up with a vision for a game adaptation, and then approaches the movie company saying "Let's turn it into a game, and here's why..." See, that is what happens when screenwriters adapt novels. They have to justify the reason for doing so, and the reason lives or dies by the rationale of what that medium needs: it needs to lead to a good movie. In movies, for example, sometimes producers don't think a novel can be adapted into a movie; sometimes it can take years for a screenwriter to find a way to adapt a novel.
Why is this not true in games? Treat the game as an actual, bonafide medium that deserves as much attention as you would give if adapting a novel into a movie. Don't treat it as just another piece of merchandise.
Hollywood and the game industry have always had a troubled past, for there is a great difference between a passive ride through a visual experience and an interactive one, which requires game developers to draw people into participating all the way through the experience. Once the game design and its direction is turned over to someone outside of the field, unfamiliar with what players expect and how to develop a product to suit them it all goes down hill from there, and way too often a game publisher/ developer will not push back on the movie studio/ director or licensor when they see the product descending into a failure! Avatar the game is a great example. After seeing the movie I really wanted a game where, yes there were missions to go on and a movie story mode, but also the ability to explore this lush and colorful world any way I wanted, with a killer multi-player mode! Wasn’t meant to be with this one, but maybe they will come out with a great MMO for this concept, for there is not a shortage of art available. :-)
I'll just add this: when games (developed) become nothing more than props in a marketing strategy, where do we as developers (large and small) draw the line? Already, game models are being developed (regularly) where profit is only an "ad-click" away. How is this game design? It isn't- it's marketing. This is undermining and devaluing the last 20 years of our toil. And when the money runs out (and it will), we'll have another dot-com bust, only this time in our industry.
Although dollars and sense are crucial items (and not to be ignored), I am from this camp: be honest, be innovative, be creative and passionate; don't aim for money, aim for what you intend, and don't get distracted. Be smart about how how you work, and be ready to say no when no is called for. Do these things, and success will follow. Maybe not hundreds of millions, but that isn't why most of us do this. We do it for the love of the game. Something marketing doesn't understand unless there is a $ at the front.
Instead of presenting the gamer the experience of the detailed world, they focused on the movie's shallow story and fast-food action scenes and possibilities.
Cameron said he had a lot of ideas for Ubisoft to do games. Without the deadlines complains, let's see what the make out of it.
It's not very hard to understand, just by launching any video or demo of the game.
But for the game's sake, it's hard to say exactly what the real problem is. Avatar is the IP of someone else, Ubisoft is just making their game. Maybe the license holders stymied the game by approving or disapproving parts of the development process. Maybe the development team was stymied by the production or publishing team.
It's hard to say, but it is pretty sad to hear them not accept blame for making a horribly mediocre game that isn't selling well.
UNLESS MAYBE... (a) all your dev tools AND your game engine AND your UI system are "finished," version-locked, and bug-free to the point of smooth workability for the entire duration of the dev cycle (i.e. as tiny an amount of new code as possible); (b) your production pipeline is streamlined to the point of possible supersonic speeds and your producers are really sharp and on top of the process. And even then it's a big maybe.
Geez, you're lucky if you even have a final script from the film in your hands until halfway thru the dev cycle. Sometimes you build a bunch of assets that you're pretty sure you're going to need, design a few levels that you hope are close to the actual story, and then kind of sit there for 4-5 months waiting for the final storyline to be done!
The fact that any movie tie-in game that comes out is even playable is kind of an achievement under those conditions. Let us all remember the lesson of Brash Entertainment!
Your analysis is wrong, even if the game industry as a whole is doing better, big Hollywood title such as Avatar generate way more money than your average game (WoW is a notable exception), just take a quick look at those numbers http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/records/budgets.php and you will understand why they could care less for the video game, who is really just a publicity stunt.