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Is ubisoft made of wizards?

Deleted member 721

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Assassins-Creed-Odyssey-Photo-Mode-02.jpg

I'm playing Assassins Creed Odyssey, and its incredible how beautiful, huge, and well done this game is, and only 1 year after Origins that was already a huge game. Even if we think they started one year before the release of Origins thats already unbeliviable.
Last gen it was easier to accept they could do yearly releases, since the games were smaller, some games aren't that great, and bugs are usual, some games even got famous for it. Before assassins creed syndicate (that's a game i like too) it was usual in threads about assassins creed people talking that assassins creed needed more time of development that yearly development was harming the franchise. Since origins the quality of the franchise increased, quests, world, graphics, size, odyssey was one of the GOTY last year. Its absurd to me how fast they released these 2 huge (and fully voiced in a bunch of languages) and great games in 2 years.

conclusion ubisoft is made of a big staff made of wizards
 

rude

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Oct 25, 2017
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You realize the company has overlapping development periods because they have a million people working there right

Any studio could release yearly single-player games with that kind of workforce except for Square Enix
 
ZanderEzekial

ZanderEzekial

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Oct 25, 2017
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They have an unfathomable number of people making their games. It's an operation that any other publisher would envy, and the fact that it runs as smoothly as it does is a miracle.

So in that sense, maybe they have at least one wizard on staff.
 
Rodjer

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They have 14k people in the company
+1000 people worked on AC
 

Deleted member 34618

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Ubisoft's open world games tend to be designed in a way that allows them to spread the work across a ton of people which is how they're able to produce them relatively fast. It doesn't always work (see: Watch Dogs) but they seem to have nailed down the process pretty well these days.
 
noyram23

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People underestimate how to make that 800 work together to bring a good, cohesive products year by year, albeit a bit homogenous. They have great management and workflow for sure
 
aerie

aerie

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Even with multiple studios and multi year development periods, Origins and Odyssey are both huge, beautiful, and impressive games. Both constantly impressed me with their scope and attention to detail from start to end. I really can't wait for what they do this year. This is a series I thought I was likeky done with, but the last two entries have gotten me more invested than ever and i'm so looking forward to more. They are a little uneven in places and each has its strengths and weaknesses, but I love both, especially Odyssey. Perhaps not made by wizards, but some damn fine management and coordination between teams producing these impressive works.
 
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Trickster

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No they're just made of nearly 14000 people. Several thousands more than even EA or Activision
 
OP
OP

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Fat4all said:
they're made of 800+ people
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rude said:
You realize the company has overlapping development periods because they have a million people working there right

Any studio could release yearly single-player games with that kind of workforce except for Square Enix
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yeah i know its a big company, but the scope of the game got much bigger than previous games and the quality increased, i think they are the only company that released such big games one year after the other, i think thats remarkable even for a very big development team
 
Deleted member 49179

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Aigis said:
Dont they have different studios working on different games in the series?
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Rodjer said:
Yes, 5/6 studios worked on AC.
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Yeah exactly. One of their studio acts as "main" developer, with a lot of stuff in the game being delegated to multiple other "satellite" studios.

For example, if I'm not mistaken AC Origins main studio was Ubisoft Montreal, and the main studio for AC Odyssey was Ubisoft Quebec. One advantage of having different studios responsible for the project each time is that multiple AC games can be developed at the same time.
 
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Roldan

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Oct 29, 2017
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Even though I really dislike their open world formula and overall approach to game design in these titles, I have to recognize it's extremely impressive that these projects come together as well as they do.

I mean. I work in a company with ~140 people and the amount of miscommunication in there is... insane.
 
RogueDeadGuy

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Jan 27, 2019
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Ubi are pros at project management. They're really good at setting realistic expectations for games sales and designing games exactly as big or small as they need to be. I also feel they have a very systems driven game dev philosophy, where they focus on the overall game structure first and improving the animation and graphical fidelity comes second. Because every game from them is fun but none are gonna surprise you with the visuals. Compared to what we see going on at EA using Anthem as an acceptable where there was so much work put into making it look insane that the overall game structure was poorly implemented.
 
Nome

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lol @ the notion that any dev could pump out games like Ubi with their manpower.

No, y'all. Their pipeline is smooth as butter. Their project and product management are world class. They insource instead of outsource.
I can't even get everyone on my team to use JIRA. Ubi are indeed wizards.
 

NIN90

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Nov 6, 2017
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The do seem to have some God tier management in order to keep production on track with that many employees.
 
Zukkoyaki

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Oct 25, 2017
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Ubisoft has extraordinary manpower. Thousands and thousands of devs across all of their various divisions and clearly very good project management. Their output doesn't get enough credit.
 

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Don't want to take too much away from the achievement because as you say, it's impressive but a lot of the world in Odyssey is the same.

There's a handful of training camp and stronghold templates and they just repeat 100 times over.

Same for most underground caves, 100s of caves based on two or three layout templates.

I felt Origins had less of that and being a little smaller (and probably with more development time and attention to detail) worked better.
 
Anthony Hopkins

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I've never been impressed by ass creed games they just don't have the level of imperfections that reality does, character models don't look that good and over all don't have that hand crafted feel.
 
RelaxedOtter

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Oct 27, 2017
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They are one of the companies that I would have really liked to work for, just to see and experience their development pipeline first hand. It is amazing that they are able to coordinate so many people across so many different studios, and do it game after game after game.
 

Deleted member 1698

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They have mastered both the copy and paste schools of magic to create some of the most soul destroyingly bland experiences of all time.

I suppose that is a kind of great.
 
bombshell

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Eylos said:
Last gen it was easier to accept they could do yearly releases, since the games were smaller, some games aren't that great, and bugs are usual, some games even got famous for it. Before assassins creed syndicate (that's a game i like too) it was usual in threads about assassins creed people talking that assassins creed needed more time of development that yearly development was harming the franchise.
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You know both Origins and Odyssey released a year later than they were originally supposed to for exactly these reasons, right?
Eylos said:
Even if we think they started one year before the release of Origins thats already unbeliviable.
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Both Origins and Odyssey took 3 years to make instead of 2 years for all the prior games in the series.
Source:
work on Odyssey began immediately after work finished on 2015's Syndicate. By this point, Origins was already a year into production
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www.gamesindustry.biz/amp/2018-09-26-how-odyssey-is-changing-the-face-of-assassins-creed
 

jdstorm

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Jan 6, 2018
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Ubisoft definitely is getting close (if not already) to being to gaming what Marvel Stidios is to Cinema.

They know what they want to make, they are very good at it and usually implement enough creativity into the process to make their games seem unique enough to be interesting
 
El-Suave

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jdstorm said:
Ubisoft definitely is getting close (if not already) to being to gaming what Marvel Stidios is to Cinema.

They know what they want to make, they are very good at it and usually implement enough creativity into the process to make their games seem unique enough to be interesting
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That's a pretty good analogy. When you see other big publishers like EA fail when they try to streamline their development across many studios over the world, it only becomes more impressive how well Ubisoft seems to be run.
 
s y

s y

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They mastered AAA production and they have a legion of developers.
 

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noyram23 said:
People underestimate how to make that 800 work together to bring a good, cohesive products year by year, albeit a bit homogenous. They have great management and workflow for sure
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Exactly what I was about to say. Too many people people in this thread posting stuff like "it's 800 people, no duh", like all you ever need is to throw devs at a project and amazing shit magically comes out.

The management logistics of games of this magnitude to come out on time like they have (they've only ever taken a year off in god knows how many years, and are about to do another one), and for the games to look as good as they do, it's some seriously impressive shit. Running a ship as massive as this is no slouch, and without a doubt it's the best in the industry.
 

Deleted member 20297

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I think it's more impressive how they are so successful with their games this gen. Their output is impressive and their GaaS model is something many can only dream of.
 
skeezx

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Oct 27, 2017
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playing Odyssey right now it's honestly spooky this game came one year after Origins, even knowing each game had about 1000 people working on them

that said you can't shake the assembly line feeling the games have. it comes with a tradeoff
 

icecold1983

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Nov 3, 2017
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Huge number of employees and procedural generation. Not to mention a huge amt of asset sharing between various projects
 
Darkstorne

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The Woods said:
Even with multiple studios and multi year development periods, Origins and Odyssey are both huge, beautiful, and impressive games. Both constantly impressed me with their scope and attention to detail from start to end. I really can't wait for what they do this year. This is a series I thought I was likeky done with, but the last two entries have gotten me more invested than ever and i'm so looking forward to more. They are a little uneven in places and each has its strengths and weaknesses, but I love both, especially Odyssey. Perhaps not made by wizards, but some damn fine management and coordination between teams producing these impressive works.
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Sorry, no new AC this year. They're giving the series a break again and waiting for 2020. Watch Dogs 3 in London this year =)
 
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