10 Years of Evolution of the Assassin's Creed Brand

[Music] good morning thanks for being here I know it's pretty year early especially for the third day of GDC shall we start I have a lot to say so I rather a start quite right away to tell you more about the last decade actually it's insane were just discussing in the back up but how time flies and a lot of things happen since 2007 with the release of Assassin's Creed 1 just to start because I'm not a very public person and not a very vocal person just start by introducing myself a bit I define myself as a designer and that works in creative industries and I had a first carrier making toys so if you'd like to discuss about development of construction toys I'd be more happy to discuss that but I guess you're more here today to to learn

about my experience at Ubisoft and mostly on the Assassin's Creed brand that I joined back in 2006 for the last year of production of a c1 then moving as a game designer on a c2 then for 2 years I worked more at the brain level overseeing a bit the entire universe and I came back to the production level as a creative director where I had the honor and privilege to direct Black Flag and origin so yeah and this was my personal achievement or my two carriers kind of collided thus that was very nice 2014 New York Comicon ok but so let's start right away to talk about the 10 years Assassin's Creed and on what I propose you today just to start with a quick video just to immerse ourselves a bit into the into the franchise [Music]

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so yes ten years between basically this AC 100 d and this origins t-shirt and so the question is how did we move from a one-game actually a solo game in 2007 to this massive global franchise of entertainment I will structure this talk into three big phases one about the creation of the franchise and finding really the recipe our and our own identity expanding it and finally refreshing it with a deeper focus on origins and so if you're ready to enter the vault of Assassin's Creed to enter the animals to deep dive into it be ready because there will be a lot of things and so maybe I will talk fast I hope you will you will follow me on that so let's start with the creation of a c1 evasive Assassin's Creed and I will

talk about both Assassin's Creed 1 and Assassin's Creed 2 actually the story starts back in 2004 because as you may know already the team behind prince of persia sands of time got the mandate to prepare for the next gen and if you remember for the olders the of you next gen back in the time was xbox 360 and ps3 and 2 also reinvent the action-adventure genre and so this is really this pop next gen that slowly but surely morphed into what became the Sasson squid and with the thousand squid when the decision was made to create this new IP the idea was really to bring a more mature take to to come up with something that was really conveying the next-gen and here I stopped for just for a moment this is the tutorial slide ok so when you will see slice like that these are actual PowerPoint slides from the date that you see here so this is a slide from a PowerPoint of back of 2006

and you will see quite a lot of them and so the idea was really to to bring modernity next-gen as something you really unique and really refreshing and yes the game was set during the middle age but not this kind of middle age we didn't want the franchise supposed to be a next-gen you know heat to to have this kind of treatment very very medieval and so this is why some decisions were made one important one was actually to have a more realistic treatment and to accept the M rating that was not the case for pot and this was a big step forward or so and with this realistic treatment came the present day the reason behind the present day in the first place is ready to create relatedness between the audience and the setting once again yes the game was set during the Third Crusade in the Middle Ages but we wanted the the overall game and the overall

experience to feel really modern and so with the the DNA with the enemies this was really edgy and allowing the game to be at the the forefront of this new gen new generation of games it also came with some very strong iconic elements the crest that evolved through times but still remain one of the key piece of the franchise a clear reference coming from the eagle the bird of prey not only about the silhouette of the hood with the big hood but also even the posing of a tire and this notion of the assassin is really dominating the situation is overlooking the you know the world from above ready to strike whenever he wants the game was also coming with the hidden blade very unique weapon no other games at the same type of things very well suited for the fantasy of an assassin and I mentioned it already the enemies technology that would allow us to link it to our 21st century audience and so

this was more about the treatment and the and the idea behind the rationale of certain elements but in terms of gameplay it was really also entering the open world genre moving from a very linear hardly level design you know platformer to an open-world game where actually these acrobatics with the parkour would be done and enjoyed everywhere in the city and this was a big big step for the team this was huge and this required actually new tech and this is why we developed the anvil engine in order to be able to render this fully interactive cities that you could interact with in many many different ways all buildings were flammable as you know it was also pushing the photorealistic treatment about characters mostly in cinematic and also the the possibility to manage big crowds if you remember 10 years ago

having more than 100 and PCs walking in the streets that was that was big and this was also linked to the core game plays but the thing is and this is probably the first lesson when you develop the engine at the same time then you develop the content where there is a risk builds are not stable enough so you you cannot develop properly you know game plays and the full experience so when the game hit the shelves we had very good very good things you know we were the fastest selling new IP so with the excellent sales the narrative really caught people did the assassin fantasy dwell the parkour all this was good but at the same time we had mixed reviews because we were lacking of things to do and there was too much repetitive it even so some of the journalists even said you know is it just a tech demo and this is why I put a thousand script to within the creation section because we really needed this game to deliver the

full promise of what Assassin's Creed was so ten years ago actually when I I joined in situ as a game designer the mandate was really really clear it was to repeat the commercial success of AC one but this time fixing all the issues it had right so that sounds easy it was a quite a big challenge and so what we started to do and remember these slides are from 2008 we analyzed thoroughly AC one do it during a past Martin looking at what people were asked to do in the game in terms of mission etcetera and what we were what we realized was that actual missions of Assassin's Creed 1 were not asking players to do what they were enjoying on their own right so we were asking you to sit on a bench to pickpocket guys when you actually when you were playing alone you just like to park or to fight you know or to blend and so this was the first learning that

helped shape Assassin's Creed 2 we identified our three main gameplay pillars so the fight the navigation and the social stealth and the entire game was designed around these pillars so if you take the enemies the archetypes of soldiers they were challenging the three pillars the three factions that you had have to work with that it was to work with the same but supporting you and that even the type of side missions were based on that so that we could actually enjoy them and support them fully and so in the end all the design loops were focused on actually supporting and making players use these pillars that were the the most of the more important so that was the gameplay recipe that we came up with for ec2 at the same time it was also clear for us that the franchise was about history was about making history everyone's playground and from day one

we started to work with historians to make people immersed into living a time period and so when talking about history is not about that you know a very old angry being of a very old man Delana Leonardo da Vinci that Schmidt in the game as you probably know is this young you know petulant and very dynamic man and with things like that we were giving players the the joy basically did the excitement to leave history to be part of it and so while history was really the core of the experience Assassin's Creed 2 helpers also solidified the rest of the narrative and this wonderful onion is here to show you that we kind of theorized the structure of our universe with what we call the onion structure where it's clear that there is the videogame layer there is the present-day layer and in the present day you entered the enemies and we in the enemies you access the

genetic memories in the past and this is very important because this is solidifying everything within the within the Assassin's Creed universe and so once that was solidified we could expand on Desmond story on one side but also diving you know deeper on the mysteries with subject 16 and the puzzles that was actually linking it to the first civilization so around the historical period we were developing the the present day and the first seafloor and this was pushing all together for a very strong narrative this was mostly for the content but we had only two years to deliver ec2 and so we also needed to nail the production pipeline and with with Assassin's Creed 2 we came up with some very strong documentation design documentation from the creative briefs to the FSO actually Patrick Claude made a talk here GDC a few years ago about that and also during the the end of production the extensive use of play

tests to secure quality of the game and so this helped us also really solidified the way we were producing we were developing Assassin's Creed but back in 2008 or so if you remember there was a big game being released spring 2008 gt4 hit the shelves and so our top management actually required us to beef up the game to increase the scope but giving us the means to do so and this was the first time we had multiple teams collaborating so we worked with ANSI in France that was a that was developing all the the davila development you know the villa management side the new-born Singapore studio that helped us bringing all the secret locations focusing on parkour and we even created a second team in Montreal in charge of bringing some more exotic moments to spice up the overall

experience so think about the flying machine sequence or the carriage chase in the Montaigne and so end of 2009 yes champagne we could celebrate we managed to deliver this big game a quality game with a strong narrative with a lot of things to do with very well integrated systems wonderful world to explore and so we really had this certitude this certainty at this moment that we knew what the Sasson squid was and so it was now time to move on and start the expansion of it right so let's see what's the explaining phase is about the first thing that allowed us to expand the franchise was the creation of a brand team so Ron Sebastian 12 was the executive producer we were a little group of people around and so I was lucky enough to be part of

this content team working on all aspects basically to secure our mandates was to secure the early releases and also develop the franchise awareness to really make his assassins creed something important so if we talk about the early releases it only could be done working with multiple core teams I'm not talking about multiple teams collaborating on one game this was a brand new thing it was big it was actually having multiple core teams working in parallel so if you look at the first core team the original one that made easy one that was behind ec2 also in 2010 with the creation of this team and so yes Singapore already helping us during AC 2 2010 while the first core team was actually using and developing broad hood a second core team in Montreal started to work on Assassin's Creed 3 in parallel the year

after while the first core team was moving on unity a third core team in Montreal was created to deliver revelations while the team of AC 3 was continuing the other thing and so on and so by adding people from different Studios developing talents all around the world we were able to actually bring the franchise with this cycle and origins really benefited from that with strong addition from from people from Sofia and Singapore and a lot of them a lot more but you will see that these two studios mostly and so it was really during all this phase it was moving from a collaboration collaboration organization to a co development organization what I mean is that collaboration basically is that so you have the leads to do that is leading the overall experience right so let's take black flied led in Montreal and we add we give some mandates you

know to other studios for example the underwater sequences but the thing the way the game and the scope and the mandates were done that it was always feasible to risk hope for example if things turn bad or didn't work as well as intended so it wasn't the case with the underwater that's just for the sake of the example don't get me wrong but this was the idea and slowly but surely developing the the expertise in other Studios we came for example this is a region ska development structure well you can see that without Sofia and Singapore the world of Assassin's Creed origins wouldn't be the same they took big big massive chunks of the game including the world quest and and major systems and so this was done through this disk this DK basically at the same time while still working violin and having to respect some elements to make

sure that we were still in the franchise each game at the mandate to stay fresh to bring something new to the franchise and to the gamers so if you look back at Brotherhood he came up with actually the Brotherhood the assassin brother that you could manage and also the multiplayer developed by NC in France with Revelations the navigation was fast and with the use of the hook blade so it was a twist interesting twist and in the present day we had this weird animus limbo experience that was something new with AC 3 assassin's creed 3 2012 that was the first time we had a chance to play in the nature environment and this was big how do you deal with trees with cliffs etc and Singapore ramping up very strongly bringing the naval missions that allowed us in on Black Flag to bring this seamless naval

world and at the same time in Black Flag we were changing the formula for the present day and I will get into more details but that soon unity a lot of work done to revamp the engine actually and and also bringing the coop and syndicate with this nice twist of having two main characters in the in the storyline and also working and tweaking the the gameplay features so that was the way basically all things work in parallel while still having things and trying things some of them lasted for example the naval some of them didn't think about the tower defence Templar stuff in Revelations but the idea was to try to always try even if we knew the global structure every single game brought something to the to the players and to the franchise so the second pillars we had as a brand team was really to

develop the franchise awareness and make AC very important into the video game industry but but even more actually in the entertainment industry in general because Assassin's Creed 2 started it at the launch of AC 2 you had lineage that was the first attempt of a live-action movie we had two other games we had a novel and French comic book the results were mixed we had good things mostly because they were focusing on prequels and sequels Renaissance was so so it was a good novel but the thing it wasn't bringing anything new it was literally the novelization of the script of the game so if you like the game you would have read the exact same thing and the French comic wasn't was exactly the thing that you want to avoid using the same characters but in a different stories and breaking the cohesiveness of the universe this is why back in 2010 for us

it was clear that we needed to establish our vision when it comes to transmedia and the fact for example that we wanted to enlarge our universe and making every single creation a good standalone that would add to to the overall thing you know its product is a standalone but the collection of them makes the IP bigger than the sum of its parts and so this was really the vision back in 2010 and we knew that to do that and to expand it we needed to work with other people we couldn't do everything on our own so we needed to be ready to share our vision of the franchise to share what needed to be respected so that other people talented people in their own field a field of expertise will actually bring very good content and so this is why we had to clarify the fundamentals so we we developed Bibles with the cannot you no can do can I do with the common Ten Commandments of the

franchise once again you know satisfying the the theory of the universe explaining the year the onion structure explaining the way genetic memories were transmitted there are things that can be done within the enemies there are things that cannot be done etc and this was really important to have other people really understand what I see is so that they would not delay a dilute sorry dilute the our universe at the same time we're developing tools to keep track of the narrative and to keep track of all the connections and the references from one creation and I say creation because now it's more than games right you have novels you have short movies you have comic books even at the character levels you know who knew who what is this piece of information launching this this this you know and we had good results if you look at revelations for example in the

game II do find a book that you can buy this is Renaissance expanding the story of alte yeah so bringing new stuff it was not just the same thing than the script of the game we also add project legacy that was a Facebook game really interesting laboratory to test things especially when it comes to breaking the fourth wall and include our audience within our universe embers was a short movie telling the story of the death of a Jew that we couldn't do if we respect the rules of the enemies so we couldn't do it in a game using the enemies but with a short movie it was good and for example with the comic book made by a word the author's Caryl Churchill and Cameron a Stewart where it's funny the 4d anecdote because six months prior to the release of the comic book IGN released an article saying that basically all video games comic book adaptation would suck and then six

months after I said you know what we said that but actually this one is pretty neat with all of and up to the movie actually back in 2016 which really helped raise the awareness of the franchise right look at the bump in Asia mostly plus 14 points so this transmedia strategy is still running today this is still the way we see things and we think that's the way to go for big universes big franchises but this also led us to go maybe too far as we know so breaking the fourth wall the idea here and I mentioned project legacy was to say that okay Desmond Miles story was really important because it was the glue it was the cement between all the episodes all of the first game it was connecting time periods that had nothing to do one way

with another so it was the giving players and the audience this consistent story going on but at some point it was really becoming constraining and limiting and so we needed to put it back to where it belong which means in the AC universe an assassin's creed telling stories during the you know humankind history has many many different stories I mean we have potential thousands of stories and Desmond Miles is important but it's one of them and we wanted that to be able to put the players to put the audience not only players with readers you know Watchers at the center of our universe our vision behind that was reso this is the evolution of the franchise from AC 1 to unity as originally planned back in 2011 and one thing that was key here was 83 in 2012 why because at that

moment when Desmond saved the world basically what we're saying is that the real world and our fictitious world were colliding and the IDBI that was that since then the present day of Assassin's Creed is our real world and this is really cool in terms of narrative potential and crossover and things that we that we can do so we wanted that to really like I said put the player and the audience inside our universe no matter you like games better than comics novels or movies you are inside of it and we wanted players to be actually part of this universe so that they could engage themselves into this globally connected universe so having connections life connections when talking about products having this real transmedia storytelling never contradicting one with another and having the audience at the core of it this is why for example we created at

circa entertainment because here we were kind of turning around the rules of the enemies we were bringing new ways to access memories to allow everybody and not only Desmond to access memories this was important and the the cornerstone was initiate or plan with initiates initiate was a website that was meant to become really the franchise hub some of you may know about it already but in case you never heard about it here is the video this video is actually an internal one so it is not a public one showing the vision that we we were having back then a secret war rages on the assassins and Templars try to shape humanity's future dive into the initiates explore the Assassin's Creed universe across land and centuries

discover conspiracies and untold tales of the Brotherhood earn rewards their progress with an assassin's creed and take your experience further an exclusive new mission set within the games customized a unique identity and take your place within the Assassin's Creed universe with the community unlock exclusive content and extend your gaming experience initiates join us so don't go into that website it's absolute but as you can see I mean

it was pretty ambitious and it was working and our core fan base was getting it they were really into it and this is why Black Flag in many ways was a transition game into this big master plan this is why the president of Black Flag was this first-person version it was meant to be you the present-day character and with an experience that was already bigger than just the game with the companion application and with the up and running web website initiate it was working we had super good content exclusive content gonna initiate we even added some missions in Black Flag through the website so we were pretty confident that this was the way to go thing is and I will come back later on that topic like I said the hardcore fans were really into it and enjoyed it but we didn't maybe listen enough to the

mass to the to the to the majority of our audience and so unity there was the following game and remember started back in 2011 after Brotherhood was really meant to be the new next-gen game and if you remember assassin's creed one it had some similarities actually because there was a lot of work being done at a very low level in terms of tech you know the engine was massively revamped with some fantastic rendering things I mean still today Unity III believe it is is still one of the best looking game ever but at the same time we moved to a one to one scale building that I impact also on the navigation and so the gameplay was impacted not talking about the the co-op development and so we fell again a bit

in this trap of work a lot on the tech and not allowing enough the teams that create the content to actually come up with something new and so in the end that's the way I see it actually I think we created the perfect condition for perfect storm we had a game that was wonderful in terms of art that but that was not renewing enough the experience right and this mad full of icons is the maybe the the best representation at the same time our vision about initiates and an experience that was bigger than the game hurt us also a lot because we came up with some design loops that people weren't ready and we didn't explain properly and so having content locked in the game you know and that you needed asking you to do things on the website and people got what's what's that for exactly are you kidding me and so on top of that Sunday when you get this kind of cherry the

turtle and by the way I need to preside that it was only one graphic card and PC only but so whatever I mean the game suffered from all this even if I mean played today with all the the fixes it's still a very beautiful and very good game but in short we probably flew too close to the Sun too far we were a bit overconfident and this is why syndicate had to really focus on quality which the team did very very well I mean syndicate is very fun game a well polished with the very interesting narrative twist with these the the fright wins and so this was basically the only thing we could do we with we syndicate to actually solidify the the experience that we knew how to do but we also knew it was time this time for a strong and firm a big big refresh and when I talk about refresh I never talk

about reboot actually this was we had tons of discussions internally and I always thought to say refresh more than reboot because at the same time that was super important to respect our franchise we know Assassin's Creed we own it we are the only ones that that can adapt it without betraying it so the two aspects are key in my mind and let's start with the Refresh of the experience this was the the key thing at first was we needed clear priorities so in 2014 this is a team meeting a slide the four big direction basically I gave to the team was okay we need to show that we master open-world creation we need to find better if not perfect balance between the story and player's agency be less hand-holding we need to be a not capable episode in the AC universe and

to remain a connected game even if without co-op we need to show that the being part of the community bring the value to your overall experience we are not a competitive franchise but the community is very very strong and we need to leverage that and so the idea behind modernizing AC was really to to have the focus in terms of fluidity and player's freedom there was key message given to the team it's not about us it's about the players and they want to be free they want to do what they want and if needed we need to adapt ourselves our tools our cultures and so making a modern Assassin's Creed was really about being more systemic more players friendly more connected and also like I said having a modernized pipeline this is why we came up with this archipelago structure of the world so if you

remember this is basically the core team of origins is the one that delivered Black Flag and so we came up with this structure of the world where procedural tools would allow us to create a lot of terrain of ground but where artists and level design were still owner of location precise locations to really have high quality and crafted locations at the same time even with the year so you see this is a prototype from the end of 2014 with the girl the intention was to redefine the way we understand the world the way we interact with it and the way we see it living remember living and breathing world we said that for 10 years now but this had to be true more than ever so it's good to have a big world but we needed to fill it in a meaningful way and so this is why we came up with this meta AI global AI something think about

an RTS AI set on top of an open-world game where people would have their agenda and bringing you know credibility to the world while letting systems work all together and interact together to create emerging situations that we would not have predicted and this was a very important step forward because the teams needed to understand that we needed to work more on situations and create good conditions of things to happen rather than scenarios that need to you know unfold in that specific sequence and obviously one of the big topic was also the fight where we moved from animation paired system paired animation system sorry to a hitbox system and this was meant to really bring a fight that was more challenging that was deeper with meaningful weapons being more reactive also and way more modern and this was

coming also with as you can see transition animation short animation won't always much perfectly that's ok from a player's perspective but some of the team were was struggling with that and so in the end we had to keep repeating that it was a cultural shift for the developers as much as a technological one this was really important and we kept repeating that to the team we should focus on the experience and not the scripting or hard coding players don't care about our code they just care about their experience and we needed to understand that losing a bit of control would bring more fun to the players rather than creating issues and I mean I had people came in to me saying are you do you really want to deliver a crappy game you say no it won't be the same it will be fun believe me and so yeah I called that operation losing the tie same bad as in quality

but you know can we just breathe a bit more more open more fluid and more madam so that was the goal but that was not an easy road and so if you want to come by Montreal work with us be prepared this is the kind of the streets we have but the balance was hard to find so again 2016 we had to I mean it was a constant you know repeat process to explain that for example the setting the envelope of the experience for the time here the world stories we knew how to do that we did it already many times but all the structure of the experience a lot of that was new were literally moving from you know a gas engine to electrical car and this is not easy this is you know we were out of our comfort zone so at some point we had

teams not liking each other I mean the guys in charge of all the systemic aspect for coming to us and say ok these people they want to tell stories and they want to control the systems how are we supposed to do systemic things if you want to control them and on the other side the narrative team was coming and say how are we supposed to tell stories if they want you know they don't want less to to take control of the systems so we add these tensions but in the end in turn well I think we I mean we all respect each other we are we are all seasoned developers and we found this balance remember the first the objectives second objective balance between narrative and player's agency we're with this quest structure would have narratives meaningful narratives but using the system's not directing every single bit of each missions and so this word really the big big things that we need to change but at

the same time every day every week every month we had to ask ourselves what should we keep what should we change for example the thing about the climbing we knew that set in ancient Egypt climbing were less permanent I mean we have less buildings that's for sure so how do we keep this verticality that is really needed for AC well we want the navigation we want the climbing to be available on all cliffs so that we could have set up in camps you know in caves using the mountains as a level design element I like this example first because it's a very old video as you can see the world here but it's about the rich high point you know the waypoints what do we do with that this is key I mean its iconic of Assassin's Creed you need to climb something you dominate the world of this wonderful vistas and then it ends up with the leap of faith which is I mean these three elements are almost defining

what Assassin's Creed is so do we keep it or not if we keep it it makes sense but at the same time we need to remove the link between that and the discovery of the world because this was feeling very old very the same way so this is why we kept the feature that we changed its utility you don't unlock the map anymore with that we asked ourselves a lot about social stealth does it make sense for byuk to blend in groups well in the narrative side is not per se an assassin is more proto assassin more of a warrior doesn't make any real sense to him with big axes you know hiding among civilians so we decided to focus instead on environment or stealth this is why the hidden blade for example that was the nuclear weapon of assassins and that was preventing us from having a good progression because you don't care about

being level 40 with one hit with the blade you can kill anybody so we needed to accept that the blade would need to be upgraded and even the chest we have quite a lot of chests still but do we want the map to be filled with this type of icons when we can actually just change the icon and having a more an icon better suited for the setting and removing this reference to the old chest formula and so this was you know the way we worked to refresh the experience at the same time like I was saying we needed to refresh and to respect our identity and what I mean is that we tried to create as many references and connection between origins and past games for example the Eagle obviously was important it's key to the franchise think about Sasson

screed one part the having the cat finger also to allow the blade was important and even in the posing of Altaria on marketing assets even if we never juxtapose the - there was this reminiscence of a c1 the use of artifacts also was the same where the first game set prior to a c1 but we didn't want to fall into this totally crazy fantasy of Egypt so we kept that low low profile basically but the way we traded the first save drawings was the exact same right this is actually the exact I mean that's the same artist that did both with I am sorry for the spoiler but I assume that you know everything I'm talking about in LC 2 we had Amunet in the world right famous Egyptian assassin where we reveal that aya and in the DLC the hidden ones her costume is directly

inspired from the vault of AC 2 so you see creating references looped like that even with this final scene echoing the trailer of Assassin's Creed 1 and so with these little details I think we managed to always secure especially our fans that this was a true Assassin's Creed game and this was also true with the present-day so we were we are back with the formula with the third person character introducing Layla because we think this formula as a lot to bring in terms of narrative and it's better understood but even with that we can create connections you know William is desmond smile is this month father sorry and if you look into our computer you have tons of references to other games and the movies and so that's the way we refreshed and respect assassin's creed in few words basically i would

have to say that know your brand first if you don't want people to screw it to dilute it to say or do things that are not supposed to be done know it and and communicate it right think about the bibles and settle in terms of gameplay you need to clearly identify your strengths what are the things the features that make your game shined so that you can focus on it and try to disperse yourself but at the same time don't hesitate to grow your things this growth of assassin's creed during the last decade would not have been possible without other studios all around the world if we were to you know protective this wouldn't work the same with external teams comics movies etc and and the last lesson I would encourage you is to listen to your audience we really try to do it with this you know initiate global hub etc we went probably a bit

too far but in general I mean you need to listen to your audience not only the hardcore fans that's the advice I would say so just to finish finish it's actually quite simple I like this slide for me its creation in general conception in general developing games or whatever is all about you know this tyshee mentality being solid you know what you want to do at the same time remaining flexible you need to be able to adapt to opportunities or issues and remain open so that you can work with others that will bring you you know solutions ideas etc so it's this constant flux between you know solidity not stiff this is not stiffness and flexibility and that's it for me today thank you very much [Applause]

so I think we have time for some questions you can come to the mile or after in the follow-up outlooks any questions hi thank you so like history is a very big part of the franchise so how do you decide like which country or which channel history historic US you choose to go on for exchange thank you so that's that's a very common question in the sense that there is a lot of you know guessing people trying to guess what's the next installment it's always a discussion between the creative team the developers the marketing the HQ you know we need to come up with an agreement where the team feels feels empowered about the setting that's something they will really want to explore at the same time we need to secure that it it had some marketing appeal so there is no rule I would say you know it's it's really which time

period are you interested in does it make sense from a business point perspective is the audience ready for that yes okay it's as simple there's no golden rule you know for everything that's what I try to explain here with the Tai Chi thing it's you need to know what you want to do but at the same time be able to adapt at every time hey John um so you're talking a little bit about the brand strategy and transmedia stuff and someone the more recent decisions that's kind of drawn a little bit of ire from the fans is taking the Juneau plotline which was started you know five plus years ago and shifting that to the comics and then kind of abandoning it in the games and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what goes into making a decision like that and if there are any like lessons learned well it's always a matter of what's more important and who does it affect what are the means that need to be put in place to deliver it properly and so it's

it's always discussions there there is a and so Juneau is we know is really really and was really really important for a part of our audience that what you look at the overall audience not so many people actually know about Juneau so we knew it was important and we needed a sense of closure for this story but that was not and that couldn't ever be the core narrative of one big game so so this is why basically it we came up with this solution but there it's always a discussion like I try to explain also with the discussions we had for features of the game there is no nothing as okay here is the rule on everything that that is right for everything so it's always a bit by bit piece by piece I don't know how to say that in English properly and so at least I think that now there is a sense of closure for this narrative line we know that some people would have

preferred to have that in games but at the same time especially with the origins also we knew we wanted to attract and to bring newcomers to the franchise and being said prior to I see one was a good way to say you know what there is no narrative barrier so come with us hi can you talk a little bit about how you were able to collect feedback from a more general audience because they tend to be a little bit less vocal so how what were your strategies for getting that feedback well we always do surveys post-launch surveys we have teams that are specialized into that trying to analyze the way people play our games what they like what they dislike about them and so this is I would say mostly the way we we go into details but at the same time our community managers are doing fantastic job you know to be really in contact with with the audience in general and so

to gather feedbacks no matter I mean whatever they are so that we can try very there's always a guest in the end right and so but we also look at the competition how the industry is evolving and so we need to to find our place into that there there's no massive worldwide you know a thing to say okay and we know exactly what you want but we have tools like that strategies to know better at least thank you okay hi you talked about growing your teams in multiple locations could you give us an idea of how many people you have in each of the locations and is there a limit on how big a geographical location can be in terms of one part of your team there's no limits per se it's really based on each studio management in order to say we're capping for some reason this team can't grow more than

this and then it's really on the producer side to being constant you know contact with these teams in the end of the last big games are we're talking about several hundred people I can't give you exact figures but several hundreds we we were think more than 300 in Montreal only and so big teams in in Singapore so Sofia plus some others in Chengdu in Montpellier a lot of SEOs but it's really about collaborating so we we have for example in the lead studio typically as a collaboration team well we have a producer technical guy design persons that are the the key contact point for the other studios and so to make sure that the communication goes well it's it's hard it's not always easy especially for the the co development studios that are most of the time

waiting for things from the lead studio but in the end it works well does the curve balance to do creative control of the area within that Monday yes more and more that's the idea of the co development versus the collaboration where the the collaboration is really about okay you do this that way almost when with the co dev is really where teams you know and so when you think about origins Sofia ad the responsibility to bring all the tombs all the pyramids for example for the entire games plus their region including their narrative editor and Singapore did all the water tech with the feluccas with the naval missions with all this and these were there so obviously we were giving feedback Montreal was giving feedback with them working on that but that's their stuff you know they developed systems specifically for that from I mean

because they wanted to as long for me as a critical item they did the responsible for the overall experience so I won't go into the detail I'm not you know I'm not the game designer above the game designer I'm not the artist the artistic director above the IDI my focus is really the global experience so if it's in line if the purpose is good if it fits the the global vision then do it right thank you all right so first it was a great song so thanks very much for that I'm sure you talked a lot about not being afraid to refresh the brand and consider changes I'm wondering what the biggest change you considered was that you ultimately start away from the be sorry the biggest are the biggest change that you considered in any aspects of and you know each successive gain that you ultimately decide it was too big I think with the original it was clearly the fight because now we were talking we were touching you know this second to second experience which is super

important because you can build a big world but if you don't like your interaction with your enemies you're screwed basically so this was a big big one but it was it was awaited it was needed or so and the team was good so but that there is a the NPC Earth of Dai was big there was big because it affected the production it affected the pipeline of it for example in previous ICS when you go into the street and you I don't know a blacksmith or something somebody working well it's can we call that a crud station you know it's like a little cinematic that is placed here and that won't change and so when you bumped into it they were released in the crowd flow and they would work away or not move at all for the entire day with origins we came up with this agenda system where people would sleep eat work and this was

brand-new and creating a lot of new challenges I think there is a very nice talk tomorrow but debugging and making sure we reach quality with Nicola Lucci I invite you tomorrow for that so thank you Frank oh hi I know Assassin's Creed II released some VR experiences alongside the movies I'm wondering if you were involved in any of those or if you could comment on any of the VR developments no this was more actually I can even marry a part of the marketing campaign of the movie so we had nothing to do with that Sally I cannot give you any details about that I wasn't involved at all so now let the game assets reused yes this we do a lot we never edited to share our assets I mean there are Ubisoft property so if we can help and sometimes we have very cool collaboration not only for marketing but

for museums for example or documentaries that ask us for some visuals you know to illustrate their things so yeah we we quite often share as it a wonderful Roger any last one yeah okay have you ever done the personas for audience and how you defined your hawk or player Mike opera and the the other players and are they involved for different generation of the games yes we thought the surveys I was talking about earlier helped us define the type of players we have but we don't do the distinctions between hardcore players it's more about profile and and the way they experienced again so for example we have the computers you know that really focus on doing everything cleaning the map or thing and it can take them a long time we have more than you know the guys

that rush the story and really want to finish the narrative you have the ones that really focus on fight because that's what they like big challenges bigger bigger end game content this is what we came up with the war elephants or the snakes or the junior event I mean the trials of the god thing but this is more the way we identify our players and trying to come up with things for for everybody okay that's questions I'm a big fan of the SS income from China and the weaker History Week assassin have you ever thought about you know made a game on Chinese history background about asses in Korea I'm really looking forward way I was here to talk to you about the past of the franchise the last decade I do know nothing about the future I'm sorry okay okay thanks okay thank you thank you [Applause]