How Ubisoft’s Editorial Teams Are Quietly Shifting Games Like Assassin’s Creed, Roller Champions

ign.com:

You’ve probably familiar with video game development jobs like programmer, artist, or designer. But one of the most influential roles at Ubisoft is one that doesn’t always immediately parse for most people: the role of its editorial team.

This advisory group’s job is, on a large scale, to determine the creative direction for Ubisoft and its games, and it’s been in a state of upheaval lately. The editorial team had previously gotten an overhaul in early 2020, only to need another later that year after a wave of abuse allegations levied at multiple senior Ubisoft employees, including editorial leads.

In the pre-2020 structure, reports suggested that many of Ubisoft’s games ended up very same-y due to just one or two people dictating the creative direction of the company as a whole. And while the initial team shake-up may have been well-intentioned enough, it left at least two individuals with allegations against them dictating the company’s creative pillars. So it had to change again.

Which is where Fawzi Mesmar came in. Mesmar joined Ubisoft as VP of editorial just over a year ago, coming with almost two decades of industry design experience at companies including Atlus, Gameloft, King, and EA DICE. He stepped into the role at a particularly tenuous moment, and while his team’s overall directive of shaping the company’s creative direction remains intact, the nuances appear to be changing. Speaking to IGN, Mesmar describes the broad strokes of his role as working with senior leadership to put together a “creative framework” to help direct individual game teams in their creative visions. They put the pillars in place, then help teams reach them throughout the development process.

“We treat these as guidelines,” Mesmar says.