Ubisoft: Bigger Isn't Always Better In Game Design
Some of Ubisoft's games, like the newest entries in the Assassin's Creed and Far Cry franchises, have been criticized for being too big, so much so that people feel intimidated to get started. So when Ubisoft announced a new game development technology, Scalar, that can help games grow even bigger in size with «limitless» worlds, some might have wondered if Ubisoft believes bigger is better as a rule.
That is not the case, according to Ubisoft's Patrick Bach, who is heading up the team in Stockholm working on Scalar and a new IP using it. «Do we need games to be bigger? No,» Bach told GI.biz. «Are some games going to benefit from being able to be bigger? Absolutely. It depends on that game, and the goal of that game and its creators.»
Bach said he believes the Scalar technology will give developers the ability to make bigger games--and some might benefit from this--but it won't be all of them.
«No part of a game should be driven by 'more is better.' This is technology, and that does not dictate what games you build, but there are games that will definitely benefit from being bigger, more detailed, being able to scale and being greater than they are today,» he said. «I don't think there's a real connection between games being bigger and them being better or worse. It depends on the creators and how they want to spend their energy achieving their vision.»
Ubisoft's new Scalar technology is a cloud-based production tool for developers to build games faster, more efficiently, and at a scale previously impossible, according to Ubisoft. But what does this look like in practice? We still don't know, and Ubisoft's team in Stockholm isn't ready to show the fruits of its labor on its new IP using the technology.
«We wish we could
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