At Ubisoft's Digital Day last night, Ubisoft Vice President of Digital Publishing Chris Early laid out the company's plan for a digitally integrated future. It's a future that spreads across Facebook, mobile devices, and consoles with games that feed into each other -- what Early called "companion gaming." One of these companion games is the just-announced Assassin's Creed: Project Legacy for Facebook, which will unlock features in November's tent-pole release Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and vice-versa.
Bitmob's Demian Linn and I spoke with Early after his presentation to find out more about Ubisoft's vision of digital harmony, the Assassin's Creed series, and whether Project Legacy will finally get hardcore gamers to start playing on Facebook.
Brett Bates: So we wanted to pick your brain a little bit more about the whole connectivity idea that you were talking about earlier...
Chris Early: The “companion gaming”?
BB: Yeah, the companion gaming, and how it works. It’s not really something that I’ve seen, at least to such an extent that you guys are trying to push it at this point, especially when it comes to looking at full retail games like Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood connecting with a Facebook game. So what was your philosophy behind that? Was it allowing the gamer to connect at any point they wanted to?
CE: Look, I’m a greedy gamer. When I’m playing a game that I like, I want to keep being involved with that game. That’s what makes me stay up too late when I’m playing a game at home, dragging myself into work the next day.
But I know that I can’t sit in front of the console the entire time, even though I still want to be engaged with the game. There wasn’t really a good way to do that. Compound that with the countless games on our iPhones or whatever, and they’re fun for the moment, but they really don’t do anything overall from a gaming standpoint.
Wouldn’t it be great to do something on your iPhone or do something on Facebook and not have it just be a mindless clicking exercise, but actually have it be an additive value to an experience you want to continue anyway? That’s the underlying philosophy.
BB: Can you talk a little more about that? Say specifically with Assassin’s Creed, the sort of benefits that you’re going to get in gameplay, either in the Facebook version of the PS3/360 version. You talked about being able to earn XP and level up your character. Are a lot of the benefits in the games going to be real tangible benefits like that or they going be like unlocking a costume -- things that don’t necessarily affect the gameplay in any way but are kind of cool?
CE: I think you’ll see both. And I think part of it comes back to where or how those benefits are going to manifest in the particular game. So when you’re making a game where you’re going to have a bunch of external influences and it’s a single-player game, then you’re really free with what you can do, because you’re only affecting my play. You can give me the “Sword of Odin,” and it’ll kill everybody, which is great -- maybe I want to use it, maybe I don’t -- but it’s all my single-player game experience. You want to balance it out so you don’t completely overpower the game, but you’re a little more controlled. On the other hand, if you put me in a multiplayer environment and you give me a BFG and everyone else has pistols, that’s somewhat of an unfair advantage from a play standpoint.
So it’s important to figure out a way you can provide those benefits to the players and not completely destroy the game balance. So in a case like you mentioned, it might unlock a cape, that might be great in a multiplayer environment, because now you have a way to distinguish yourself -- and we know plenty of people love doing that -- and it’s restricted. Look how many people in World of Warcraft go out and and play a certain element and get a certain armor set that is worse than what they could otherwise wear because of the way it looks.
BB: How does the XP component then work? How do you balance that issue where someone could--
CE: You govern how much you can do on a daily basis.
BB: So there’s a limit to how much you can earn per day?
CE: Right. You don’t want someone to sit there and click and click and click on Facebook and be done with Brotherhood by the time they get home.
BB: Exactly. Suddenly they’re at level 99...
CE: [laughs] So it becomes a more complex balancing of the ecosystem overall. I’m sure you know that as you start to get into the MMO worlds and things like that, there are economies that go on -- not only monetary economies but economies in items and in advancement. And this adds complexity to that.
But from a player’s perspective, I think it really fuels the passion. It lets me then go ahead and engage with that game at other places and at other times. You know, I look at iPhone games when I’m sitting waiting five minutes for something or another, I’m certainly not going to fire up Brotherhood -- at home even -- and play for five minutes. But if I could do something where I made a difference for five minutes, I’d rather do that.
BB: So did you guys approach these games as a complement to the retail versions, or are you looking at them as a separate standalone product?
CE: They have to be a standalone game in their own right.
BB: Are you envisioning people then strictly playing the Facebook game?
CE: I’m sure there will be some people who play on Facebook and never ever play another Assassin’s Creed game. Because look at the demographics of Facebook: Not all of those people have consoles or are going to download the PC version of the game. It’s just the fact of the matter.
BB: So the games aren’t necessarily catered towards unlocking various aspects in the retail game?
CE: I think time will tell what the best implementation is, but the theory is as you have fun in the brand universe, you’re going to want to explore more areas of that universe. You see Star Wars, you want to see the second one because it was good, right? I look at my kids, who by the time they were watching movies, all six were out. And they saw one random one. Well, that was fine, because it made them want to see more of them. Were they originally Star Wars fanatics? No. Did they become one? One did, one didn’t. But they saw all of the movies. So maybe that’s an on-ramp for the Assassin’s Creed universe, or maybe it’s just a fun game you’ll play. We’ll see.
That’s why I say it’s got to stand on its own. And if has some additive value that unlocks something in Brotherhood, great. Because if you really like that universe, you might play that.
I know there are guys who are gamers who say they hate Facebook, that they’re never going to play a game like that.... we’ll see. I admit, there are a lot of Facebook games that are basically mouse exercises. Maybe this is a mouse exercise in some people’s minds, but if it’s a mouse exercise that helps my other gaming? Maybe it’s worth it.
BB: How much interaction are you seeing between the studios developing the Facebook versions and the teams working the more full-fledged retail versions? Are they talking with each other?
CE: In some cases, they’re in the same building -- even in the same room. In other cases, they’re separate. But in each case, they’re involved together because you have to adapt the technology that Ubisoft has developed overall as a mechanism for exchanging the information. And you really need to think about how it’s going to affect the game. You don’t want the Assassin’s Creed Facebook game to just generate unlimited experience. So as the producer of Brotherhood, you have to be thinking, “Not only do I want to make sure that that game limits it, but I should be able to limit it as well, so that I can control the balance of the game that’s going on at the Brotherhood level.”
Demian Linn: Is this kind of a central game-design tenet for Ubisoft going forward? Do you want all of your games to have a browser-based component?
CE: You saw the family picture thing that I had up there [during Early’s earlier presentation] of the products that are around a game. We’re not dictating that every studio implement every single one of these elements. We have a series of best practices. And different games are going to be able to take advantage of different parts of them. Not every game is going to have a good Facebook component. Not every game is going to lend itself to having a good iPhone component. It’s going to really be game by game and studio by studio.
The real challenge for us is to make sure we don’t routinize it to the point where it becomes something stupid that somebody does, because we had to check the box and make a Facebook game, because we had to check the box and make an iPhone game, but to make it so it’s a meaningful play experience on that platform. That’s going to be our challenge, and how do we encourage that creativity from all of our studios.
DL: So what do you think about the kind of games Zynga for example makes on Facebook? Do you feel confidant coming in with Ubisoft’s background that you guys will be able to make better game experiences than they do?
CE: Short answer? No. When are you ever sure that you’re going to make a 95? Maybe, maybe not. It is a hit-driven business. We’re going to do our best. What some companies have going for them is lots of users that they can push around to other games. What we have going for us are some excellent brands and some passionate players who want to play with those brands in other environments.
Frankly, if we make a bad Facebook game with any of our brands, no one will play it. Or they’ll only tolerate it because of the benefit it provides somewhere else. But that’s not our objective. It might happen sometimes. We’ve made some flops. Everybody’s made some flops. I don’t think we plan on that. [laughs]
BB: Are you guys adopting the microtransaction model that a lot of those games use, or is it completely free-to-play?
CE: Most all Facebook games are free-to-play at some level. If you look at Assassin’s Creed, there’s no monetization mechanism in there at all. It’s all completely free-to-play.
It’s on a game-by-game basis. Because really what you’re trying to do is make a good game.
DL: So EA for example is bringing some of their franchises on Facebook but not having interconnectedness between the games as they exist on consoles or PCs. Do you see other publishers following suit into what you guys are doing?
CE: If we’re successful, yeah. I think some will anyway. The industry is evolving quick enough that everybody is watching what everybody is doing. Earlier this year, EA did their 10-dollar subscription model. I first saw it in [Mass Effect 2]. So you know what, will more companies do that? Already there are more companies doing that because it seems to be working. It doesn’t get in the way of the player who bought the game anyway, and players seem to be somewhat accepting of it from a used market perspective of it as well.
I think everyone’s going to watch, and when they find something successful, more of it will be adopted. As a player, I think that’s great. As someone leading Ubisoft, I hope they never do! [laughs]
DL: Are you looking at any other platforms besides Facebook and iPhone/iPad?
CE: Yeah, we continually look at new platforms. For us, it’s a question of audience. Where is the audience going to be that we can address with a different brand experience? So when a platform makes sense with an audience, we should be developing for it.
One example for that is with the DS. Are many people making connected DS games? I don’t think so. But it makes sense for Petz because there are so many Petz DS games, and that’s the same audience that’s going to be playing Petz World. So is everybody set to make a connected DS game? No. But it makes sense for this game.
The other thing I forgot to mention, so here’s an exclusive, is that when you play Assassin’s Creed: Project Legacy now, the benefits you accrue will be there when Brotherhood launches. So it’s not like you’re wasting your play in the meantime.
