Alex Hutchinson, director on Assassin’s Creed III and Far Cry 4, has revealed during an interview with GamesRadar that Ubisoft put a lot of pressure on its developers to cram as much content into their games as possible, in order to ensure players ‘keep the disc in the tray.’
At the time there was a lot of pressure inside Ubisoft to ‘keep the disc in the tray’ to essentially try to delay resale as GameStop was the only one making any money on that transaction. Designers were being asked to add play time which seemed like the most pro gamer solution to the problem in a franchise where multiplayer had never really worked.
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He went on to say that “action adventure games” such as the earlier Assassin’s Creed games “are notoriously expensive per game hour, so the cheapest and most effective way to bulk it out was to add RPG elements.”
I think it’s the only franchise I can think of that changed genre and kept its audience, so it was risky but it seems to have worked. That said I always thought it was a peculiar decision for a franchise where they also wanted to put them out as close to annually as possible.
I was worried that if you had 200 hours of AC you just played then would you really be in the mood for more a year later? I think luckily the radical change in setting and often protagonist means it feels more fresh than most franchises so they get away with it, but my heart is in the action adventure space, not stat juggling, so I miss the old days.
Assassin’s Creed Origins
[Source – GamesRadar]