Former Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed Director Criticizes Ubisoft, Says They Are “Allergic” to New Games
Shortly after Ubisoft’s recent leadership changes for the Assassin’s Creed series, Alex Hutchinson shared sharp criticism of the company. The former Creative Director of Far Cry 4 and Assassin’s Creed 3 believes Ubisoft’s leadership has become allergic to new video games.
After leaving Ubisoft in 2017 to found Typhoon Studios, Hutchinson spoke to PCGamer about his career at the company and commented on its current direction.
Leadership Shift
According to Hutchinson, “It’s a shame.” He added, “i think a bunch of things happened. The style of development we pioneered was being able to manage big teams by letting them be individual groups with ownership of their own thing, to allow us to make bigger games faster.”
He then explained what changed inside the company.
“But then I think with the recent boom, there’s been a weird five year boom in private equity and investment from people which we hadn’t seen before ever. So a lot of senior people left Ubisoft and started studios or splintered off. So there was this talent drain that went out.”
Hutchinson links the company’s recent struggles to this internal transformation and the departure of experienced developers.
Continuing his analysis, Hutchinson also mentioned the canceled project Pioneer and spoke about Ubisoft’s focus on sequels.
“They always had a history of sequelizing the franchises, but also having a couple of new things coming along. They became very allergic to the new things, and so they killed a bunch of our ideas, like when I was working on Pioneer. They had nothing new to come through.”
According to him, the company now shows strong resistance toward new concepts, something that was not the case in the past.
