While sailing made its first appearance in the Assassin’s Creed franchise with the release of Assassin’s Creed 3 in 2012, Ubisoft still ended up needing quite a bit of time with the development of multiplayer pirate game Skull and Bones. In an interview with PCGamer, former creative director on Assassin’s Creed 3, Alex Hutchinson, said that it was “bizarre to see essentially the same stuff re-shipping 14 years after we made it.”
He noted that the long development time for Skull and Bones likely came down to the fact that its studio, Ubisoft Singapore, lacked the development experience required to work on the mechanic at that scale. Founded in 2008, Ubisoft Singapore was largely a support studio for other teams, having helped in the development of titles like Assassin’s Creed 2 and onwards.
“Ideas have a window, and that’s another reason we’re trying to do things faster this time,” said Hutchinson. “They age out and become stale. I think the team was junior. They were trying to essentially make Black Flag crossed with World of Tanks or World of Warships. But I don’t think they had experience in that. And then they didn’t really have experience in making even an Assassin’s Creed game down there, because they really did co-development. And then I think it just got away from them.”
Hutchinson went on to describe the excursions that French and Canadian Ubisoft employees would have to go on to provide in-person support at Ubisoft Singapore as year-long vacations. He believes that this attitude ultimately resulted in the lack of a growing talent pool at the studio, describing these employees as not being serious about its growth.
“For a lot of the French or Canadian developers, they would go down to Singapore for a year’s holiday,” he said. “They weren’t going down there to make that studio huge. They were like, ‘Oh, that’d be fun to work for a year in Singapore.’ I don’t think they were serious. And you couldn’t get as many people, the talent pool just wasn’t deep enough.”
Skull and Bones was announced all the way back in 2017. It would go on to have an lengthy development cycle before ultimately coming out in February 2024. While it was originally believed to be a multiplayer-focused take on the sailing and naval combat mechanics from Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, reports at the time indicated that it had gone through many changes in direction and scope. One report has indicated that development originally started in 2013 as an expansion to Black Flag.
The launch of Skull and Bones was ultimately met with a lukewarm reception, with many noting that it offered a bland gameplay experience. The fact that Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot had referred to the game as being a quadruple-A release certainly didn’t help matters.
“You will see that Skull and Bones is a fully-fledged game,” he said in his attempts to defend its $70 price tag. “It’s a very big game, and we feel that people will really see how vast and complete that game is. It’s a really full, triple… quadruple-A game, that will deliver in the long run.”
Skull and Bones is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
