Jade Raymond from Ubisoft Toronto, doesn’t like the fact that the industry isn’t taking much risks and are simply competing to be the next Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto. Very few studios like to take risks nowadays she revealed in an interview with Eurogamer.
“Everyone is competing for the top slots to be Grand Theft Auto or Modern Warfare or whatever. The current tendency is to copy the games that occupy the top slots, not to try something different. It takes a real belief in the medium for a company to be willing to take the risk.
“But at the same time, whenever you see a big success it’s because somebody took a risk. I am pushing our creative teams to think about meaning and to say something deeper than at the surface level.”
She also said that plenty of Ubisoft developers come to her and say that they want to create something new other than first-person shooters, and she is amazed at how so many people at Ubisoft are fed up with it.
“More and more people come to me at Ubisoft and say, ‘I love games. I came into this industry with so many ideas. But I can’t continue to make shooters over and over again. I’m not even in line with the messages.’ I have that meeting a lot these days. Yeah, it’s time to give our teenage medium a kick in the balls,” she revealed.
She also had a few ideas about how developers can innovate and push the medium forward and also believes that creative heads at the top spot in the industry have to take a lot more risks.
“What about the way the way the system is stacked against the poor? If you lose your job, especially in the States where there’s no healthcare, your debt can grow out of control very quickly,” she said.
“It’s remarkably easy to become homeless. That meta-gameplay loop could easily be brought into a game I think. Sexism, too. That could easily be brought into a franchise like Call of Duty. If you could play as a woman you could bring in some perspectives to what that might be like.
“Interesting topics that have been in the news include the Arab Spring, internet freedom, the growing class divide. I think games could explore religious beliefs in a fascinating way. For example, imagine a game in which death or save games are aligned with the Hindu belief in reincarnation. Perhaps you could retry levels as animals, or humans with different skill sets upon death?”
Those are some good ideas for sure, but it remains to be seen if we do see some changes in AAA titles, but one thing is for sure – we will have plenty of innovative games at the start of next-gen when publishers try find the next big thing. Jade Raymond is currently working on a Splinter Cell game with no shipping date in sight.
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