{"id":30272,"date":"2018-07-04T15:51:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-04T15:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/321342"},"modified":"2018-07-04T15:51:00","modified_gmt":"2018-07-04T15:51:00","slug":"neverending-story-ubisoft-keen-to-move-away-from-finite-experiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/07\/04\/neverending-story-ubisoft-keen-to-move-away-from-finite-experiences\/","title":{"rendered":"NeverEnding Story: Ubisoft keen to move away from &#8216;finite&#8217; experiences"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ubisoft\u00a0wants to keep players engaged for longer by shifting away from &#8220;finite&#8221; experiences, in favor of titles built around smaller,\u00a0multi-layered\u00a0narratives.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In an <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ubisoft.com\/article\/ubisofts-executive-vp-of-creative-talks-shorter-stories-player-choice-and-the-future-of-ai\">interview posted on the studio blog<\/a>, Ubisoft&#8217;s vice president of creative Lionel Raynaud explained why the company&#8217;s games will soon focus on serving up a platter of self-contained narratives that fit into larger arcs, rather than a one long, overarching story.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>According to Raynaud, the studio doesn&#8217;t want players to feel their titles have nothing to offer beyond the main quest, and that means creating an experience that&#8217;s rich and robust enough to pull them back after that core tale\u00a0has been told.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What drove [that shift] is the will to not give finite experiences. The idea was that you have this conflict, and the resolution, and then it&#8217;s finished &#8212;\u00a0you&#8217;ve killed the bad guy, for instance,&#8221; he explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We build a strong nemesis, and the goal of the game is to kill him or free the country, we&#8217;ve done that a few times in our games. But when you succeed, you have to leave the game, because there is nothing else to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So the goal was to break this, and say that you will be the hero of a region or population many times, not just once. And if you get rid of a dictator or an oppressor, something else is going to happen in the world, and you will have a new goal.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/venturebeat.com\/2018\/07\/03\/ubisoft-is-finished-with-finite-experiences\/\">As noted by VentureBeat<\/a>, Ubisoft expressed a similar sentiment at this year&#8217;s E3 conference, where it explained how players won&#8217;t be able to &#8220;solve&#8221; the world of <em>Assassin&#8217;s Creed: Odyssey<\/em> (the next title in the franchise), and that their decisions will always lead to new conflicts and adventures.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is why I talk about having several fantasies; not only being the hero who&#8217;s going to free a region, but maybe also the fantasy of having an economic impact, of being the best at business in this freed country, or even having a say in how it should be governed, now that you&#8217;ve gotten rid of the dictator,&#8221; continued Raynaud.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And I think we can have several different experiences with different game systems in the same world, if the world is rich enough and the systems are robust enough.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;ll be interesting to see how the French studio\u00a0puts the philosophy into practice, and whether\u00a0it will in\u00a0fact\u00a0convince players to stick around for longer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ubisoft\u00a0wants to keep players engaged for longer by shifting away from &#8220;finite&#8221; experiences, in favor of titles built around smaller,\u00a0multi-layered\u00a0narratives.\u00a0 In an interview posted on the studio blog, Ubisoft&#8217;s vice president of creative Lionel Raynaud explained why the company&#8217;s games will soon focus on serving up a platter of self-contained narratives that fit into larger [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}