Jade Raymond Leaving Ubisoft

I didn't follow her closely but always thought she seemed cool.

It's pretty rare that someone of her skill level doesn't move on directly to another job. Was she let go?

@spraynardtatum: I don't think she really took the spotlight much after the first assassins creed.

Did she say whether she was staying in the game industry or not? This article is vague on that matter.

@patrickklepek

Oh man, I remember that one hehe...

That's a super impressive list to have on your resume.

I wonder if she'll be headed to a smaller team or will end up sticking with a bigger publisher. If the latter, let's hope her situation doesn't end up like Patrice Desilets' did. Personally though, it'd be nice to see her working on smaller projects.

Best of luck to such a great talent. I hope she joins up with Christina Coffin (coder from DICE who created the Frostbite engine) and makes some super rad game.

No it's not because she was a producer and like film or TV producers often do PR work for the shows they produce. There was absolutely nothing "sleazy" about Ubisoft having the producer of Assassin's Creed do press for Assassin's Creed.

Yeah. She had to deal with some pretty insane harassment for literally just being a woman working on the game during that press tour. I don't blame her.

@greyfoxv1: Oh, well that's a bummer.

Every now and then I go back and watch that trailer. Good shit.

@turboman: Remember how fucking God awful the internet was to her? I would have hid too.

@haz: My money's on her heading up a small team at Oculus.

@ultimaxe: It's pretty normal for a producer to be the one to promote the game. Most of the developers are busy, you know, developing.

What a weird headline. "One of the most visible women in development" is that girl who did a few pieces on Assassin's Creed 1 almost a decade ago. That's a little disconcerting.

Looking forward to see what she does next, always kinda figured she has the best chance to be the first woman become the head of a AAA publisher someday

Probably no relation but she looks a lot like Alex Vance.

"PC" or not, it's the truth.

I hope she leaves games for her own safety! I hear that prominent female devs are being targeted and threatened through a hashtag

@mr_creeper: post/username combo

"If this press conference goes over 50 the bus will explode!" She'll be fine. The internet is not a place where threats are followed through.

It's not vague, look at the last sentence and the tweet.

It's also pretty likely that she is in fact moving directly to another job, but hasn't announced it yet. Not that anyone really needs to disclose where they work on twitter, but the game industry tends to be pretty secret about anything that isn't marketing material.

I suppose that secrecy is required to stop competitors from copying game ideas, yet also the reason gaming seems to be such a hotbed for conspiracy theorists right now.

Ok, sure, but's what's to gain from pointing it out via a post? Are you complimenting her directly? Are you helping out blind people who can only read the forums via text to speech software and can't look at pictures?

Still the best looking lady in the gaming community.

Perhaps she'll get into freelance photography after teaming up with a pig man in fart boots.

She was going to be part of that Ubisoft Toronto studio but I don't know anything about Ubisoft after 2012. It's like all the industry news coverage has slowed down in favor of something else.

@humanity: All respect to you and your opinion....but you are crazy!! just kidding....but Assassin's Creed 2 is widely recognized as a superior product, and in my opinion still the best entry in the series.

Oh please. "PC"? "Nowadays"? Really?

It's all about being tasteful and above all else, respectful. Nobody will take away your right to call someone attractive.

Co-Founder of Sierra and creator of the graphical adventure genre

Maybe? I don't pay much attention to peoples' titles, but when a Cliffy B game is coming out, Cliffy B is taking interviews. David Jaffe was running around promoting Twisted Metal. Same with Michel Ancel, Kojima, Mikami, Sakurai, Nomura, Kamiya etc. Point being, it's typically the creative visionary talking about their creative vision, not the person making sure that everyone is doing what they're supposed to be doing and keeping the studio from catching on fire.

Like I said, I'm not trying to belittle Jade Raymond's contributions to any of the games that she's worked on, but she was an odd choice for the Assassin's Creed PR campaign.

I think the only one of the those guys you mentioned who is actually still writing code is Jaffe. Maybe Ancel as well? They're mostly creative input at this point, and Raymond most definitely had creative input on AC. She's a well articulated, enthusiastic and confident person, and that doesn't strike me as a odd choice at all.

Good. Ubisoft seems like a stifling atmosphere and with her talents I'm sure she can make something cool.

@maccyd:

I'm well aware of Roberta Williams, I used to love Sierra adventure games. And she is proof of why it is beneficial to have more female leadership and creators in games

Never considered them to be AAA though. Maybe they really were but to me the concept of AAA didnt really exist until the play station era. That doesn't diminish what she accomplished, just a different market today with a handful of megacorps unlike the more wide open 80's and early 90's.

@slag: Sierra was massive in the 80s and 90s though. They had huge budgets for some games, dwarfing many others in the industry and was the arguably the first company to use a level of professionalism comparable to other mediums, such as films, regularly designing detailed sets, professional composers and using hollywood actors. It was what paved the way towards companies treating games as a professional medium and not just a niche hobby.

Big loss for Ubisoft indeed. I remember her as one of the driving forces behind Assassins Creed which is still one of my favorite franchises ever. I hope we'll hear from her again in the future.

sigh, I know all that ok? I bought a lot of their games back in the day. AAA is a sloppy ill defined term, this sort of mis-communication is one of the many reasons why.

All I'm trying to do is acknowledge and recognize that Jade Raymond has had a pretty impressive career so far and she may have a chance to make some history if she chooses to pursue it. It may be an opportunity that never presents itself to her and that may be something she is not even aspiring to do.

Can we at least agree, that if Jade Raymond were to climb her way up become the head of a pre-existing Fortune 1000 Videogame company that it would be a pretty unique and notable accomplishment for a woman in the Games Industry?

I'm sad to see her go. I know when it comes to Ubisoft, it's impossible to really claim one person made a difference on any of their games these days. But, Raymond was brought in on the latest Splinter Cell.

Blacklist returned to the roots of what Splinter Cell is, and Raymond had something to do with that I'm sure. She was brought on to SC, and there were positive changes made to that entry. So I'm sad to her go, I remember hearing she was also working on the next Splinter Cell game.

I totally forgot about her, I remember seeing her face on like every single Assassins creed 1 video back in the day.

Good luck to Jade Raymond, hope her future includes more games for us to enjoy.

How do you even exist for that long at a AAA studio and look that good? She's got the secret the Spanish explorers were searching for, because there's no damn way. Every individual I've seen who has lived in the grindhouse of AAA development looks and acts like they're dead inside. I met one girl who came in to talk about game development in a software class and basically emphasized to us that AAA is hell and her life is hell and nothing is worth it anymore and DON'T WORK IN AAA. I guess being in charge has its perks?

Someone should make a bingo card for people leaving games companies. What will they do next? Stay tuned.

I had never heard of this person before today, which is probably because I'm not a big Assassin's Creed fan. Still, I got to say it. Ahem...she is quite attractive. Kinda shoots the whole "only fat overweight males living their parent's basement play games" stereotype.

Everything to gain; nothing to lose.

Posted an hour ago from her twitter, Pictured with Casey Hudson. Both going to work with Oculus.

@murdoc_: Her background includes being a programmer for The Sims... Don't be an asshat AND ignorant. Thats a bad combo.