Former Ubisoft producer Jade Raymond announced today that she would be opening Motive Studios, a new EA development team operating out of Montreal, Quebec.

Motive Studios will be a "creative-driven team, incubating entirely new IP and taking on some amazing projects." The first of these projects is set to be Amy Hennig's upcoming Star Wars game, and Raymond's enthusiasm for the chance to work with Hennig is palpable:

I've also known Amy for years and have admired her work on the Uncharted games! I’m thrilled that the first big project that we will work on in Montreal will have Amy as Creative Director. An opportunity to work with her and the Visceral team, and to play in the Star Wars universe, is once-in-a-lifetime stuff.

I'm excited to see what Raymond and Hennig can do together, since both were incredibly active in shaping the last generation of console games. While Hennig was directing the first three Uncharted games, Raymond was busy as a key figure in Ubisoft's development strategy, working as producer on the first two Assassins Creed games and later as the executive producer on Splinter Cell: Blacklist and Watch Dogs. Raymond left Ubisoft in October of last year.

Motive Studios is the latest in an ever growing list of developers working in Montreal, a group including both large companies like Eidos Interactive and independent developers like Kitfox Games and Polytron. Quebec continues to be a destination for game development, at least partially encouraged by provincial tax incentives that currently offer to cover up to 37.5% of a studio's labor costs. Over the last year, this tax credit has come under fire and it may be reduced (though not axed entirely) in the near future. Perhaps EA's decision to open Motive in Montreal shows a confidence that the benefits of developing in Quebec outweigh the risk of that credit being cut.

I'll be curious to see what sorts of games come out of Motive after Visceral's Star Wars game is finished up. Here's hoping that Raymond and co. can create something as ambitious and risky as Assassin's Creed was back in 2007.

Exciting news. Looking forward to her new work!

So excited to see what she can do!

It is useless to resist. Don't let yourself be destroyed as Obi-Wan did. There is no escape. Join meeee and together we can climb all the towers as father and son.

Maybe (hopefully) they will be allowed to make an entirely new project once they are done with the current Star Wars one.

Not entirely sure how they're gonna contribute to Visceral's game but it's cool to see Jade Raymond branching out of Ubisoft. That Star Wars game keeps getting more interesting though, I hope we get some details soon.

Motive Studios will be a "creative-driven team, incubating entirely new IP and taking on some amazing projects."

OOH!

The first of these projects is set to be Amy Hennig's upcoming Star Wars game

Oh.

Star Wars 1313 or something like it would be incredible.

I've always wanted Jade to come on a GB podcast or event and talk about her role in AC. The term producer is really nebulous, and people take the example from movies where producers have little creative input. I know that in video games and other entertainment mediums, they have much more impact on how things come out, but a lot of people seem confused on how important "producers" are to their games.

Hopefully this means more interesting games in the future!

When's Stah Trek?

Cool, I had been wondering the other day where she had ended up after leaving Ubisoft.

The tagline of their website is...

Motive, Means, and Opportunity

Probably reading a bit much in that, but yeah... Oh boy.

Exciting! Hopefully they'll be willing to take some chances since the Star Wars name is pretty much guaranteed sales.

Raymond and Hennig could do something really damn cool with an open world Star Wars game. I'm interested.

Forgot that she left Ubisoft.

I've never had any idea of what a producer actually does when it comes to video games, but it always seemed weird to me that Ms. Raymond gets so much credit for Assassin's Creed when Patrice Desilets is listed as the actual creative director behind the franchise.

Yo fuck star wars. Fuck it for real.

I'm still waiting for my Legacy of Kain: Defiance sequel.

KEEP WRITING NEWS STORIES AUSTIN

DONT STOP

This is like some sick dream team/crossover shit. It's cool.

But shouldn't the Amy Hennig game have been being worked on already? All this "new studio" stuff makes me think the game isn't nearly as far along as we thought

Oh boy, if only that were the case!

As someone who works in that particular industry, let me tell you - it entirely depends on the producer and the project. Yeah, if it's a big name movie with huge stars and a major director, the producers will probably sit back and let the money do its thing. But let's say you're working on a small-medium budget, and your producer is the guy who created Friends, or something - if that dude decides to make creative decisions, they are going to happen, period. If the director or the cast doesn't have the weight to throw around, producers can easily dictate the shape of the entire film.

EA not calling this studio EA Quebec gives one some hope. We'll see if they'll get to expand on something of their own after this first project.

I hate to say this but I think we need some new pictures of Raymond, she's like the Bobby Kotick of her day.

Also yeah, I totally forgot she left Ubisoft.

Spot on.

@gaff: Bringing new meaning to "killin' it" at game design! HAHAHAHAhahahehehehe... *sigh*

I thought Visceral had been working on their new Star Wars game for quite some time now? Is Motive Studios just there to help with some development? I guess that's what the "incubating" part of the studios description means? It'd be a shame if Jade's new studio was just to help other developers push their game along and not do anything of their own.

This doesn't seem to indicate what her title or role will be. I assume since she's announced to be "opening" the studio that implies she'll be studio director.

A producer can be a lot of things on a project but in general they manage, schedule, motivate, and/or help out where they can on a project. They facilitate the development process and a lot of a producer's time is spent unblocking issues that hold up their team's time or efforts and generally making sure as much of the developer's time is spent doing what they do best.

Furthermore someone has to be the person to take the game to events and often producers are the ones to take that role if the team is large enough to have one. It's their job to know the project in and out but aren't the ones who strictly need to be back at the study banging away on it.

Basically the running joke from devs that I've heard is that producers stare at spreadsheets all day and actual producers laugh at that because it's largely true.

So as producer Jade was the one who often represented the game at E3 and the like and that's how she became someone people strongly associate with the franchise. It's also the case that Assassin's Creed and a front facing female figure in the industry debuted together in the public's attention.

That's great news,very excited for her!

This is great news! I'm so stupid excited for Amy Henig's Uncharted Star Wars (not a hint of sarcasm)

I always wondered what Jade's true role in Assassins Creed was. In pressreleases and press photo's she was always THE woman surrounded by a group of dudes who were responsible for Assassins Creed.

But then you hear that story about Patrice Désilets, and how he's pretty much the guy who created that game.

Bit sad that we mostly know about Patrice Desilets because he got bullied by Ubisoft.

Heh, exactly what I was going to post. Let me know when something actually interesting happens.

I can't imagine what a hellish existence it must be trying to produce a game that has to be touched like 17 different studios all around the world. I sometimes have to get 3-7 people together to solve specific issues at work (I essentially just figure out who knows the stuff we need to know to sort it and get them all in a room together and keep prodding until it's done) and that shit is worse than herding cats.

I had *some* experience in movie post-production that gave me an interesting insight on the "producer" career path.

Basically, from what I understand, the path was Gopher=>Coordinator=>Project Manager=>Producer

Gopher ("go for") are production assistant with little to no training or experience. Their job is to be efficient, responsive and not to fuck up (the not fucking up part is very important :P). They usually provide assistance for anything that falls off the table from other position that is considered time consuming and low impact (from shipping stuff to coffee to breakfast, catering for small events...) In exchange to not fucking up, they get to know what people do, they pick up the lingo, they learn about the projects, the work involved, clients and partners, the timelines, the environment, ect...

Coordinators are, not always, but usually Gophers who proved adept at being efficient, responsive and not fucking up. They are the right arms of project managers and are responsible of coordinating and tracking a piece of the project for PMs. Their job involve a lot of spreadsheets, metrics and charts but it still is low level enough to account for mistakes and the learning curve. Most of the stuff learned "on the job" from the gopher position (esp how the team works, the lingo, the environment, the timelines) comes into play to shorten the learning curve in a dramatic fashion.

Project managers are, not always, but usually coordinators who proved adept at coordinating pieces of work schedules, production assets and project timelines. They are usually given a team of coordinators and a bigger piece of the pie to manage. Things become more complex as the "human element" is added to the mix in addition to time pressure and financial incentives (if you ever had to manage employees you know what I mean by "human element").

Producers (I aggregate line and executive producers here) are, not always, but usually project managers who proved adept at handling the "human element", time pressure and financial incentives of projects. Their role, in theory, is to be the technical (usually administrative) umbrella and troubleshooter for the designer or director. Having a vision and the will to implement it is fine but sometimes having to bother with finances, payroll, employees, location, equipment, clients, suppliers, ect can come in the way of your perfect platonic artistic inspiration. In theory, it is the producer's job to "handle it" so the project can move with as little problems as possible from conception phase (what is possible, how to make it happen?) to production phase (making it happen, dealing with problems) to delivery phase (and relation to clients on technical aspects sometimes).

What I'm assuming is going on is that because she's building a studio from the ground-up, their initial work is going to be helping with the Star Wars game. Once the studio gets settled in, they'll start work on their own IPs.

This is exciting, even if it was just Assassin's Creed('s?) gameplay in a Star Wars open world I'd play it.

@loktarogar said:

I sort of want this too, but after seeing what a fucking travesty the LoK sequel that got canned a couple of years ago was, I think they might be better off leaving it alone.

Well I just hope EA actually supports the studio well and doesn't give her the the Maxis, every other studio they have run into the ground etc treatment.

Kinda cool to see a possible lady AAA superteam in the making (Raymond + Henning)

Ooooh. I'm expecting great things.

@onemanarmyy: Producers are almost always the defacto public faces for some companies. They'll be the people who have the best understanding of the project at large whereas an artist or programmer will only know information about their section of the project. Raymond's job would be to understand and coordinate every section of the game's development throughout.

She also quickly became known as a closer within Ubisoft from what I've heard. If a game was struggling she could come in and help tie up loose ends. She eventually became known for her work on a bunch of projects within Ubisoft, not just AC, and was known for meeting ship dates with great playing games.

Also Patrice left Ubisoft in 2010 and Raymond just filled the AC public face void. Patrice was on stage at E3 for years and then left. So that also explains why you feel he suddenly wasn't the face of those projects anymore.

Cool! I was wondering what she was up to.

So glad Amy Hennig is behind the storyline :)

@finaldasa: While i agree mostly with your post, i feel that Jade Raymond didn't fill any public face void after Ubisoft fired Desilets. She has been the public face throughout both Assassins Creed 1 and 2 all along.

Having the team work together as assistance on an existing project might end up being quite a good idea, as it'll let them fall into their new roles and location a bit more easily before they start worrying about developing a new IP. I'm interested to see what they end up coming out with, though. Someone who had a major hand in managing a project as vast as even the earlier AC games is probably pretty competent in that role, so I'm excited for what Jade and her team at Motive can do in conjunction with Amy and the Visceral team.

Can we even count Polytron as an indie developer any more? I mean, the only guy who actually done any massive work there is totally disinterested in ever coming back to videogames, and I don't think the person who owns the holding company is particularly bothered about doing anything but sit on the royalty checks. Safe to say that they're totally done and will never put out another game again.