In writing, there's a standard practice for creating a comedy character. You come up with a goal they tirelessly strive for but make their circumstances such that pursuing that prize lands them in the opposite situation to the one they're seeking. So, David Brent in The Office wants to be a respected leader, but he's a tool in a workplace of down-to-Earth colleagues meaning that he only ends up looking stupid to them. In Malcolm in the Middle, Lois wants to have stringent control over her children, but they love to stir up trouble, and her strict parenting only inspires them to push against their boundaries. These characters inevitably become aware of their dilemmas but react the only way they know how. They double down on their current solutions, which, comedically, makes the problem worse.

It's entertaining to watch Ubisoft make and talk about games because they want to create action entertainment and see it embraced by as wide a base as possible. They do that by simulating and pulling imagery from the most intense modern conflicts, ranging from wars in the middle east to violence on the New York streets. However, such battles are, by their nature, divisive and controversial. So, when you import them into your work, that work becomes divisive and controversial. It is exactly by pursuing their goal (acceptance of their products) that Ubisoft ends up where no company wants to (rejection of their products). So, they lean into marketing mode and insist these works aren't political, which is funny. That humour is born out of the absurd contrast between their ostensible rejection of politics and their games about invaders in the White House, American intervention abroad, climate fallout, and similar incendiary topics. This, hilariously, only makes people madder.

Yet, despite never quelling outrage, I think that Ubisoft's insistence that they're just making apolitical games about apolitical soldiers apolitically murdering undesirables in apolitical warzones does serve a couple of functions. Firstly, it keeps them from getting roped into too many awkward discussions about the exact statements their games make. It's much more PR-friendly to say that The Division has nothing to say about the real-world horror of military police mass-murdering the vulnerable than to try and justify it being a game about that very subject. Secondly, dirtying your hands with politics, especially hate politics, is one way businesses can alienate partners, especially advertising partners. Ubisoft may take a hardline stance that their games are pure fantasy for the same reason that YouTube demonetises pro-LGBTQ+ content: explicitly taking a stand on something can shrink your consumer base.

And I'm sure the publisher would much rather you talk about the social commentary of Rainbow Six: Extraction than the storied string of abuses within their walls. Ubisoft is in full-on image control mode, setting the PR machine to the task of convincing prospective customers that their games are just a bit of fun and are not a source of ethical discomfort. However, this year, and in the previous couple of years, the company has pursued a curious new goal: Signalling to developers who might work for Ubisoft that their studio is not somewhere that they might suffer harassment, but will be a garden that nurtures their drive and creativity. You can see the same industry-facing idealisation in Koch Media's 2021 presser and Bethesda's conference from 2019. I think it's important to remember that context as we trudge our way through this briefing.

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One of my niggling disappointments with the last couple of E3s has been the lack of gameplay on display, but I have to admit, Ubisoft often took the opportunity to present their games in motion. I don't say this lightly, but Rocksmith+ is potentially a revolution in the rhythm genre. Sometimes, unsolved problems stick their boots in so deep that it feels like they're just part of the landscape, something you'll never remove. We've seen the cost of extra peripherals as an inherent trait of controller-based music games, and so, assumed they were always destined to gate audiences with exorbitant hardware pricing. Such conundrums are often solved by creatives broadening their view of potential answers.

In the case of Rocksmith, yes, an electric guitar is expensive. However, that's not a barrier to accessibility if you can shake the idea that a computer game instrument must link electronically to a receiver. Rocksmith+ instead considers what happens when you connect them by audio. It's not that the hardware isn't costly: a phone is not a cheap hunk of electronics, but it's a device capable of doing the job that has a huge install base. Instead of solely thinking about the right product to sell Rocksmith audiences, Ubisoft considers the items they already own. I love that ingenuity. Of course, introducing fresh tech is a surefire road to questions about the functionality of your game. We know developers can create an open-world action-adventure or a class-based FPS that use standard controllers; they do that all the time. An app that can use a microphone to parse exact guitar chords and relay them to a program with imperceptible latency? That's a whole other prospect.

The Mario + Rabbids turn-based fighters represent another supposed impossibility in the medium. It is the paradoxical premise of a mainstream strategy game: An XCOM for your Mum. Given the mechanical grounding of such games, however, I think Ubisoft had a responsibility to show how they're shaking up the rules of the series, and for whatever reason, they chose to keep quiet. I also have to tip my hat to the company for continuing to update games you wouldn't expect them to. For example, Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, whose mechanics you might assume would be set in stone given that it's a single-player game. Or The Crew 2, which is a three-year-old release that received a tepid response on launch.

Unfortunately, I have mixed feelings about the other items in Ubisoft's window. I'm a sucker for the industrial design of a world like Rainbow Six: Extraction's and this demo set a more reasonable bar for graphical expectations than some of the company's previous previews. But haven't we seen this game before? Recycled structures and mechanics are to be expected at an Ubisoft keynote, but what struck me most was how much emphasis the publisher put on the painfully predictable enemies. You know this rogue's gallery already: the grunt, the exploder, the ranger, the leader, the Witch from Left 4 Dead. They're skinned as parasitic aliens, but could as easily be cast as zombies, lab-grown monstrosities, or demons. The interchangeable nature of the antagonists represents a lack of personality.

In Far Cry 6, I see the opposite problem. There is a man who looms over the whole game, a charismatic figure whose presence fills every house, hall, and cargo hold: Antón Castillo. However, where the presenters in this video implied he is a villain, on Thursday, we heard Castillo's actor, Giancarlo Esposito, deny that claim. Was he just slipping into character? And what does Castillo stand for? What point does the game make with him? He seems to have a cruelty towards his own family that he believes will mould them into instruments to serve the people, but I don't feel like I have any idea of what serving the people means to Castillo. That's a problem when the previews for the game have brought this president to the forefront.

Steep 2 looks like it could be providing that chaotic Fall Guys or Trackmania energy in an off-road sports format. However, it is also a shameless port of The Crew 2's stylings. That doesn't bolster my confidence in the game because a common criticism of Steep was that some of its sports were underbaked. Additionally, The Crew 2 was a game made all the weaker for splitting itself into some okay driving and two side activities that felt nowhere near as deep. For Just Dance 2022, I wonder if customers are getting their money's worth. Ubisoft brags that the pack comes with 40 new songs, but the last Rock Band had more than 60. Hell, Guitar Hero: World Tour, released all the way back in 2008, came with over 80.

Then there were those odd properties that I know, or at least suspect, have a loyal and passionate following, even when I can't seem to find anyone who raves about them. See your Mythic Quest, your Werewolf Within, your Aiden Pearce, your Avatar. Avatar is a particularly peculiar franchise. The immediate disappearance of the IP after the release of the 2009 movie would make you think it was anything but the highest-grossing film of all time (not adjusted for inflation). To see them pick it up again like they never stopped makes me feel like I just stepped out of a time machine.

Overall, Ubisoft is still a company making games that are often expertly produced, and I would never claim that there aren't some interesting ideas banging around inside the casing of that publisher. But for the most part, I'm just not sure I'm buying what they're selling, either in terms of entertainment or company ideology. Thanks for reading.