We Talk Over the E3 2018 Ubisoft Press Conference

WEED3?

Hello

1:01:44 for peak Dan

@donpureevil said:

The most Dan. None more Dan. Except possibly for egg whites. And he says it while wearing an MGS shirt!

@someramguy said:

New Dan is over. There has only ever been Old Dan.

In short: The Ubisoft press conference was a success!

DAN, WHAT DID YOU THINK PIRATING GAMES AND MUSIC MEANT?!!!!!

The open world was the worst fucking part of the gameplay in MGSV: TPP, and I really like that game. It's not fun to sprint 200 meters to your objective when it could've just been placed closer, and the level and stealth design seriously suffered because of it.

I know I shouldn't be surprised by the things Dan doesn't know or understand, but man...

Dan's routine ignorance aside, I am kind of with him on Ubi/HitREC compensation stuff. Like, how is what they are suggesting any different than what any game with user created content, mod tools, or even company contests to have player designs incorporated into the game? Players of Dreams (presumably) cannot be paid for their creations, is that any better?

Of course, a platform for aspiring creators to get paid for their work is very cool, and I'm glad to hear that is the likelihood here, but is there anything inherently wrong with running their collaboration w/o pay like every other community driven game?

Brad was as happy as I was to see Grant Kirkhope show up

This was better than the Square Enix video they could've just released on YouTube. They actually presented something.

I love Vinny's reaction to Dan being Dan.

yeah, Dan is right about the modding thing being odd, I don't make mods to make money I make them because I want them....

but if they are selling my art as their own, and own my assets. i'm on the fence, if it was for a small team sure. but a giant mega corporation, nah.

@effache: i don't think there's anything wrong with crowdsourcing assets if you pay the 'winners', this is just like any art/architecture/etc competition. honestly it's probably more annoying for professional designers who could have theoretically got a salary and benefits to work on this game

The big difference is that the work is being made to Ubisoft's specs., and then Ubisoft are taking the parts they like and _selling_ it. With player creation tools, or even mod tools, that IS the game, and you are free to design what YOU want, put it out how YOU want (not waiting for a publisher to OK it/decide they want to sell it), and no-one else is directly profiting from it (imagine if Nintendo sold a level pack of community-created levels/made a Mario game based on crowd-sourced levels, rather than just letting them be shared).

It's also not displacing anyone, as you aren't going to be paying people to make that user-generated content or mods in most games. If Ubisoft can crowd-source 10% of their assets, that's 10% less they need to pay their artists to do.

Is the video cut short for anyone else?

Jeff - Ubisoft's name is not shorthand for "Ubiquitous Software". Ubisoft started in Brittany, France, so their name is the acronym "UBI" (Union des Bretons Independants) and "Software"

Lol I thought Jeff said I want to fuck that band up

Absolute peak, top-of-the-mountain Dan in this one.

Yikes.

Fresno State represent! Woo!

So, ummm, that was Ubisoft. To be honest I kind of liked the opening. Couldn't care less about the game but at least Ubisoft knows how to put on a show. I was hoping the Panda was Michael Ironside personally.

Beyond Good & Evil 2 continues to perplex me. I never played the first but even I can tell this is a very different thing. My guess is it will come out slightly after Elder Scrolls 6. The player collaboration/content creation stuff was putting up big warning signs for me to start with but may actually end up being kind of cool.

Good to see they are still very much supporting and adding content to Rainbow 6 Siege, not personally interested in the game, but cool for those that are. The whole announcement of the documentary felt weird and, its hard to explain, reflective in a away that doesn't makes sense to me for a game that is still pretty new. I like Trials so am excited to play more, this one looks good.

A hard tonal shift to The Division 2. Don't think the trailer was particularly good but am ready to get back into that franchise. Announcement of raids is cool but is ultimately content I will never get to play, unless they do matchmaking. Free DLC is much appreciated. Fell off Mario & Rabbids pretty hard, not sure if I would go back to it for the Donkey Kong DLC but I love me some Grant Kirkhope so that was cool.

Skull and Bones should be right up my alley. I love the ship combat from Assassin's Creed but the existence of Sea Of Thieves makes this a little weird for me. Would be eager to check out a beta. That Elijah Wood game Transference is not for me at all. Seems like any number of other scary games, VR or otherwise, you find on Steam. Just with maybe better production values.

I really don't know about StarLink. Seems like it should have come out several years ago when people were more enthusiastic about toys to life stuff. Could be ok if the gameplay side holds up but from the little that was shown here I am not convinced. The Star Fox inclusion is both unexpected and totally makes sense. But at the same time feels like they may be trying distract people from appears to be shaping up as a bit of a fizzer. Miyamoto is an absolute treasure.

For Honor, another one of those games from Ubi that was rough at launch but seems like they turned it around. Not personal investment in this game either but cool that there is more content for those that like it. I was super excited for The Crew 1. I was hopeful even after being super disappointed by the beta. I still bought the full game but didn't ultimately play it much, you can't have a driving game where the cars have bad handling... that's all there is! Sucks to hear that the sequel appears to be following the same route. I will probably give this a miss.

Lastly Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Man it looks a whole hell of a lot like the last one, that not a bad thing necessarily as I loved Origins, so am looking forward to playing this one. Weird though that it is set before Origins. Seems like the modern day timeline will tie it in somehow.

And then it ended. Was expecting a "one more thing" from Yves, all signs pointed to Splinter Cell, but not this year. Agree with the guys though that if it was supposed to be AC: O then that wouldn't have done it anyway. Another ok press conference overall. Not much in terms of new announcements but I guess that Ubisoft's MO these days is to launch a game and support the hell out of it, which as a consumer that enjoys a lot of their games is pretty awesome. Just makes for a slightly disappointing E3 presentation.

I don’t know if it’s just me but the video stops before the end of the press conference

Precisely. As an artist myself it really does irritate me that people are comparing this to in-game editors and level creators. It's very different. The whole HitRec thing is a little sleazy to me, even if the "winners" get compensation. People could still work for significant time on content and asset generation and not see any return.

It's potentially dangerous if companies get this idea of "crowdfunding" their game development, it can only lead to less jobs and lower salaries of artists, writers and musicians. It just cheapens the whole thing.

Artists, musicians and writers of any kind, in my opinion, should only work for free on their own passion projects. If a company/business wants content on any kind generated, there should be a contract in place between both parties and they should pay for it. Even if little or none of it is ultimately used.

@jacksmedulla: yep the video eems to cut out at 1:21 for me both the version on the site player and the downloads too

@bisonhero: He walked it back but he already walked the plank.

Brad hoping for an open-world splinter cell to be like MGS V. Oh man, I feel so bad for him. Thinking Ubisoft would do anything like that? Just setting yourself up for disappointment. An open-world Splinter Cell would be like every other open-world Ubisoft game. It's going to follow their template, nothing like Phantom Pain.

@stordoff: now that their website is no longer down, and viewing the "challenges", the direction they provide seems on par with the kind of info you might give a contract artist or designer. So on that level, I guess it is different, but the other stuff you said doesn't really gel for me.

Developers like Bethesda and Media Molecule clearly profit from active communities creating content for them, some of those games would hardly work otherwise. The analogy of selling a pack of Mario Maker levels doesn't seem sensible either, ubisoft hasn't said anything about charging anyone for this user-created stuff, and it seems like it will be showcased more seamlessly in what looks like an open world game. If anything, games like Mario Maker and LittleBigPlanet/Dreams seem to rely much more on user created content than this game.

The challenges "displacing" people also seems unlikely. There's no evidence that Ubisoft would pay their salaried artists any less to do their jobs due to this, it seems just as possible that user-gen stuff will just mean more detail in the world, or more realistic deadlines for the employees. If anything, I would assume a project like this means Ubisoft is spending more money on things like community managers, lawyers, people to vet this content, etc. It seems, like much of what Ubi is doing these days, like a play made solely to drive community engagement/awareness in the time leading up to the release of the game.

Again, I'm happy to hear that people who do work on these projects will likely be paid, I think that's awesome, I'm just suggesting that the lines between what work should qualify for pay and what shouldn't is a lot blurrier than Alex seemed to be suggesting. There are load of video games that benefit from that kind of unpaid work, and yeah, a lot of it has led to some shitty exploitation, but a lot of it has led to really cool stuff and careers for people who might not have had the opportunity otherwise.

Daaaaaaaaaaaaan

Woo boy, it is always disappointing how many people are conditioned to defend corporate exploitation.

Video ends with conference still going at 1h21m

@effache: For me, the difference is that the stuff Ubisoft gets from hitrec is the stuff people directly pay their 60 bucks or whatever for when they buy the game. At least, that's my interpretation of what that hitrec deal is. For instance, if someone creates a painting that's going to be used as a background/ambient painting in the game or writes a song that's occasionally played by some in-game radio station or whatever.

Like, when you bought Skyrim, you paid for the game Bethesda made, the characters, the music, the graphics, the questlines, whatever. You didn't pay and Bethesda didn't charge you, to have a giant Thomas the Tank Engine flying around. Texture packs and re-skins of entire cities, same deal. You paid for the creative vision and assets Bethesda put on the disk; people replacing these assets later doesn't mean they're responsible to pay these artists.

Now, if, for their Skyrim "Remaster", they had approppriated someone else's textures or auto-included certain, curated mods, I'd totally say they'd have to pay the creators, since at that point, Bethesda would directly make money from stuff they themselves didn't create.

@yojimboran: damn, you got me, that is exactly what I was doing, nuance be damned

What's worse: Dan not understanding what Pirates are, or Dan not understanding why free spec work is shitty for creators?

@howdire: Nobody that knows the score is actually comparing the two things. Everyone that has worked freelance and been told to submit on spec, everyone that has worked with freelancers, everyone that knows a freelancer, etc., all know that spec work if fucking garbage for everybody that isn't the moneyman in the scenario.

I've long since given up on Dan caring about worker's rights, or him understanding the privilege he has had, or even doing anything other than side with the giant corporation in things. So this isn't even a fight I'd bother having with him. But most people just don't know.

NOSPEC.COM

@lethalplacebo said:

Yeah, the open world had basically nothing to do with why that game was good. The open world map was basically a few dozen bases/compounds, each like 2500 meters away from each other for no good reason, and the interesting part was infiltrating a compound from whichever direction you want once you were close to it.

The same thing could've been accomplished by having a series of Hitman style smaller-but-still-sandbox maps. Traveling between bases in MGSV:TPP was boring, and only a very small number of story missions used the scale of the map/roadways between bases in an interesting way. The other 98% of the game, the size of that map is an obnoxious time waster.

@jacksmedulla: yep - video cut out around an hour and twenty minutes in just as For Honour started for me

@ericsmith said:

Honestly, the latter can be difficult for people to grok. My first reaction when I heard about this issue was "Then just don't do it." If it's really as pervasive a practice as I see claimed, however, "Then just don't do it" is at best ignorant and at worst thoughtless.

Point being, go easy on people who aren't intimately aware of an issue affecting an industry in which they don't participate. Notice how Alex and Jeff were the first to raise concerns here because they were (are?) musicians. Dan, to my knowledge, has never inhabited the artistic part of the creative space.

The first, since I just have to wonder what was going through his head all these years when people talked about movie/music/video game "piracy." Vinny's "I can't engage with this" type of reaction best encapsulates the unsettling disbelief a lot of people would feel at that moment. Even if it's laughed off, moments like that are cringeworthy because co-workers at least have the passing thought of "this person is literally my peer. What does that say about me?"

The second is definitely something where it's pretty easy to go "ok, so what?" if you don't engage in some level of discussion. Having said that - if you work as a professional covering video games I think the Alex/Jeff reactions are far more on the mark.

I think the sort of non-thinking reaction around the content generation, and Dan not really seeing the issue isn't exclusive to him or most video games media. It's not even the type of thing specific to this medium. A lot of people working in a lot of industries often fail to engage with many elements of the worlds they inhabit (professionally) in a way that is deeply frustrating at times. They work directly adjacent to particular items but may not ever meaningfully engage with those things directly.

Pirates just rob people? Holy fuck

anyone else feel like bens not gonna last very long? dude seems like he's burning out and looks like he wants to kill himself most of the time.

@oroku1983: he's sitting next to dan, That's how everyone looks when they have to sit next to him

God I love the RedLynx guy.

I'm only seeing a half hour video.

i think the wrong file is posted it is now only 14 mins?

Anyone not have sound on this video for the second half?

I think it's bizarre that people are giving shit about Dan not being more informed about spec work considering, if I'm not mistaken, he wrote video game reviews on spec for like, 5 years or something? In this case it feels like a difference in attitude and perspective and not ignorance.

Fix the video please!

This video is fucked! 30 minutes long but audio cuts out at 14 minutes in.

EDIT: Working version on their youtube, here