INTERVIEW: CHRIS EARLY, VP OF DIGITAL GAMES, UBISOFT UPLAY GOING STRONG
UBISOFT launched its own social network, Uplay with the release of Assassin’s Creed II. It’s a layer that runs over the likes of Xbox Live and PSN, and offers players of Ubi titles the chance to use achievements to unlock in-game freebies.
Uplay has been a relatively quiet part of the Ubisoft online offering so far. But as it enters its third year the longer term plan is becoming apparent. And the system is definitely coming into its own, says digital games VP Chris Early. “We find that people who use Uplay almost invariably do so to unlock more content,” he says. “I don’t want to say it’s addictive but it’s highly utilised.”
making a game that is good enough that people want to keep playing?’ Because if not people are not going to keep playing. Therefore you’re not going to be able to, whether by advertising or microtransactions, ever make a return on that game. Quality is important to the free- to-play space. In a digital market where everything is one click away it’s much more incumbent on the publisher or the creator of the games to make a good product that you’re going to be interested in.
You mentioned companion gaming. What is it? Companion games exist in the same brand universe, but on different platforms. They are independent games that you can play which have a residual benefit for another game on another platform in that same franchise. We experimented with this last year with Assassin’s Creed Brotherhoodand Project Legacy. When you played Legacyyou could earn currency and unlock items in Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. When you played Brotherhoodand you accomplish certain things you earn currency and experience and items in the Facebook game. They were both independent games, but symbiotic. You didn’t need to play one to play the other one. But when you did, it was a better experience overall.
Did people play both Assassin’s Creed on console and Facebook? They did. It was an experiment for
28 September 30th 2011
No publisher really plans to make a free game where no one pays for it or
compensates them for it in any way.
“ Chris Early, Ubisoft
80 per cent of the people that played the Facebook game were people that linked in from Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood.
That stat surprised us and it’s something that led to us to the free- to-play Ghost Recon Onlinefor the PC, which connects to Ghost Recon Future Soldieron console and the new Ghost Recon Commander,a social network game. It’s a Facebook game centred on the Ghost Recon universe that I hope my wife, who is a non-gamer, will play. There will be a Ghost Reconmobile game app too.
Tell us more about the Ghost Recon plan.
They’ll be four games that fit together in this Ghost Recon
us, we didn’t market the game and didn’t put any form of monetisation in the game cause we really wanted to see if we could have a hardcore player go and play a Facebook game. It turns out they do, especially when it’s tied to a franchise that they’re enjoying.
universe that all offer advantages to the other games when you play any one of them. So when you play the Facebook game during the day, you could unlock some items but you could also earn some currency or consumables that you then may use that night when you play Ghost Recon Online.
The thing I notice, as a gamer myself, is that I definitely enjoy sitting down in front of a big TV on my couch with a console experience, but there is only certain times in the day that I can do that. That’s the experience we want to provide for our players all the time when it comes to the brands that they love around our games. We’re really defining the future of companion gaming here by letting all four of those games interact and each time you play one of them you’ve got that residual value that carries on to another game.
How mindful are you of Zynga, which dominates the platforms you want to move onto? I think there is plenty room in the marketplace overall and definitely room for all of us to learn from each other. I think most importantly, from the way we’re approaching it, is by bringing our brands to each of these platforms we’re letting people have an experience of what they like and what they love. When we bring the CSIgame to Facebook, it’s not that we’re trying to convert all the people who play some other social game, which has been the strategy
Has it helped sell more games, or is it just a bonus for players? “I think it gives players a better experience of a brand that they like and they’re gonna continue to consume that brand. That might be the next Ghost Recongame that comes out on console. That might be the next Facebook game that you can spend a little money in. That might be the next free-to-play game. “But it’s going keep you engaged with the franchise which is why it’s important to build that customer base because the more people you get into that connection with the IP that they love then the longer, the more loyal they’re gonna be.”
in Facebook games otherwise. We’re helping our brands become more relevant to more people.
What’s the split at Ubisoft between how many digital products you make versus the number of boxed ones? About 25 per cent of our company is focused on digital products. It varies by territory, though, so San Francisco office has more of a focus on social games there. Different studios focus on different things.
How do you see that growing in the next 24 months? I see it increasing. Percentage-wise it’ll probably increase too, but that’s more through growth than through attrition one way or the other. One of the challenges that I was given when I came to work here was to help digital grow at Ubisoft but not at the cost of our traditional business.
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