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[Draugoth]

In an appearance at the External Development Summit 2024 (XDS24), Assassin’s Creed Executive Producer Marc-Alexis Côté said:

One of the things that I’ve noticed since the pandemic is that we have a lot of juniors in our teams. Probably half the team that’s building Assassin’s Creed is building a game for the first time.

While the video below is set to begin approximately where Marc-Alexis Côté spoke about the game’s development

Source

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[EviLore]

Everyone's there to get an AAA shipped credit on their resume and then bounce to meaningful work elsewhere.

 

[MagicX]

Baby’s first game development project? Would explain some of the crazy decisions seemingly being made.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

That's not that weird, there's like 2000+ people working on it, and you definitely don't need to be senior for the basic pipeline stuff.

 

[LectureMaster]

Here is the Barbie costume our modern interns brainstormed for Yasuke, hope you like it.

 

[kruis]

That's not that weird, there's like 2000+ people working on it, and you definitely don't need to be senior for the basic pipeline stuff.

50% of the development team working on their first game is a lot. I shudder to think what Ubisoft's personnel attrition rate is.

 

[Bernardougf]

A lot of new young devs .... in the DEI hiring times .... I'm really shocked that some games are turning to shit.

 

[Kacho]

Here is the Barbie costume our interns brainstormed for Yasuke, hope you like it.

Is that real?

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

50% of the development team working on their first game is a lot. I shudder to think what Ubisoft's personnel attrition rate is.

It's not, not really, ubisoft has 20k people working for them and they get shifted around, they also have a whole ass graduate program available to nearly all their studios, so they get a lot of fresh out of school people, which is great for them since they need a lot of grunt work to do all the basic pipeline shit.

 

[LectureMaster]

Is that real?

It says it's leaked by Frax discord. X account has been suspended

 

[Fake]

Surprise surprise. Let me guess, they hate gaming as well.

 

[Kacho]

It says it's leaked by Frax discord. X account has been suspended

It's so bad. Holy shit.

 

[StereoVsn]

That’s a shitload of juniors working on a high profile AAAa game. I am sure it’s going I end totally well!

 

[Represent.]

Holy fuck.

This is probably the same thing for many studios across the industry. Said it before Ill say it again, the industry lacks talent.

 

[LectureMaster]

It's so bad. Holy shit.

There are more

 

[Mr Moose]

Then he said it's the worst thing they've ever seen.

 

[mitch1971]

You have to start somewhere, right?

 

[PatientGamer]

They'd be down right stupid to hire seniors for this game. It's the number 1 contributor to extreme development costs.

Can't have it both ways guys..

 

[Saber]

Uga buga, people don like mi game, people racist buga duga

 

[Neo_game]

It depends how big the team is. May be most of the newbies are into testing or something. They could be contractors and not even FT employees.

 

[EverydayBeast]

I like a developer with prior work history.

 

[Dr.Morris79]

They'd be down right stupid to hire seniors for this game. It's the number 1 contributor to extreme development costs.

Can't have it both ways guys..

Exactly., you don't want it to sell or anything.

 

[proandrad]

Ubisoft management, "what's the worst that could happen."

 

[LordOcidax]

That’s doesn’t matter if the team is inclusive.

 

[chakadave]

Everyone's there to get an AAA shipped credit on their resume and then bounce to meaningful work elsewhere.

Even if it’s shit?

At some point clout chasing isn’t going to work anymore. Meanwhile Nintendo and other merit based companies will continue to succeed.

 

[consoul]

Why would you say this out loud?

Don't tell the public your product is being built by a bunch of juniors who don't know what they're doing. Regardless of the truth, consider your messaging ffs.

 

[FunkMiller]

Imagine someone telling you half the people building your new house have never built a house before.

 

[Hero of Spielberg]

Why would you say this out loud?

Don't tell the public your product is being built by a bunch of juniors who don't know what they're doing. Regardless of the truth, consider your messaging ffs.

These people live in an alternate universe where either there is no accountability or they just straight up don't give a fuck. I can't think of a project I have been part of or paid for, or any fucking business matter where you would openly tell your customers / investors that half your fucking team has never done this before ... what the fuck are they thinking?

 

[lughnasadh123]

Considering shit from supposedly experience devs that we've seen get served up I'm more than happy to give the noobs a chance to show what they got.

Sometimes surprises come in "good" flavor, too.

 

[LordOcidax]

Considering shit from supposedly experience devs that we've seen get served up I'm more than happy to give the noobs a chance to show what they got.

Sometimes surprises come in "good" flavor, too.

That’s not how real world works especially successful companies.

 

[genesisblock]

Everyone's there to get an AAA shipped credit on their resume and then bounce to meaningful work elsewhere.

That's how they spread their agenda. Get more untalented, agenda loving activists, insert into resume then get hired because you meet DEI initiatives. Rinse and repeat.

 

[rabbity-thing]

And?

If I was building a by-the-numbers genre title where the aim of the game is to slowly eat away at repetitive quests littering the map, I can't imagine I'd need a majority of the workforce to be top talent that would demand higher pay for accomplishing work that's beneath them. Better to hire younger cheaper people just starting out.

I dunno. As long as senior staff is able to lead properly and provide coaching/oversight, it seems like a smart idea.

 

[Fbh]

It's a Ubisoft game... so the 3000 people that make up the other half can probably manage.

It's not a proper Ubisoft AAA game unless it has 3 hours of credits where you can see how thousands of people came together to make something mediocre

 

[newtypepilot]

The issue isn't half of them are juniors. It's that they are giving these unqualified people in decision making positions.

 

[lughnasadh123]

That’s not how real world works especially successful companies.

No one was expecting the crew who made HL to do as well as they did. Thinking that only experienced devs make great games while newer ones don't is a terrible fallacy we've seen crumble too many times. That anyone would hold that up as an argument as why something is going to fail is a fool.

 

[Ceadeus]

Well, we can't say Ubisoft don't give big opportunity to new employees!

 

[EDMIX]

"One of the things that I’ve noticed since the pandemic is that we have a lot of juniors in our teams. Probably half the team that’s building Assassin’s Creed is building a game for the first time."


The actual headline...

"Half of Assassins Creed Shadows Devs have never built a game before"


Holy shit man, can we at least to properly apply what this is about instead of just making something up for this weird sensationalist shit?

99% of the time when I read something about this, I have to comb thru a lot of bullshit to find what is actually REALLY being stated as it seems some of you love to exaggerate almost anything stated about this publisher.

Example.

Developer states "working during crunch, I almost felt like I was going to die"

the headline - "THIS JUST IN EA is KILLING PEOPLE THRU THE SLAVE TRADE, developer confirms he was on death's bed, doctors not hopeful"

lol

For me to see something here, I need to know several things.

1. How normal is it for any major AAA game to have 100% of their staff all seniors who worked on a prior game?

2. Is the person making this statement a hiring manager with actual fucking proof to make a legit story? As in, did they just look thru every last resume of every person working on the game to confirm this?

That is what journalism is (or at least should be) providing a clear, transparent picture in to what the headline is claiming, not merely just making something up for clicks or something.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Young people bring new perspective.

What are some of you on about??

Check out Psychodeyssey.

A new game designer was on team, that was also most creative. He brought a lot of those levels to life.

 

[WX3]

How many DEI hires? I'm rightfully getting sick of this shit being forced down our throats.

 

[xenosys]

Have any of them every had a meaningful face to face conversation with another human being before? Because the writers at Bioware clearly hadn't.

 

[nush]

Here is the Barbie costume our modern interns brainstormed for Yasuke, hope you like it.

Yeah, because of course it has trans flag color coding....

 

[Cyberpunkd]

There are more

Is this like a cross-breed of a Chinese dragon and a…horse?

 

[cormack12]

Here is the Barbie costume our modern interns brainstormed for Yasuke, hope you like it.

*Pukesmilie* Assume these will be cosmetics that can be bought using Helix credits or equivalent? Irs now at the point when I see this shit I'm like I really cba, too much backlog.

As for the topic, I think we've had multiple topics about the quality and experience of senior devs leaving the industry, due to a number of reasons which means you need to fill from the bottom up.

I think the bigger issue is that the next generation of devs do not appear to have the same level of engineering ingenuity. Which is probably why we see other articles on the numbers of devs using AI etc. Increasing and have generally more bugs and shady optimisation.

We have a generation of devs used to cobbling together bits of code from stackoverflow or lifting UE snippets. And that's not always a bad thing, but it can be when it's just there and easy to rip without complementing it with custom built purpose specific optimisations. And personally for me, I think that's exactly what is happening across a range of genres and game types.

That's not to say from the pool of new talent there isn't going to be prodigies in there or genius level devs - of course there is - but the rate the industry is losing experienced devs of this tier is faster than they are being replaced.

And I hark back to something I said a while ago, all the heavy lifting right now is done by art/texture/environment teams.

 

[Ozriel]

Baby’s first game development project? Would explain some of the crazy decisions seemingly being made.

Why in the world would you think an industry newbie would be responsible for major development decisions in an AC game?

At Ubisoft, of all companies?

How many DEI hires? I'm rightfully getting sick of this shit being forced down our throats.