Y VES GUILLEMOT
How Ubisoft’s CEO runs one of the world’s biggest family businesses
Yves Guillemot is still building the company he and his brothers founded over 30 years ago. Ubisoft’s CEO now sits at the head of one of the biggest studio networks in the game industry, a vast creative operation that spans games and is beginning to make its first forays into cinema. Even as Ubisoft extends its reach, however, it faces the danger of a predatory buyout back home. Here, Guillemot discusses the challenges of innovating at huge, global scale; the perception of Ubisoft’s rather templated approach to game design; and the struggle to maintain independence in a company under the threat of a hostile takeover.
What’s your perspective on the recent history of the company, particularly the situation with Vivendi?
We had Vivendi coming in, buying stock and trying to discuss with us how they could get more of the company. We said that we weren’t interested in having a company coming in from the outside and not speaking with us before buying shares. From that time, we’ve not been able to discuss it too much.
Those guys, they have a reputation of being a company that acquires creeping control. We said that we were not interested in creeping control; that if they wanted to buy the company, they had to make an offer. We weren’t interested in them buying stakes in the company step by step, then taking control without paying a premium.
For you personally, or more broadly for the business, why is retaining control important?
Our industry doesn’t work very well with big corporations. When a company like that comes and wants to take control – wants to decide which projects to do, when to do them, the level of risk the company has to take... when you have a big corporation that does not have a clue about videogames, you know that the agility will not be there. That risk taking will become more complex. In our industry, if you don’t make the right call, you can be in big trouble. So for us it’s very important for the company to maintain its agility, and creativity, and the ability to take creative risks.
Is there a concern that your expertise, or your management team’s expertise, is necessary in order for Ubisoft to function?
This is a company that is very different from many other companies. At Ubisoft, people stay for a long time. It has a system built around people that have been here for quite a while. So when you have a lot of people leaving because they don’t want to get into that different way of doing business, you have a company that is more difficult to organise. Anybody can organise a company – it’s just the level of creativity that can change.
You seem to place a lot of value on training and retaining expertise.
Exactly – it’s the DNA of the company. The types of products we make need creators that take risks, and are dedicated to creating the best experience possible. It doesn’t mean that you make it each time, but your goal is to create the best product. These kinds of companies have to take care of their talent, and train their talent, ensuring that they are in a position where they feel they can take risks.
How do you reconcile the size of the company with the need to stay creative?
What’s very important is to work on projects that you feel are going to change the world. The number of people can be a constraint, but what is most important is to have talented teams and lots of motivation to win that race. That’s what we’re trying to do: to make sure that the challenges are real, and that we can identify who we want to compete against and who we want to beat so that we can create a game that is more interesting than what already exists. That is a great motivation for teams; that, plus the fact that you launch something that can be very different to what people expect.
Ubisoft works a lot with established IPs. How do you express that creativity, that need for reinvention when an ever-larger group of people are spending their time working on well-known brands?
For me, an existing IP can be very, very creative. The
“IN OUR INDUSTRY, IF YOU DON’T MAKE THE RIGHT CALL, YOU CAN BE IN BIG TROUBLE”
advantage of an existing IP is that you know that the brand is recognised by players and that a certain number of them will buy the product [every time]. That tells you that you can put large amounts of investment on that brand because, you know that there will be a certain turnover. Coming with that are some pillars that have to be there – because those fans go for it with the understanding that certain elements will be there. But outside of that, you can create the world you want, you can create the fantasy you want, you can create systems that can be revolutionary. Your creativity can be very strong.
There’s a sense that certain game mechanics would often migrate between different Ubisoft titles – towers being the most obvious example. Was that impression something that concerned the studios? Is it something that you made the decision to reduce the appearance of?
It’s interesting, because Zelda [ Breath Of The Wild] took a lot of the things that existed in Far Cry and other Ubisoft games, but did them perfectly. I think the most important thing is not the systems as they are, it’s how they can be perfected; how they can give the player the best experience possible. The same system can be in two games, and not be seen as the same thing. The job, really, is to make sure that you have a certain number of possibilities and that you are able to combine them in such a way that provides a great experience. When systems seem similar, it’s because developers have not been able to take full advantage of what those systems could bring [to a game].
When a system is really good at providing fun, the team knows that that will work – and at the end of the day what counts is the experience. But we are taking more and more time on our games so that they are very different from one another. That has always been the objective. But if you look at many of the games that are being launched – even the last Sony game, Horizon Zero
Dawn – again, they took some of the same systems that we have. Because, in the industry, we always look at other games and other publishers. A game is very complex, so it helps us to provide a good experience.
How important is focus testing and audience feedback when determining what comes next for the company?
Data is becoming more and more important. Seeing what a person is doing – where they didn’t go in some cases, when they didn’t do some of the things we created and so on – really gives us an indication of how to incentivise our players to go and consume the content that has been created for them. When they stop playing because it’s too hard, or they continue to play because they like some ways of doing things, all of those elements should give us the possibility to improve the quality of the game. Not only that they should – they actually do. We spend a lot of time looking at playtests and how people play, so we can change the games in such a way that will be appreciated by different types of players.
Is there something specific about any given IP that makes it internationally successful, or is success for an IP more a matter of the right marketing or the right positioning in the right parts of the world?
Cultures are different, but for the types of games we make, if you really create the right experience, you can be bought anywhere. When you go mobile you start to be very massmarket, so you have to go with cultural specifics. But when you make triple-A games they are so interesting, so different, that if it doesn’t belong too much to your country then it won’t matter much.
Because on mobile, the games are free, so if you get in and don’t like it, you go to something else. Whereas with triple-A, if you don’t like the first hour, you will persist because you spent money to buy the product. And very often, if you persist, you will have lots of fun.
Ubisoft has made a bigger investment in multiplayer and multiplayer-dedicated games of late. Why did you take that decision?
It’s the kind of game that is more and more in demand from players. As a company, we have to adapt to this evolution in demand. So it’s a question of generation: some people have been playing linear adventures, and they tend to want to continue to play that kind of game, even if they’re starting to be open to other types of games.
For each revolution or disruption, there are steps where you are in the middle and the new thing is not yet very interesting. The first people that try the game might say, ‘It’s good, but it’s not as good as I expected’ and sometimes they don’t want to try again. But after a while you improve the quality of this new experience, and you arrive at a level where the new people who try it love it. It always takes time to change mentalities. For us, we had no choice but to introduce the types of product that most of the customers, most of the players, wanted.
How much room is there for projects to not achieve their goals? When you have a company of such size, how do you guard against failure?
At the early stages, it’s easy. You can make mistakes. It’s just after you pass your alpha that it’s difficult. It’s becoming quite expensive! Do you foresee a point where creating the types of games you create at the level of fidelity that the
audience expects requires simply more time than you can give it?
I don’t think so. I think now with the fact that games live longer, we have more and more time to spend on our games.
How did Ubisoft become the company that it is? Were you always following what the audience was asking for, or was there a conscious decision that this was the type of company you were going to be?
As I said, all over the world players can buy the same game. There are no boundaries – there’s no frontier between countries, in a way. The only frontier is, ‘What is the experience that the others are providing, and where do I have to be so that I can exist?’ In some cases you can still make a fantastic product but it’s too short, or you can do gameplay that is perfect and sell nothing. There are some constraints on the market, where you have to come with a certain level of graphics, animation and gameplay. If you don’t do that, you can’t sell. In a way, those elements are set by the market.
There are many ways to answer the resource problem. We found one option – which was to have talent coming from many countries – but other people can find other ways to do it.
Has the experience of running Ubisoft been a matter of adhering to a long-term plan or has it been more reactive than that?
It’s something very challenging, but also very beautiful, and great to experience. You have to create the best games ever, otherwise you don’t exist any more. You have the obligation to be the best in the world at what you do. That really is a very interesting challenge. It’s like going to the Olympic Games and having to perform; if you’re not in the top three, you’re not successful.