Post Script

Xavier Manzanares, lead producer, Ubisoft Paris

Xavier Manzanares has been involved with the Rabbids brand for several years, but Kingdom Battle is his debut as lead producer. Here, he talks about gaining Miyamoto’s endorsement, and the challenges of working on such an unorthodox strategy game. It’s an unlikely collaboration in many ways. How did it happen? It started in 2014. There was already a good relationship between Ubisoft and Nintendo, and then we heard about the possibility of proposing a concept involving Mario. We started to dig into what we could do, and what the Rabbids could do, and how that would make sense. The team was really small at that time, but we’re all hardcore Nintendo fans and we thought about combining that passion with another passion of ours, which was turn-based gaming. We felt that was quite unexpected, and that it fit with the surprising nature of the Rabbids. So we started working on a prototype and a scope map for those ideas – we used Unity, because that way we could do it quickly. Then we started to add weapons and other elements and then we flew to Japan. It was November and we met with Mr Miyamoto’s team in Kyoto. We had no clue what the response would be. That must have been quite a daunting prospect, especially as Nintendo fans. We knew that it would be one of the first Mario games made fully outside Nintendo. The pressure came from having respect for that IP and making sure the game had the animations, the art, the design, the accessibility – everything that Mario is known for. Even though we had a lot of passion and expertise, it was far from easy. The second challenge was figuring out how the Rabbids could be not just some characters alongside Mario, but offer something strong themselves, because after all it’s a Ubisoft game. At that meeting, Mr Miyamoto said, “Hey guys, you surprised me with something I didn’t expect, but this is your game, this is your concept. So please make sure that you continue surprising me now, and surprise the players tomorrow.” For him it was indeed the Rabbids that really brought something fresh to the table. Which games did you look at to try to capture that Nintendo feel? We talked a lot about Super Mario World, and how it developed from Super Mario Bros 3 but still kept in touch with the players that loved Mario before. We discussed the Mario Kart series, how everyone can play it, but at the same time it could almost be an esport because it’s very deep. The explosive cover, the domino effect you have with some weapons and their super effects – those came out of discussions of the red, green and blue shells. And Splatoon as well: how Nintendo took the competitive shooter, and how it made it different with the painting. Arms came after our initial brainstorming, but that was also a good example of how it approached a genre in a very Nintendo way. Of course, we looked at the Mario games in general, how even through to Mario Galaxy and 3D World, when you play you instantly feel at home. And Captain Toad was a really a good way to see that, even when Mario isn’t there, it still finds a way to create a puzzle game that really talks to Mario fans. So we had a lot of examples. But it wasn’t just a matter of copying these ideas, because that would be easy. We had the Rabbids, we had other elements Nintendo hadn’t done before, we had a different engine. That’s when our passion as players, not just as devs, came in. We iterated a lot, asking ourselves, ‘Do we have the feeling?’ Then, when [the first world] Ancient Gardens was more advanced, and we had Mario interacting with the Rabbids, and Grant Kirkhope’s music, the playtests confirmed that the game had that Nintendo feeling. That’s when we dug in and finalised the project around that idea. The leaks must have been demoralising for the team. How did you bounce back? It’s true that leaks like that are never good news. We were so focused in our little world that it was almost like we were in a cave for three years. We had so many things to reveal, we were so excited to do it, and when you have leaks, it feels almost like you’re getting stuff stolen from you. So yeah, there was an impact. At the same time we knew that we would have hands-on sessions very soon. We knew we would at least be able to show how passionate we were, and how surprising the game would be. We knew that we had something to show to prove how different it is from other games. And when we saw the result at E3, when we announced the game officially, we knew that it would overcome any leaks or negativity. We were waiting for that moment for so long that in the end it went really quickly. But look at the context. We were doing a game with Mario and the Rabbids that was a strategy game on a console we didn’t know anything about when we first started to work on the concept, using the same engine as The Division, which meant internally we had a lot of things to redo as well. Then adding co-op and turn-based elements that needed to be accessible as well as bringing something new to the table. And we didn’t realise it at the time, because we were in that tunnel, but that was pretty crazy. So the announcement at E3 for us was a big moment of realisation: ‘OK, we just did that.’

“When you have leaks, it feels almost like you’re getting stuff stolen from you”