Skull & Bones: Kotaku looks back at 8 years of chaos

It’s through Ethan Gach’s work in Kotakuand testimonials from over twenty developers who work or have worked for them skull bones, which we were able to discover behind the scenes of what has become one of the biggest Arlésiennes members in recent years.

I initially imagined it as a multiple extension of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (2013) which will arrive after the release of the game, the so-called Freedom Project She ended up standing on her own two feet. Responsible for the navigation stages in black flagUbisoft Singapore developers had to build on these rules a new proposal, with the help of the teams behind free to play a house, Ghost Recon: Phantoms. has become skull bones, the title promised naval battles aboard multiple pirate ships, but also in PvE. Anyway, these are the ambitions that were displayed during its debut at E3 2017 and 2018. Because according to Kotaku, in the back room, no one really seems to know where the game wants to go.

The main problem that seems to eat into the production skull bones According to the testimonies received by Kotaku it will be the absence of a clear creative vision, a global path, as well as in form as in content. The game will thus be its third creative director, Elizabeth Belin, former vice president of editorial division at Ubisoft. She succeeded Justin Farren, who left for Wargaming, and Sebastian Boyle, veteran producer at المنتج Doctrine killer In Ubi Montreal. With each change of hand, a new direction for the enterprise and rotation tires. Without basic questions like “Are we playing a pirate or a ship?“They did not find their answer; the arrival of Elizabeth Palin, for example, would have required the addition of a whole set of tools andorigins To be able to manage exploration on foot. An area where the game hasn’t been cut until then at all.

But this is just one of the last shoulder changes to the rifle skull bones. Before that, she would have known countless shapes and contexts: the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, and a wonderful world called Hyperborea. The first PvP questions were asked by the teams, then the PvE questions with Looting And cooperation before leaving in 2019 towards a formula that adds editing And resource management with a side rogue In addition. Each time, Ubisoft had followed the direction of the wind according to the successes of the moment (rainbow six sig first then division or Rust And the Ark: Survival Evolved).

“The game is still developing”

Rather than downsizing the game to refocus on a small team responsible for defining the game’s final look, the publisher decided to increase its workforce, from about a hundred people in 2015 to four hundred in 2019, according to Kotaku’s sources. Lots of people having to work hard on items that may become obsolete with the next reorientation or the next technology change. Hence, the ongoing mass exodus of developers, exhausted by the organization of the project and Administration without taking with the land. Today, many of them just wish they could release their game, no matter how good it was, so that they could finally move on.

Certainly, skull bones He would have ended up blowing her budget to over $120 million and becoming that.”Too big to fail“To use the image that was often used for US banks at the time of the 2008 crisis. The game’s economic model, even if it remains obscure to this day, can fit with the French publisher’s tendency to switch to the game as a service, El Dorado’s stable and predictable income streams But according to three different sources, there’s another factor preventing Ubi from giving up his game: a deal with the Singapore government that stuck out”generous grants“In exchange for local assignments but also to create an original license within the studio.

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According to a developer interviewed by Kotaku, “The game is still developing“And the”The design has not yet been decided“.

Stan Shaw

<p class="sign">"Professional food nerd. Internet scholar. Typical bacon buff. Passionate creator."</p>

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