Assassin’s Creed is a long-running franchise which still generates lots of sales with the latest game Shadows being a critical and commercial success. The games have become a lot bigger and have added in RPG-like elements compared to older games on the series which started out life on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Former Ubisoft director Alex Hutchinson has commented on the change and says that there was a lot of pressure on the team to “keep the disc in the tray” which was because management didn’t want the game being resold straight away to GameStop and not get a penny. So the staff were told to try to bulk out the games in an effort to keep players playing for longer periods and not just trade it in a couple of days later. Here’s what he said.
“At the time there was a lot of pressure inside Ubisoft to ‘keep the disc in the tray’ to essentially try to delay resale as GameStop was the only one making any money on that transaction,” Hutchinson said. “Designers were being asked to add play time which seemed like the most pro gamer solution to the problem in a franchise where multiplayer had never really worked.”
“I think it’s the only franchise I can think of that changed genre and kept its audience, so it was risky but it seems to have worked. That said I always thought it was a peculiar decision for a franchise where they also wanted to put them out as close to annually as possible.”
“I was worried that if you had 200 hours of AC you just played then would you really be in the mood for more a year later? I think luckily the radical change in setting and often protagonist means it feels more fresh than most franchises so they get away with it, but my heart is in the action adventure space, not stat juggling, so I miss the old days.”
