“Why do you want to redo everything each year if you can improve and increase the experience in one game?”
– Ubisoft’s Yves Guillemot explores the company’s trend toward live games in an interview with IGN.
Ubisoft CEO and co-founder Yves Guillemot sat down with IGN’s Unfiltered podcast to run through his time with the company and talk about the philosophies Ubisoft takes towards things like monetization and live development.
Many of Ubisoft’s biggest releases fall under the category of live games, and have evolved quite a bit since their launch. Those gradual improvements and continued support are things that Ubisoft has credited in the past with helping to maintain strong and growing playerbases. That includes titles like Ubisoft’s still-thriving 2015 release Rainbow Six Siege, and something Guillemot discusses briefly with IGN.
In a clip from the full interview, Guillemot says that Ubisoft aims to create worlds and games that offer players reasons to stick around for the long haul, either through gameplay or social features. Live games, he explains, provide a unique way for the company to accomplish this.
“It’s easier for us to improve and increase the number of possibilities that the game can bring than restart from scratch,” Guillemot tells IGN. “Yes, we need also to have a little bit of monetization in those games so that it can pay for the content all the teams are doing, but you can do better when you don’t have to redo everything I would say.”
The full, near-hour-long chat is well worth a listen as well and can be found on IGN’s website and podcast feeds.