French video game publisher Ubisoft and live-service games go together like peas and carrots. Known for major open-world action-adventures series such as Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft has, over the past decade, become somewhat infamous for its by-the-numbers design philosophies, and, as indicated by a new Ubisoft Reflections job listing, even the introduction of an all-new IP won’t cause much of a shakeup.
According to Ubisoft Reflections’ site, the studio is looking for a new Senior Narrative Designer to help with the development of a hitherto undisclosed new intellectual property. The listing contains much of the typical corporate jargon to which jobseekers are accurately accustomed, but the major takeaways stem from the mentions of games-as-a-service and open-world design. Ubisoft recently announced that support for Ghost Recon Breakpoint would be coming to an end, and it could be that the publisher already has a new live-service replacement in the works.
Of course, Ghost Recon Breakpoint was hardly Ubisoft’s only current live-service offering. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege continues to dominate in the competitive shooter space, and it is now supplemented by the spinoff Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction and the upcoming XDefiant, which previously bore the Tom Clancy name before it was pulled due to the game’s incongruous look and feel. Ubisoft seems to be as committed to the live-service model as ever, and, if the publisher’s new IPs are apparently going to continue this trend, it may be quite some time before the debut of a traditional single-player experience backed by Ubisoft.
Unfortunately, while it has, for the most part, worked for the Tom Clancy series as well as in cases such as For Honor and The Division 2, live-service games tend to be fairly hit-and-miss, and the developer’s penchant for doubling down on controversial elements in its games could spell trouble for this new IP. For instance, Ubisoft has caught quite a bit of flack for the inclusion of NFTs in Ghost Recon Breakpoint, and, while that game has since been shuttered, there’s a very real chance that the widely-reviled implementation of new tech could once again appear in Ubisoft’s new series.
Furthermore, in the wake of recent feature-complete industry success stories such as Elden Ring and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, Ubisoft’s games-as-a-service and open-world systems can come across as particularly stale. In fact, a fan-made Elden Ring image poked fun at Ubisoft by offering a look at what FromSoftware’s game may have looked like had the French publisher helmed it, and it could be an premonitory glimpse of what Ubisoft’s forthcoming IP might actually look like should the publisher continue on the same path.