SOT Activity 3: Visit to Ubisoft, Shanghai

-No Pictures due to Ubisoft's sharing agreement policy-

Task for today- 500 word review on the whole visit.

     The first stop today would be Ubisoft Studios, Shanghai. Ubisoft is the worlds fourth most solo distributed game companies of the whole world. For people who doesn't know much about Ubisoft, they are the company whole makes well known games like the Assassin Creed Series and Tom Clancy Splinter Cell Series. Two of their games, namely I am Alive and Tom Clancys End War, were award winner.

     So how does Ubisoft works? Every project will come from the main management building in the main branch/headquarters, Ubisoft, France. The main building will select a number of the studios located all around the globe, or a just a team of people in a single studio, to make a game. The games could range from a AAA game- large title PC or console game to something small like a mobile game.

     What makes Ubisoft games successful? If you are a gamer, and you are searching for games that focus more on gameplay experience more than everything else, games made from Ubisoft will never fail to deliver. Unlike many other companies, Ubisoft tend to focus almost everything on the gameplay of each game, unlike Square Enix, which is a company that rather focus more on the storyline of the game instead. Many game designer have this concept of- A good game must first have a good storyline. I would say that this state is not wrong, but yet, it is not totally right either. Ubisoft proved this from many of their games. Lets take Far Cry 3 for example, Far Cry 3 is a open world single player FPS game, meaning that it is basically a one player shooter game where you can run anywhere available in the game. The storyline of this game is just- You play as a character named Jason, you are your friends were skydiving towards this island. After everyone had landed, you all were captured by pirates on the island. You then have to find a way to escape this island with everyone you can take along with. Yup, that is pretty much the story.

     But what makes this game so good would be because it gives the player choices, and somehow still ends up with the linear storyline. What i mean would be that the player is able to run anywhere they want, do anything they want, and explore the whole island at their own pace, which gives them choice and freedom, but yet at the same time, the main quest that the character receives will  set the player back into the story's direction. Ubisoft believes that allowing the player to craft their own story from the way to play is key to making a game really fun. More games like that, and also made by Ubisoft are the Assassins Creed series and Watchdogs.

     For the people who likes to play games, not because of the storyline, but because of the gameplay itself, I strongly recommend a game by Ubisoft to start with. And for those hardcore Ubisoft fans, or at least if you are following the games that Ubisoft makes, fear not, as many great new projects are going to get released in the near future that will not fail to disappoint!