育碧在多伦多成立了全新的工作室，未来可能改变加拿大游戏的发展面貌。游戏邦获悉，《刺客信条》的制作人Jade Raymond加入了育碧蒙特利尔的核心团队，并将担任新工作室的总经理。新工作室的有趣之处在于它只开发AAA游戏，工作室的首个任务是推出全新的《细胞分裂》，而多伦多历来是独立开发商和社交游戏开发商的专属地盘。

接手工作室后，Raymond拥有更广阔的发展空间以及更多富有挑战性的机会。游戏邦就Gamasutra采访Raymond的内容加以编译，内容主要涉及工作室的目标、工作室在公司的跨媒体策略中处于何种地位以及工作室是如何影响加拿大游戏业的发展3个方面。

工作室是如何建立和组织起来的？你们引进人才的途径有哪些？

到目前，我已经花了快1年的时间建立工作室。刚开始都是一些基础性的工作。我刚到工作室的时候，连供水都没有，所以我们得把事情分出缓急轻重，有很多事情其实和游戏没有直接关系。

当然，最重要的工作还是人员招聘。我们的员工不到1年就增加到了100多人，这真的相当不错。我们的员工来自各个地方，但还是以加拿大的本土居民为主，其中有一些是漂泊海外的安大略省同胞。我们碰到了好时机，有很多游戏开发精英此时都已到了成家的年纪，他们希望离家近一点，我们的工作室因此得到了很多人才。

Jade Raymond

你们的团队有100人员工应该大部分都是游戏行业的专业人士，你们有没有想过招聘在校生呢？

从目前来看，建立核心团队是我们工作重点。事实上我们手上有两个项目在进行，我们已经建立起两个核心的团队，我们也开始考虑游戏行业的新手。我们刚接受了3个暑期实习生，目前正和安大略省当地的一些学校合作。

安大略省有很多不错的学校，像滑铁卢大学，我不知道你有没有听过，这所学校培养了很多优秀的程序员，在世界各地都小有名气，我们也计划在这所大学招1-2个实习生。

多伦多过去出现的更多是独立游戏，所以你们的游戏可能是该地区的首个AAA项目。你觉得你们和独立开发商能够和平共处吗？你们是各干各的，还是相互合作？

我们相处很融洽，这很好。我不知道你有没有听过Hand Eye Society，这个组织会定期举办一些活动，把许多杰出的独立开发商聚集起来，他们在活动上展示自己的作品，相互交换意见。我们也参加过参加这些活动。

事实上，独立开发商Capybara Games目前正在制作的游戏是育碧之前发行过的，我很开心，我希望能今后能和他们合作。

我之前听说工作室将会同时进行多个项目，同时你们也有谈到要开发社交游戏。你们是不是打算把AAA游戏和社交游戏融为一体？

我今天所谈的其实是工作室未来发展的目标。

我们也谈到了工作室未来会推出新的《细胞分裂》，对此我们不会透露太多细节，但新游戏肯定会有新构思。

细胞分裂

在旧金山的Ubisoft Gamer’s Day上，很多人谈到了数字创新，实现《刺客信条》的跨平台运作之类的，你认为，社交游戏和AAA游戏在相同IP上的协同作用对公司来说依然很重要吗？

我认为是这样的。我很喜欢“非对称合作”这个概念，这可以增加新游戏的粘性，让玩家和游戏伙伴一起玩游戏。我觉得探索大型游戏很有趣。

你认为强大的IP对社交游戏来说必不可少吗？这是社交游戏最原始的功能？或者相反？社交游戏的发行是否需要大量的前期制作？

这是一个好问题。我认为当你想要推出新的IP时，总能听到各种各样的声音，有的说要借用既有品牌，有的建议自立品牌。我觉得推出新IP要承受很大的压力，其中还包括建立品牌的知名度。

我觉得首个推出IP的公司在Facebook上很有优势，因为当时平台上还没有别的大型IP。玩家总是喜欢新鲜的东西，所以我不认为新IP会处于不利地位。我认为当前整个社交游戏领域需要不断推陈出新。

现在看来，真正基于游戏的IP似乎不太需要了。

我同意这个观点。刚开始吸引玩家玩社交游戏时，你可能会推出某个在线游戏的Facebook版本，而不是针对Facebook用户推出游戏。

你有谈到为跨媒体游戏推出新的IP（游戏邦注：所谓的跨媒体就是跨越电影界、游戏圈等等）。团队需要因此引进不同类型的人才吗？像让非游戏行业人员加入工作室？

能够拥有各个领域的人才当然是件好事。我的意思是说我们可以从来自电影、电视等领域的人员身上学到很多的东西。《刺客信条》中我们并没有引进很多游戏行业以外的人员，但我们主要撰稿人Cory May也是电影、电视圈的一份子。

我认为跨媒体（transmedia）是个新词汇。我们应该考虑‘如何建立游戏的架构（游戏邦认为架构包含游戏的故事情节和组成要素），并让这个架构之后成为不同故事的搜索引擎’？

刺客信条

在《刺客信条中》，玩家可以扮演某一历史人物，我觉得这点很有趣，这让我觉得我是一个举足轻重的人物。你觉得玩家对此反映怎么样？

我觉得把握当前是我们发展的关键。我们经历了不同的发展阶段，因此也相应发生了一些变化。我觉得很重要的一点是游戏要有明确的目的性，并把当前的社会背景考虑在内，不要把游戏局限在某一时空中。

可以和我们谈谈这款游戏的营销方式？我对你们团队的合照印象很深，你在前面，其他成员在后面。

这不是什么营销决策（哈哈）。是摄影师让我们这样的排的。

原来是这样。不过这让人们开始好奇你们工作室的营销策略，毕竟你们也小有名气。想到多伦多育碧，人们马上会联想到你。成为不在自己控制范围的媒体焦点，你有什么感受？

我并不认为多伦多的育碧是和我绑在一块的，多伦多的育碧有一个很棒的核心团队。Alex Parizeau和Max Beland也很有名气，他们的上个游戏《细胞分裂：定罪》颇受大家欢迎。我们团队还有很多成员名气虽然没有Max和Alex大，但不久也是明日之星。

所以，我并不是多伦多育碧的代言人，是整个团队造就了今天的工作室。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Interview: Ubisoft’s Raymond Talks AAA Toronto Studio, Social Landscape

Ubisoft’s brand-new Toronto studio has the potential to massively shift the development landscape in Canada. The publisher’s core Montreal team joined Assassin’s Creed producer Jade Raymond at the location, where she’ll be general manager. What’s perhaps most interesting about the new studio is that it’ll focus only on AAA titles — Ubisoft will first be developing a new Splinter Cell project in Toronto — in a climate that’s historically been populated by indie and social developers.

Ubisoft itself has begun to pursue initiatives across social media, like its Assassin’s Creed Facebook portal, a companion to the franchise’s latest console iteration, Brotherhood.

Presiding over the studio, Raymond faces much new territory, and many interesting opportunities. We caught up with her to discuss the studio’s goals, where it lies in the publisher’s cross-media strategy, and how it stands to affect the development climate in Canada.

How is the studio being built and structured, and where are you drawing talent from?

We’ve been working now for about a year on building up the studio. A lot of the initial work was really the groundwork, making sure we have payroll in place, construction. When I first got there, there was no water in the building, so that was a big priority, all kinds of things that don’t necessarily have to do with games at first.

And then, of course our big focus has been recruiting. We’re now a little over a hundred people already within under a year, so it’s pretty cool. And we’ve been getting people from all over the place, a majority from Canada, a lot from Ontario, a few from Montreal, a few from Vancouver. We’ve actually gotten quite a few people who are ex-pats who were from Ontario — but there was no AAA game development before, so now they’re coming back home.

It happens to be good timing because people are getting to the age where they’re having families and they want to be closer to home, too, so we’ve actually gotten quite a few really great senior people to come to the studio because they want to move back to Toronto. And then we have a mix, like we have some people that we’ve recruited from South America, a couple from China, some from Europe and the UK.

If you’re a hundred people, you must be mostly recruiting existing professionals and things like that, but are you also going to draw from the schools?

Yeah. So far, it’s really been focused on the core teams. We actually have two projects going on, so we built up two core teams, and we’re just starting to recruit some of the more intermediate roles. We’re getting our first three summer interns that we’ve just are in the process in hiring. So, we’re working with the local Ontario schools.

Ontario has some amazing schools. There’s University of Waterloo. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them, but they have a worldwide reputation for creating the best programmers. We’re going to have one or two interns from there.

The Toronto scene previously was very much about indie stuff, so this will be the region’s first major AAA venture. Do you feel like you guys are going to coexist, or exist separately or feed into each other at all?

Hopefully feed into each other — it’s cool. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Hand Eye Society, but there’s this really cool group of indie developers that get together in really interesting events where they kind of show and tell, and exchange ideas. We’ve been attending those.

Actually, one of the indie developers, Capybara Games, is actually making a game now that Ubisoft was already publishing beforehand, so I’m really excited because I hope that we can collaborate with them.

I had heard before that this studio is going to do multiple projects simultaneously, and you’re talking about social stuff, too. Are you going to integrate AAA development and social stuff so these are multiple products within the same IP? What’s your drive for that?

Well, what I was talking about today was really my vision of where I see things going. At some point in the Ubisoft Toronto future, we plan to start up a new IP. Those are some of the things that we’re already thinking but not working on yet.

We’ve talked about already starting to work on the next Splinter Cell. We’re not sharing too much about that, but obviously there are a lot of those ideas, too, that will hopefully be brought into that brand.

At Ubisoft Gamer’s Day in San Francisco, there was a lot of talk about that kind of digital initiative — cross-platform stuff with Assassin’s Creed and all these kinds of things. As far as you can tell, is synergy between social games and their AAA counterparts within the same IP going to continue to be important to the company?

Yeah, I think so. There’s this concept of asymmetric co-op that I really like, because it’s a way to go and get new people engaged in the same franchises and get them to play with friends who are gamers, but maybe some are not. And I think that’s really an interesting thing to explore on the big franchises.

When it comes to social games, do you feel like a strong IP is necessary, original or otherwise? Does it need a strong pre-production core before you launch a social product?

That’s a good question. I think when you’re thinking about launching a new IP, there are pros and cons of being an established brand or a new brand. I think [with] new IP, there’s a lot of pressure on getting out there and getting your name known.

I think the first movers had a big advantage on Facebook — there weren’t other big IP there, so people were like, “Why not try FarmVille instead of the ‘Sims Farm’?” or whatever it could have been. But gamers, I think, are always looking for something new, so I don’t think it’s a disadvantage to be a new IP, but that whole arena of social, obviously since it’s a hot topic now, is going to get a lot more crowded.

It seems a really game-oriented IP isn’t so necessary.

I agree. And you might end up actually bringing gamers to Facebook games for the first time by having a Halo Facebook. You know, if you’re a big Halo fan, you might go try it out, where you might not have normally tried a Facebook game.

So, instead of having the inverse where you’re just seeing who’s on Facebook and trying to give them a game, it might be just a different way to engage your existing audience.

You were talking about preparing an IP for cross-media stuff, you know, going across film, games, etcetera. Does that require hiring different kinds of people, like non-game people to integrate into the studio?

It always helps to have experts in different fields, for sure. I mean, there’s a lot we can learn from people from film and TV and stuff. With Assassin’s Creed, we didn’t bring in so many people from outside the game industry, but our main writer Cory May has also worked in films and TV, and so I guess he had a bit more of an understanding on that angle. But really for us, we weren’t thinking transmedia then.

I don’t even think transmedia as a term existed then. For us, it was really more ‘how do we create some kind of backbone to the franchise where there’s the story arc and the material there that can become an engine for different stories later?’

The meta-layer of Assassin’s Creed where the player takes the role of someone taking the role of a person in history was a particularly interesting one for me because I feel like as kind of core-oriented game players would already understand that. How do you think that was received?

I think that whole layer in the present is really the hub for the franchise, and that’s what allows us to continue to expand. So that explains why we’re in a different period, and it explains why some things aren’t consistent, like why are they speaking American English… maybe gamers don’t mind so much and they’re used to those things, or when you die and you get to retry.

But I think the most important part of having the animus and the part in the present is really just because it gave that kind of breadth, and it expanded the universe of the franchise so that it wasn’t just a franchise about the Third Crusade when we came out. You know, there was already the idea that it could expand from the Third Crusade to wherever the present is taking place.

What about the marketing decision on that game? I remember the picture of the team had you in the foreground and everybody else in the background.

That wasn’t a marketing decision [laughs]. That was just some photographer who wanted a shot like that.

I see. But it did cause people to discuss marketing, about a studio having a face — right now, when people think of Ubisoft Toronto, they’re going to think of you, because you’re the person who is recognizable. How do you feel about that, being a media thing you can’t really control?

Well I don’t think that’s the case that probably now Ubisoft Toronto is mostly associated with me. You know, there’s a really amazing core team who are also pretty well known. Alex Parizeau and Max Beland did a lot of press for their last game, Splinter Cell: Conviction. They’re really well known to fans, and we have a lot of other great people who are maybe a little less known than Max and Alex but who are also kind of rising stars and starting to make a name.

So, I think it’s not going to be me the face of Ubisoft Toronto; it’s going to be the whole core team that’s helping me shape that core studio.（Source：Gamasutra）