Jade Raymond, head of Ubisoft Toronto shared her frustrations with the current state of video games, pointing out how big budget blockbusters are usually the only ones to find major success.
In an interview with CVG, Raymond discussed how important it is for this form of entertainment to evolve and mature, saying “I really do feel it’s time for our medium to grow up. I think we don’t need to make the equivalent to a Michael Bay flick in order to sell five million copies. I think things can be exciting, have meaning and hit important topics, and I’m not the only one that thinks that.”
She definitely brings up a great point here, as the best selling games year after year are titles like God of War, Call of Duty and Gears of War. As a result of the success of these games, we see developers chasing after the same market, making copycat titles that end up killing creativity and watering down the industry.
Raymond goes on to point out how much potential there is for this industry to really push the envelope in ways that other forms of entertainment can’t and how developers should really take advantage of that.
Games, I think, have even more potential than that given that on top of the narrative side we do have all of the gameplay mechanics and we create rule sets from scratch which can have any kind of meaning embedded in them. It’s not easy to do that, because it requires breaking our recipe and trying to find new recipes, but I think it’s an important thing for us to strive for.
Ubisoft Toronto is currently working on a new Splinter Cell game as well as a brand new IP. Stay tuned to PlayStation LifeStyle for more news on what they have in store for gamers.
