'Assassin's Creed' Devs Take a Shot at Rockstar Over "Massive Crunch"

In light of the recent controversy that has placed the studio over at Rockstar Games in a negative light regarding working conditions and what it was like to work for the company itself, many developers and gamers alike have stepped forward to let their own thoughts on the matter be known. Though reports of what the company environment is really like are vastly contradictory, the fiasco did prompt the studio to make some major policy changes within their team. But it looks like the change might have come a little too late, because Ubisoft couldn't wait to take a moment to deliver a small potshot at the Rockstar camp.

Ubisoft Quebec Managing Director Patrick Klaus recently sat down with the folks over at Gamasutra to talk about the "massive crunch" at Rockstar and what that meant to their team. He responded, "While we can always do better, I can tell you hand on heart that [Assassin's Creed Odyssey] hasn't required a massive crunch, like maybe some of the triple-As from five or ten years ago. We can still always do better, but we have managed pretty well to succeed in delivering a game of huge magnitude which is hitting a good quality [level], while making sure that our teams are not burnt out and disgusted with working in games.

"We collectively, on the management team, think that it is a false economy to burn out our teams. We risk losing them, or we risk disengaging them, and we will simply not get the best out of those talents if we're forcing them to work insane hours in crunch. We've got some way to go, but I'm feeling good about what we have achieved."

Assassin's Creed Odyssey's Senior Producer Marc-Alexis Cote added, "It's something we were very, very bad at 15 years ago, but as the industry is maturing, we are becoming better at managing our teams, managing our scope. Not every studio will grow in that way, not every team will grow in that way, but it's one of the commitments we made to our team when we started: that we would manage the scope of the game, that it was super-ambitious, but that every two weeks we would reassess it with them to always make sure that it is doable."

Both agreed that being a developer isn't ever going to be a traditional 9-5 job. There will always be instances that require the extra push. Cote mentioned, "A lot of time during the development of the project, it's not a 9-5 job as you would say. It might be a 9-3 job, it might be a 9-4 job. Sometimes it's a 9-6 job, so again production of a video game is not constant work. We're asking people to be creative, that's what we look for in people.

"But we try to give them the flexibility of both. It's not about just showing up to work. If you're in more of a down period, we think it's good for you to be home if you need to be, and let you cool down and think about things that could make either the game better or your career better, or everything. But sometimes…and again a lot of times it comes from the people themselves. They have a brilliant idea, they want to implement it, so they'll push for a couple of weeks and then rest a little bit."

With how incredible Assassin's Creed Odyssey was, their dedication was definitely felt on a massive scale. Still, it looks like Rockstar - and it's developers - are starting a new chapter, one that is more conscientious of how their team members feel.