this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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I feel like I've heard this "it's different this time guys, we swear" spiel about every Ubisoft game in the past five years. Hard to believe or care at this point.
Even the UIs of their games look similar, even though they are from different genres (Division looks similar to AC looks similar to Settlers). IMO that alone shows that they are not about making unique games, but about hammering their franchise into the heads of gamers. They don't foster creativity, they try to apply the same formula to everything.
I don't think that's a bad thing. A big part of effective software development is building things in a way they can be re-used, then adapting that re-use to your use case. You don't want to re-invent the wheel every time.
With UX specifically, user expectations also play a bigger role, and you need to be careful with how and when you violate expectations. There's a reason most FPS games have settled on the same control scheme. Unless you have a very good reason for a change, it detracts from the user experience instead of improving it.
There are issues with the fact that the games are done so fast that none really have their own soul, but shared core UX (that's pretty comparable to most other similar games) is reasonable. It's the fact that it's not as good as it should be (mostly by shoe-horning in all the ads for shitty monetization) that's the issue.
I disagree. The UX design is a critical part of the design language of a game. The Settlers has a completely different setting than Assassins Creed or The Division. For The Division a "cold" and technical UI feels fitting, since this matches with the world it plays in. For Assassins Creed it's a mixed bag, but since the back story in AC is also extremely futuristic and technical, it still fits. It would likely still be better if the UI was more aligned with the main-setting of the game than with the background-setting, IMO. And finally The Settlers doesn't fit at all into this theme, yet the UI still looks like it.
Re-using the engine and the development tools is completely logical and a good thing. But the UX should be in line with the setting of the game, not the company that it was developed from. Because that breaks immersion.
Watch Dogs and AC feel eerily similar, I wouldn't be surprised if they are just swapping out assets, a map, and a standardised game story file format at this point.
IMO their game engine, formula and approach to franchises need to change drastically, if they truly want to demonstrate a fresh start to the public. Anything short of all three is going to feel like a half baked Ubisoft Special, regardless of how talented their writers may be
The game you're looking for is Trackmania, although it's technically developed by the team Nadeo which is now owned and managed by Ubisoft. (they're now called Ubisoft Nadeo)