Far Cry 4’s creative lead Alex Hutchinson has had his personal game pitch greenlit by Ubisoft, and will head a team including former Assassin’s Creed staff on a new project.
No clues as to what that project might involve just yet, but it sounds like a step away from developing for mega-budget franchises.
“I’ve got clearance along with a bunch of people from AC3 and AC4 to go off and do something new after (Far Cry 4),” Hutchinson told CVG in an interview recently. “The challenge then is to keep costs down and make something that competes at a high level, without saying ‘we need a thousand people for a new IP!’”
Ubisoft Montreal has an internal policy of allowing creative staff to pitch new ideas, a good recent example being former Assassin’s Creed designer Patrick Plourde’s side-scrolling RPG Child of Light. Adventure game Valiant Hearts, created on the same UbiArt framework, was another product of the system.
“For me it’s important for projects like Child of Light and Far Cry: Blood Dragon to exist and to know that there is a place for them here,” Ubisoft Montreal CEO Yannis Mallat explained to CVG. “It’s also important for those projects not to be suffocated at the beginning with high-level objectives. It’s a question of growing talent inside the company and giving them a chance. It allows us to try new things without breaking the balance financially.”
So far this policy of pursuing smaller budget titles alongside the heavy-hitters is working nicely, and it’s lead to some excellent little games. It will be interesting to see what Hutchinson comes up with.
