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Follow-Up: Organic Game Design on the Assassin's Creed - Bio of Patrice Désilets, Creative Director of Assassin's Creed

Written by Niketh Pareek

Despite garnishing huge acclaim around the world for being the creative mind behind one of the most successful video games ever released, Patrice Désilets isn’t resting on his laurels.

“I’m really lucky to be where I am today. In Quebec, and in Canada a best seller is 2,000 copies. When I finished making Prince of Persia, I couldn’t believe it sold over 2 million copies. Two million compared to 2,000. It’s like wow!”

Désilets would be the first to agree that his ascension to video-game stardom was an unlikely possibility when he completed his university studies 10 years ago. He joined Ubisoft Montreal shortly after graduating, which at the time consisted of only 10 employees.

“My first game was a PlayMobil game. It was a simple game and not the most creative of technologies to work with, but I decided to see where I could push the limit, [or] change something to make it more interesting.”

With titles such as Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3, Donald Duck: Going Quakers, Hype: The Time Quest and the hugely successful Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (PoP), Désilets has developed a reputation for breaking the rules of game design while retaining a fun gaming experience.

His post-modernist approach to game design is being transferred to his latest project, a bigger and grander title than PoP. Two years ago, he approached Ubisoft executives with an idea to re-define the third-person action game genre.

In Désilets’ mind, third-person action games force the player to develop a gamer’s intuition. For experienced players, the concepts of a double-jump, or living in a world where you can commit murder or other violent acts without recourse are expected. Non-gamers, on the other hand, expect the laws of physics to apply and react negatively when their character is rewarded for disregarding the rules of organized society. Non-gamers have abandoned playing third-person action games because they are designed to appeal to those looking for a violent, escapist and morally empty experience.

According to Désilets, what gamers really want is to play a hero. “Games are supposed to give people a chance to become an actor and do things they’ve always wanted to try.” He added that protagonists are often the types of people you’d never want to meet in real life. “How can you create a sense of reality by playing a character you never want to become?” he asked rhetorically.

And thus the creative vision underlying Assassins Creed, Désilets latest project, was born: To create a game with an environment that is so close to reality that the line between reality and fantasy blurs, creating an experience that is all encompassing and immersive, appealing to both gamers and non-gamers alike.

When Désilets ambitious idea was pitched to executives at Ubisoft, they threw their full support behind the project. Yannis Mallat, CEO of Ubisoft Montreal, described his initial reaction as “total excitement”. He added, “here was an idea so revolutionary I knew we had to go with it [even though] I knew we’d face many challenges to achieve Patrice’s vision.”

One of the biggest challenges was finding the right person to lead the development team that would deliver one of the most important projects to come from Ubisoft’s Montreal Studio. Someone would have to oversee the development of new software tools, the upgrade of technological infrastructure, and understand what it takes to manage a group of dedicated and passionate developers. At first, Mallat took on the role of producer, but soon found his executive duties interfered. It wasn’t until he met Jade Raymond that he felt he found the right person to take over the project. “When I met Jade, I knew she was the one who had the experience and understanding of the creative process to make Assassin’s Creed a reality.”

Raymond, a 10 year veteran of the industry, cut her teeth at studios such as EA, Sony and Maxis, where she worked closely with Will Wright. She accepted the challenge of becoming the producer of Assassin’s Creed because she knew that she it was the opportunity of a lifetime. Assassin’s Creed is a brand new game, with new characters and a new storyline. Producers rarely, if ever, are presented with a blank slate and the opportunity to change a game genre.

She concedes that her responsibilities as the producer are “a bit overwhelming but at the same time I know I can do it. I learned all the processes of how not to constrain creative teams but also meet deadlines when I worked [as a producer of] the Sims On-Line.”

Recently Raymond and Désilets gave a presentation to members of the IGDA explaining how over the past two years, the development team led by Raymond has created a host of new tools and modeling techniques that will make Assassin’s Creed the most realistic game ever created. Désilets noted that “programming to kill is really easy because a program is binary, just a bunch of ones and zeros. Pushing, climbing, jumping, that’s much harder because you have to pay attention to little details.” Two years have passed and Assassin’s Creed is reported to be 60% complete.

When the game is released, non-gamers will likely appreciate the effort of the development team, though hard-core gamers might not jump for joy when they learn they’ve lost the ability to double-jump.

Posted by ChristinaReinards on November 14, 2006 06:14 PM