Clint Hocking resigns from Ubisoft

Ubisoft Montreal's creative director Clint Hocking has resigned from the company after nine years.

Hocking has worked on three big titles for the publisher – Splinter Cell, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and Far Cry 2 – and said his reasons for leaving the company are to avoid falling into bad habits and complacency.

"For me, habits begin to form when I am comfortable and content, and over time those habits settle," wrote Hocking on his personal blog. "Their weight begins to rest heavily on the foundations of contentedness on which they were built. All the courage and hard work required to overcome my bad habits and forge myself a place where I can be happy, leads me back, inevitably to a place where I am once again comfortable and content.

"In the 451 weeks that I have been here, I have adopted many new habits."

The three games Hocking has worked on have shipped over 12 million units between then, noted Hocking, who also modestly attributed his success in game design to luck.

"The way forward lies in my having the courage that I did not know I had a decade ago to bid farewell to those tragically comforting habits. I need to walk on hot coals and sleep on a bed of nails. I need to chew on broken glass. I need to drink paint," he wrote.