Skip to main content
If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

Ubisoft's Michael de Plater

The creative director talks about launching new IPs, the progress of technology and releasing games at Christmas

Phil Elliott avatar
Feature by Phil Elliott Contributor
Published on
GamesIndustry.biz One thing you can't get away from is the rate of change of technology, which is a challenge, but also brings new opportunities - with EndWar using voice recognition, what other opportunities do you see arising, and how important is it for us as an industry to bring new experiences to gamers?
Michael de Plater

I think you hit the nail on the head by talking about experiences - basically, whatever experience you want to give people, and whatever the popular imagination or fantasy of that experience is, then you try and give people the most immediate access to that experience.

So if your fantasy is about being a general and yelling at people then you want to live that by voice. If you're fantasy is about rock-climbing or mountaineering, something where you can climb...

GamesIndustry.biz I guess the success of Guitar Hero and Rock Band also bear out that point?
Michael de Plater

Exactly - Rock Band is the best possible example, because actually the kind of experiences that people fantasise about having, or want to have, really don't appear to have changed very much.

When I was a kid it was cowboys and Indians, or hide-and-seek, or playing with your Star Wars figures, or LEGO - and realising those sort of experiences really hasn't changed.

But as you say, the technology, and empowering people to have deeper experiences like that - not just in the graphics, but in the interface and interaction and communication as well.

GamesIndustry.biz I was impressed at how well the voice control for EndWar worked, even with lots of background noise.
Michael de Plater

It's about two things - accessibility and immersion. You can pick it up and play, firstly, and then you can put yourself in the role of being a commander. That went really well.

GamesIndustry.biz What sort of lessons did you learn from the production?
Michael de Plater

It's hard to talk about big, general lessons, but probably the number one lesson we learned is that console is not as different from PC as we would have anticipated it to be.

In terms of depth and content of the gameplay we probably went too far in assuming we had to simplify things. We actually put an enormous amount of effort and iteration on the accessibility to make sure that it was pick up and play, and in the end we probably went a bit too far on that. I think Halo Wars made the same mistake.

From my experience with Rome: Total War before, it's an incredibly easy thing to fall back on - adding features and complexity is really, really easy. Stripping stuff back and making it simple is very hard - so that was the biggest lesson.

But at the same time I think it was a really good lesson to learn, and we can come back from that.