When you think of AAA game development, images of designers, programmers, and engineers creating and iterating on their titles for months and years likely come to mind. The original Assassin’s Creed spawned an enormous franchise developed today by thousands of people, but its side missions were actually developed in a span of just five days.
Charles Randall–a former Ubisoft employee who worked on the first two Assassin’s Creed games–shared that the original game was essentially finished when the company’s CEO apparently had his son give it a try.
so we’re all ready to ship the game, first submission goes pretty well, and then
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The CEO’s kid played the game and said it was boring and there was nothing to do in the game— Charles Randall (@charlesrandall) May 23, 2020
so my lead comes to me and he says “so, we have to add a bunch of side activities into the game. we have a plan from patrice, but I’m not going to say yes unless you are in.”
I tell him to give me some time to think about it, and I go crank my music and have a nap at my desk— Charles Randall (@charlesrandall) May 23, 2020
oh yeah I forgot the key part. he says “we have to put all these side missions into the game in five days, and they have to be bug free, because the build is going to be burned directly to disc and released to retail.”
— Charles Randall (@charlesrandall) May 23, 2020
He found that version of the game to be boring and didn’t think there was enough to do, and the team then decided to add in side missions as a result. They only had five days to implement them, as the build they produced was going to be burned directly to discs and shipped.