First shown at E3 2017, Skull and Bones has since lost its course. Now slated for somewhere in 2023, Ubisoft's piracy game is in deep trouble.
Kotaku investigated the game originally thought of as a multiplayer expansion to Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag (2013), and drew a long article rich from the testimony of about twenty developers from Ubisoft Singapore . The result is a very gloomy picture, which tends to confirm that the project is indeed in “dev hell”.
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A bastard game that doesn't know where it's going
Announced much too early, Skull and Bones was obviously unable to keep its initial release date, scheduled for the end of 2018. According to the latest news, Ubisoft estimates that its Singapore branch should be able to deliver its copy by the end of the fiscal year 2022. That is March 2023 at the latest.
But the company would still have to find a course and stick to it. Kotaku's sources indeed describe a project carried out with a trembling hand, rebooted several times, and burdened by ego wars among producers that prevent development teams from doing their job. "Even after years, some very basic game mechanics issues remain unresolved," writes Kotaku.
Things as basic as "are we playing the pirate or are we playing the boat?" would have found their answer only recently. The teams were also forced to completely rethink the game's game design... which would have cost them between 6 and 12 months.
Even internally, few seem confident about the finished product's chances of success. "If Skull and Bones was developed by a competitor, it would have been canceled at least ten times," sighs a developer. “Nobody wants to admit they screwed up. »
Sign of the curse that seems to weigh on the game, one of the people interviewed by Kotaku compares its trajectory to that of… Anthem, the game service from Bioware known as being one of the biggest industrial shipwrecks of recent years .
In hollow, the article of the American site testifies to the great weariness of the people mobilized on the project. It doesn't matter the state of the game when it comes out, seems to say an employee of Ubisoft Singapore, as long as it allows them – finally – to move on. "To have a team that works for 4 to 5 years on something that is not moving forward, it would destroy anyone," slips another.
“On paper, Skull and Bones is an easy game to develop”
Skull and Bones was originally intended to stretch the concept of sea battles from Assassin's Creed IV into a fully-fledged service game. Ubisoft Singapore, precisely responsible for this part of the original game, therefore did not have much to do.
"On paper, Skull and Bones is an easy game to develop, but it really isn't," corrects an ex-developer. The reality is that Ubisoft quickly realized that the technology mobilized on Black Flag was already dated for a launch game from the PS4/Xbox One era. “Technology was changing, and quickly you want better graphics. And so you realize that some textures are no longer suitable. And the more you start wanting to change things, the more other parts of the game become stale. Also when a project drags on for more than two years, your original idea is no longer valid. »
It must therefore be understood that the images that we were able to see of the game at E3 2017 already have little to do with what the studio had originally imagined. At that time, the idea was to make Skull and Bones a "Rainbow Six Siege with boats", summarizes Kotaku. But then there would be a captivating world to explore, quests to do, currencies to collect to justify the status of a multiplayer service game. Note: the version of the game shown at E3 2018 (which some journalists were able to try) relied heavily on PvP clashes.
But in 2019, adds Kotaku, the trend was more for survival games like Rust and Ark. And the studio has decided to add a new layer of gameplay combining resource recovery, crafting of objects and exchanges between players. A real little MMO, set in the world of piracy.
So what exactly does Skull and Bones look like today? “The game is still evolving. Everyone has a clear idea of ​​what a Ubisoft game is supposed to look like, and their design isn't quite there yet,” admits a current developer. But many still don't know exactly what form the finished product will take.
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Ubisoft persists and gets bogged down
After eight years of development, some 120 million dollars (amount communicated by Kotaku sources) spent and around 400 people mobilized, the project therefore still seems extremely unstable. So why is Ubisoft so stubborn, when many people admit that other publishers have already given up?
Several reasons can explain this. First, Ubisoft knows the value of having large-scale game-services in its portfolio. If there is no shortage of them in its current catalog (The Division 2, Rainbow Six Siege), its competitors Take-Two (GTA: Online), Electronic Arts (FIFA 21) or Activision (Call of Duty: Warzone) are also very well armed.
But that's not all. According to three people interviewed by Kotaku, Ubisoft is contractually bound to develop and deliver a game designed by its Singapore team. "In addition to hiring a number of people in its Singapore studio in exchange for generous grants, Ubisoft Singapore is also set to launch brand new IPs in the coming years." A commitment that probably motivates the publisher not to give up on Skull and Bones, even if its construction site is very chaotic.
Contacted by Kotaku, Ubisoft said that its game had reached the Alpha stage, and that the team would communicate in due course on the progress of the project. “That being said,” adds the spokesperson, “any speculation about the game or the decisions that are made in the studio only serve to demoralize the team, which is working hard to develop an ambitious new franchise that meets the expectations of the players. »
