
Why I quit my dream job at Ubisoft - Chico75
http://gingearstudio.com/why-i-quit-my-dream-job-at-ubisoft
======
lost_name
I once worked as a consultant to help users implement some software. I moved
on to the development of that software, knowing the dozens of areas that could
be improved to make life easier for the users, and honestly with little effort
(it's a web app, I did that before the consultancy stuff). At that point in
time, that was my dream -- I wanted to help make people's lives a little bit
easier, and the people I helped would be those who used our software.

After around a year or so of implementing questionable features, I attempted
to get approval for updates to old, well used features to improve them
(stability and convenience focused, really), but was shot down. This wouldn't
sell the software, because it worked well enough, and we needed more revenue
more than retaining old customers. At that point I understood that after the
software is sold the customer will be too ingrained into the product to leave
without financial repercussions.

A while later, we got bought out by Big Company, so that strategy apparently
worked. BC doesn't give half a shit about anything we ever did, and we piled
on the features release after release with little concern about anything else.
I tried a couple times after the buyout to get approved for existing product
improvements, but always got shot down.

I continue to find it odd how the company can be so profit oriented, and yet
so averse to improvements. I suppose I'm just wrong or don't actually
understand. Either way, it makes it very hard to care about my work these
days.

~~~
martincmartin
If your customers are big companies, then there's another dynamic: the people
who make decisions about the software are usually not the ones who use it. So
a large part of their decision is driven by how the software is described on
paper, i.e. by feature bullet points. You end up with lotus notes.

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/feb/09/guardianwe...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/feb/09/guardianweeklytechnologysection)

~~~
astockwell
This is exactly why so many terrible "features" and design patterns keep
showing up in web sites: People calling the shots are not the developers. They
"saw this on XYZ's successful site, plz implement today".

~~~
Reedx
Yep. The latest one seems to be newsletter popups that are suddenly infecting
the web at large.

~~~
Donzo
Pop ups are bad in general.

IMO, the worst are the full page, content-blocking, app install requests that
appear on thin-content sites.

It's preposterous.

You've proven that you can't be trusted to present your website content in an
acceptable manner, and you want me to install your software?

Instant back button.

------
ransom1538
Why to not work at a video game company:

0) Abuse.

1) Executives cut projects: a lot. The budgets are so insane for games
executives need to constantly trim budgets and shift things around. It is
common to walk over to an artists desk and inform them the art they have
worked on for 2 years wont be used. I am convinced telling a wife her husband
has passed is the same feeling.

2) The budgets have exploded. My last project for an iPhone game was well over
4million dollars.

3) Complexity is compounding. My last team (for a prototype) consisted of: AI
guy, graphics/C++ guy(s), gameplay guy, Art TEAM (vector and raster) and
project managers. The art pipelines alone will suck the budget dry.

4) Pay is low. Since you are starting fresh each project (see 5), your working
knowledge of the system is similar to someone new. Promotions, salary
increases, etc don't make any financial sense (see 1) unless you are a
rockstar. The new kids walking in usually burn out and quit because they don't
understand the massive shit show the industry is. EA's managers just grind
people until they can't walk. Disney is a sweatshop.

5) NOTHING is reused. After your second project, you quickly realize the AI
you created for fish has nothing todo with with your AI for a 3d shooter. The
asset pipeline you created for a soccer game doesn't translate over to a
racing game. Game companies are full of dead code repros. People try to
create/use repeatable platforms, but then the game designer guy will walk by
and say "Hey is that the newest unreal engine?". In games: Anything reused is
quickly spotted as reused. This is why games that have a good series going do
really well financially. GTA what like 15?

6) Success is low. After a few years into a project, someone will say: "But
its not... fun". Welp, good luck fixing that. Or plan on having it rot in some
terrible online store.

7) Rockstars. Executive: "OMG you wrote the AI for GTA2 in 1998??". Welp, this
guy is now your boss. AND, because games are almost always a luck play - this
"Rockstar" will teach you absolutely nothing.

My takeaway:

I have talked with guys in the game industry that have been in it 20+ years
and asked WTF. Basically, lifers are like high school teachers. They are
abused and underpaid: but they _love_ what they do.

~~~
ibejoeb
I've heard all of the horror stories about EA, but the author seems to have
enjoyed the premise of the experience at Ubisoft, e.g., good camaraderie, a
non-abusive environment. Sure, projects got canceled, but that happens in
every industry, especially creative.

Which one is the outlier, Ubisoft or EA? Is the whole games industry a mess,
or is EA just exceptionally bad?

~~~
sillysaurus3
Having worked at both a small-time and significant studio, I too can confirm
the whole industry is nuts, as the sibling comment says.

vvanders' comment is such a perfect illustration of the situation that you
should read and re-read it and then force yourself to believe it. I didn't.

None of this will really change the minds of a determined 19 year old to
become a gamedev, though. That's why gamedev is able to treat employees as if
they worked at a startup while giving none of the benefits. If one leaves,
there are ten young people who want to take their place, and are massively
excited to do so. For a few years.

~~~
vvanders
Yep, I've lost count of the people that I was unable to convince not to join
the industry that came back a few years later(hell I was one of them).

Sometimes you can only learn a fire is hot by getting your hand burned in the
flame.

------
endymi0n
> Since my very beginnings at Ubisoft, I knew I wouldn’t spend the rest of my
> days here. I already dreamt of starting my own indie company.

Well, then that was probably your dream job instead of Ubisoft.

~~~
joss82
"Dream job" can also be understood as "a job people usually dream about".

~~~
stronglikedan
In the context of the article, and made clear in the first paragraph, it was
definitely the author's dream job.

~~~
hguant
To be fair, dreams change. Sounds like the author's initial "oh shit I get to
work on <big title>" morphed into "I want ownership of my work."

They could also have meant game design/architecture was the dream, not
necessarily working at Ubisoft in particular. You're right though, it's a bit
unclear.

~~~
acveilleux
It sounds more like the romantic ideal of his dream turned into a very
different reality and he realized that what he was seeking all along
(ownership, significant contribution) just did not exist in AAA games.

~~~
hsod
except he said "since the very beginning"

------
chaostheory
> No matter what’s your job, you don’t have a significant contribution on the
> game. You’re a drop in a glass of water, and as soon as you realize it, your
> ownership will evaporate in the sun. And without ownership, no motivation.

A good description of a lot of big corp projects. Do people working on large
open source projects eventually feel the same way?

~~~
Dr_tldr
I've never really understood that attitude of "if it's not all mine, my
contribution doesn't matter."

Maybe it's just my own raging ego, but no matter how small my contribution is
to the whole, I remain absurdly proud of whatever I did.

I certainly hope that the guys working on AAA games feel the same way to the
point of annoying everyone they know: "You see that? You see the way the guard
rubs his stubble in his idle animation? Look at how realistically his fingers
make contact with his face! I did that, that was me! You're welcome!"

~~~
sjm-lbm
On some Pixar movie (Ratatouille, I think), one of the DVD extras was a set of
deleted scenes that happened to be the _entire_ work of individual animators -
basically they spent 18 months of their life working on that stubble, and the
whole guard was cut because that didn't work with the story.

That's an extreme, but something like that is possible for anyone working on a
sufficiently large project. I get how people like that could really feel like
their time was wasted - your assumption is that their contribution will be in
the final project in a small but interesting way, and that's not an assumption
that can always be made.

~~~
ChillyWater
I used to be on the Space Shuttle Primary Flight Software team in Houston.
Super motivating environment.

There was another independent team in Huntington Beach that wrote the Backup
Flight Software. Never used it in 34 years of flights.

Poor bastards ...

~~~
meagain20000
I'm pretty sured it was indeed used, at least as part of emergency drills. I
think that is pretty good, to know that your backup system works in case it is
ever needed.

------
this_user
This phenomenon is not exclusive to game development. Lots of people want to
work for large, prominent companies like Google or FB, dreaming of working on
cool projects. But the reality usually turns out to be much less glamorous.
Instead of being the guy who comes up with the next killer product or feature,
you will likely end up as a small cog in a huge, well-oiled machine,
optimising ads to increase some metric in the fifth decimal place.

~~~
yodsanklai
but (I assume) you make more money than elsewhere with better working
conditions, and a cool addition on your resume

~~~
frozenport
Nope. In C++ land, you can get the same 130k salary at a 30 person company,
that builds hardware devices.

~~~
minwcnt5
Google/FB engineers make a heck of a lot more than 130k, that's pretty much
base entry level before bonuses and equity grants.

~~~
ryandrake
Maybe a few outliers, but not all or even most.

------
mattmaroon
I hope this does not happen to him, but wait until he releases a game (that
might even be a really good one) and gets nowhere because 1,000 other people
released a game that week. It's a tough industry now! You probably appreciate
the indie side of it when you're in AAA, but I can tell you from experience
you appreciate the AAA side of it when you're in an indie!

------
lhnz
> "When your expertise is limited to, let’s say, art, level design,
> performances or whatever, you’ll eventually convince yourself that it’s the
> most important thing in the game."

This is my experience, too. Without autonomy and ownership across a whole
project it's very easy for people to get tunnel vision about what's valuable.
This causes general harm to both the team and the outcome of its project.

I'm not sure how to lessen the effect other than perhaps by making projects
small enough that they can be worked on by just a few people and using this
phase to establish a kernel of good ideas and team cohesion.

Perhaps there might be another structure where the tools that are provided to
the team are literally so good that the main project can be done by just a few
people working on everything together. (Idealistic vision here.)

~~~
bigchewy
I don't have the source handy but there is research showing that if you ask
individuals on a successful project the % that they contributed, the total of
the perceived contributions generally equals around 140%. I've wondered if
simply pointing out this issue might help reduce the inflated sense of
personal contribution

~~~
Marcus316
I wasn't able to find your particular point in my searching, but I did find a
paper from 2000 that came to a similar conclusion[1]

"This difference in perception has a potential of creating tension within the
team and disrupting the cooperation, because there is a possibility that every
single team member may feel to be undervalued by others and not receive his or
her due."

"The perception gap can be a threat to the team and its goals. Facing the gap
requires interpersonal skills on the part of the team management and team
members."

[1]
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=077...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=0778BDC8DBA5C04386CB70652FD1EB7F?doi=10.1.1.228.2618&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

------
chris_wot
I can well imagine this can occur in larger, non-games software development
projects. I wonder if it is the same?

I sort of suspect not. I am currently refactoring an (albeit important) part
of the LibreOffice codebase - the VCL font subsystem. Mostly it's reading the
code (in fact, 90% is reading and understanding the code), but it's kind of
satisfying looking at how changes to the code make things better and... more
_elegant_.

Perhaps this is just an Open Source thing. Or maybe I'm unusual in that I like
to focus on smaller modules and make them really good, then move on to the
next thing.

------
jnaour
Seems to be his first indie:
[http://openbargame.com/](http://openbargame.com/)

~~~
pavel_lishin
Looks very cool, but I'm bummed that it's not available yet - I'm afraid I'll
forget about it in a week.

~~~
Raphmedia
If you have a bad memory, you should look into mail reminder services. You
write something you want to be reminded of and they send you an email about it
later on.

Or simply a Google Calendar event.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Yeah, I ended up adding a Google Keep entry.

This definitely seems like the case where collecting email would be
appropriate - "Enter your email here to be reminded on the 28th", etc.

------
ckarmann
Congratulations for pursuing your dreams! I also work at a big game company,
not even on a game but on an internal technology: no player will ever see
directly the result of my contribution. I still feel great about my work
because of reasons not important here, but I totally understand what the
author says.

But feeling of being a little cog in the machine aside, some of what is said
here is about failure of management: communication problems, useless meetings,
bogus decision process, lack of visibility of who is impacted by a decision,
etc. It's true that big projects are more difficult to manage than small ones,
but in truth a bad management or bad coworker dynamics can destroy motivation
in big or small companies alike. I have worked in a few startups and two indie
game companies and all were plagued by mismanagement as much if not more than
my other experiences at a bank and at a big cell-phone company. I may have
been unlucky, but it may a simple truth about the programmer's job: working
with other people is hard and team dynamics is very important.

------
gnulnx
> No matter what’s your job, you don’t have a significant contribution on the
> game. You’re a drop in a glass of water, and as soon as you realize it, your
> ownership will evaporate in the sun. And without ownership, no motivation.

This is why I left my 'dream job' of work working on a AAA MMORPG. I came on
board early on as the first member of a 'NetOps' team, a senior linux systems
administrator, which later split off and grew into a number of very large,
very specialized teams. My loose definition of 'dream job' at that time was
'large scale' and 'video games'. Cool!

It took a few years for me to redefine what a 'dream job' really meant, and
being a drop in a bucket was not it, so I left and moved on (slowly) to
freelancing, and haven't looked back.

------
martimoose
I don't work in the videogame industry, but I can totally relate. I work in a
small website dev studio, and we interact with a lot of companies, both large
(though not huge) and small.

As soon as you get people working on a project that are too specialized, no
matter the size of the team, you inevitably get conflicting concerns. I think
it's very important for managers to understand what those concerns are to be
able to take the right decision.

I also think that even specialized people should have some knowledge of other
specializations (e.g. designers that understand programming, and vice versa).
On very large projects, this is impossible as there are just too many fields,
but still I value very much "general knowledge" for that reason.

Anyway, good luck Maxime in your endeavors.

------
cpsempek
I do not get why people, it seems, often use the "...or, how I learned to stop
worrying and..." in their blog post titles. Are they doing it as an homage to
the film Dr. Strangelove (I'm not sure if that was the originator of this
alternate/sub title phrase), or, are they doing it because it has become a
meme among bloggers?

If the latter, fine, at the worst they are unoriginal. If the former, then
they haven't ever seen the movie, or, don't understand the movie and the
absurdity of the title character nonetheless of "loving a bomb".

Or, this phrase is common and I erroneously associate its origin with the
film.

In every case but the last, it irks me, but for no good reason ultimately.

~~~
TillE
Yeah, lots of phrases get stripped of their interesting meaning as they become
tired second-hand cliches. It's not unusual to see someone quoting a quote of
a quote, completely unaware of the original source.

------
ergothus
This quote stood out to me:

"On large scale projects, good communication is – simply put – just
impossible. How do you get the right message to the right people? You can’t
communicate everything to everyone, there’s just too much information. There
are hundreds of decisions being taken every week. Inevitably, at some point,
someone who should have been consulted before making a decision will be
forgotten. This creates frustration over time."

This is an issue I've wrestled with over the years - too small a company and
your resources are limited, too large and progress mires, and it mires because
of communication.

------
shmerl
The problem of companies like Ubisoft is mass market approach. Big publishers
prefer commercial mass market art to good art. In result, more interesting
games come out from independent studios like inXile, Obsidian, CD Projekt Red
and others. Not sure how it looks from insider's standpoint, but from gamer's
standpoint, big publishers like Ubisoft and EA are plain boring and their
games can be compared to pulp fiction and you don't expect to see masterpieces
from them (coincidentally they are also most often plagued by DRM in contrast
with games from independent studios).

------
hacknat
Late to the party and this doesn't address what the OP said directly, but the
state of the video game industry actually makes me quite sad.

The last AAA game I played was Oblivion, which I couldn't finish. I haven't
really played a AAA game since, and have only played two video games all the
way through since (Braid, and Monument Valley).

When the OP talks about working on a project so big that no one person really
"grocks" the whole thing I can relate, but I also want to say "it shows".

IMO, the current state of AAA games is shit. I think the reason they are this
way have to do with what the OP is complaining about, the originating vision
of the game comes from Marketing not an artist, and no one person has vision
for the game. Maybe video games just have too many resources at there
disposal.

I think I read somewhere that either Ocarina of Time or Mario 64 had double or
triple the playable content of the released game and Miyamoto had a
perfectionist eye for the game and was merciless in what made the cut.

Resource constraints are a good thing, IMO, as it forces people to make a
razor focused product that trims the fat mercilessly.

Having unlimited resources is the enemy of good decision making, and it shows
in the current state of video games (and film too). Games and movies are just
too long/full these days.

------
dismal2
Fulfillment through structured 40hr+ a week labor is an illusion

------
the_common_man
Fantastic write up. I know this feeling all too well.

A bit related is when you work in big companies like Apple and Tesla. These
guys have a "hero" at the top. There is nothing you can do but wait for that
headline that talks about a feature you made and it was Elon Musk's doing or
Job's amazing leadership. I have nothing against these two but it is very
demotivating to work.

~~~
chippy
You should usually get the praise internally from the boss and all your peers
know it's down to you. But externally, and the public, you get nothing, and
the boss gets all the praise.

~~~
the_common_man
Yes and that's soul crushing (to me). Especially if the boss makes no mention
of you even in passing. The problem with BigCos is you can do nothing about
this, other than climbing the ladder. I feel small companies have a nice mix,
I know the developers of many startups by name and what they do because of the
very fact that they can come out and talk about their work.

------
jarjoura
So let me just throw this out there, we will always have to answer to someone.
Whether it's our middle manager in a big organization, VCs telling us how fast
we need to grow, or our demanding users because they are the only way to get
revenue.

All software written at this stage is small cogs on a much bigger platform
written by teams of brilliant people over the last 30-40 years.

I do think it's fair to say you want to work on actual interesting problems
and being one of 20-40 people working on a game engine is probably very
tedious. I imagine long code-review cycles since any tiny change could
destabilize the entire system several layers up.

Some people need big organization structure to produce their best work while
some people need the freedom to have infinite WFH days answering to users to
produce their own best.

~~~
clock_tower
Get financial independence! If you can support yourself with your investments
(I'm personally aiming for REITs, MLPs, and holding companies -- I want
dividends, not capital gains), you can work on whatever problems you like,
whether they pay or not.

------
davedx
I've worked for a couple of small games studios, and once for a big studio
working on a AAA game. The headcount observations resonate.. I remember our
teams growing, and growing, and growing, and each extra programmer detracted
from the "community" feeling of being part of a studio, and added to the
complexity of developing such a large code base with so many devs.

Compare that to small studios, where you can really feel like part of a
family. It's very different, and all these kinds of feelings are more intense
than other IT companies I've worked at. (Probably partly because of the extra
time you tend to spend there when working in the games industry...)

Having said that -- some of my best friends were made when working at the big
AAA studio! So it's not all bad.

------
emehrkay
This was a great read. I worked at a large web agency once and did some pretty
decent work. It is definitely rewarding to see people use something that you
worked hard on and to see it on tv and in magazines, etc. But that yearn to do
your own thing, blaze your own path is a feeling that I'm certain most people
who work in creative fields go though.

Sidenote: before he said that the small projects were cancelled, I assumed
that they were Evolve
([https://evolvegame.com/agegate/](https://evolvegame.com/agegate/)) (I don't
follow games close enough to know which studio makes which game).

I'm curious as to how he was able to, I assume, bootstrap a game company for a
year before releasing an iOS game.

------
dexwiz
Good luck to him. Going Indie is a bold choice, especially after Steam
Greenlight.

~~~
minimaxir
This is an odd comment as Steam Greenlight is currently one of the main
drivers of getting indie games exposure when it would be near impossible
otherwise.

Yes, Steam Greenlight has quality control issues, but it still has a purpose
of getting games to the store without going through a publisher.

The environment has been better-than-ever for indies, especially as increasing
costs make AAA games harder than ever to make. (in 2015 alone, we have Rocket
League, Ark: Survival Evolved, and Undertale)

~~~
Drakim
I guess the idea is that Steam Greenlight has grown the indie market and thus
given him more competition.

~~~
Zikes
I don't think it's necessarily so zero-sum. The videogame market is
continuously growing, and competitively-priced indie games can still be a big
success.

~~~
adnzzzzZ
You don't even need to be a big success like the previously mentioned
Undertale, Rocket League or Ark. For small teams there's an extremely viable
middle ground between the game not selling anything and it going huge.

~~~
vlunkr
Exactly, AAA games have to make back their multimillion dollar budgets, indies
don't have that same pressure.

~~~
Zikes
Gunpoint and Risk of Rain are really good low-budget games that fall into that
middle ground category. I'm fairly certain each were made by a single
developer, but have been very successful.

~~~
vlunkr
Risk of Rain happens to be one of my favorite games! I'll have to check out
Gunpoint.

~~~
the_af
And if you like Gunpoint, don't forget Ronin, also indie and also made by a
single dev (and with a general aesthetic similar to Gunpoint, but different
gameplay).

------
richerlariviere
> The team spirit was sooo good! Our motto was “on est crinqués!”, which more
> or less translates to “we’re so hyped!”. During our play sessions, we were
> so excited we were screaming and shouting all over the place. I think it
> bothered colleagues working next to us, but hell, we had so much fun. I
> didn’t feel too guilty.

Wow. IMO A dream job is a balance between having fun like you described and
working on complex problems. I love how you have written this paragraph.

------
ninjakeyboard
I went to business school instead of tech because I too dream of running the
head of the ship one day. Tech will always be an interest but I thirst for
freedom.

~~~
cheetos
What's your definition of freedom? Freedom to make major business decisions or
freedom from obligations and responsibilities?

Running your own thing rarely means more free time than if you were working as
a tech cog -- it often means much less free time.

~~~
ninjakeyboard
the former :) isn't the ability to make decisions, to steer and to lead a sort
of freedom? it is to me. You're right though - I attended fi.co for example
and they scare people away day 1 with the expectation that a business owner
needs to bleed all of their lifeblood into the business.

~~~
jib
Not really, to me. There are (in my experience) very few companies where you
have one genius spending most his time making decisions and a bunch of minions
just implementing those genius decisions.

If I was to estimate I would say that for every 1 hour you spend making big
genius decisions, you spend 99 hours convincing people why those decisions are
right, listening to why they are not right, listening to what you should be
doing instead, writing reports or communications, listening to what issues
people have...

------
azraomega
tl;dr - feeling no ownership doing somebody else's big projects, he quit.

------
MollyR
Wow, cool stuff. I wish them the best.

I often had dreams of doing the same thing, especially inspired by this guy
[http://www.konjak.org/](http://www.konjak.org/) .

It seemed like overkill for me as I could never get a team together.

Though with rise of VR, I've been looking into unity3d. How cool would it be
to build your own world, then jump in and visit it.

------
robertndc
There are no dream jobs, just jobs or dreams:

. Build your own company and you will finish accepting profit as flagship.

. Find a job where you lead the direction and internal politics will make you
adapt to a whole way against their life goals.

. Make an open source project that no one will use.

------
durpleDrank
I used to work beside UBISOFT here in Montreal. I'd here them talk about
videogames during lunch time and it was pitiful. It seemed like having colored
hair and geek-chic was more important than actually knowing anything about
videogames.

------
Mendenhall
We are all just cogs. What I learned is no matter what sized cog I am compared
to others, just make sure my interaction with the other cogs is as smooth as
possible. I take pride in doing good work no matter how small or large.

------
nshung
This reminds me of this TED talk.[1]

1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aH2Ppjpcho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aH2Ppjpcho)

------
iolothebard
Put the guitar on ebay/reverb. Or just send it to me!

Best of luck :-)

------
listic
How large was the development team of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, at its peak?
Is the overall budget known, as well?

I wonder how big the _really big_ nowadays is.

~~~
ido
I don't know about ACS, but GTA5 had 1,000 people working on it at some point:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Grand_Theft_Aut...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Grand_Theft_Auto_V#Overview)

------
workitout
For me my dream job can be writing CRUD web software as long as people need it
and appreciate my work.

------
oDot
How does this compare to Valve? Maybe having no deadlines can ease the
specialization issue

------
bronz
Make sure to check out his upcoming game, Openbar. It looks really, really
good.

