33bits

Cita:CVG: Ubisoft Montreal is a studio that's very good at finding the sweet spot between core and massmarket audiences. Do you approach the balance differently to other publishers?

Yannis Mallat: First, thank you for the complement. I see at least two reasons; the first one is that at Ubisoft we have marketing guys that are embedded in the development teams. We used to call them 'marketing game managers'. Before we created that position it was sometimes difficult to make the creatives aware of the importance of market pertinence - how we talk to the mainstream, which topics are relevant and how we package it.

With that position we were able to tackle that aspect of the content from day one, within the conception team. That proved to be really helpful. In a nutshell, those guys are responsible for putting a little marketing into the creative conception work. What they also do is help the purely operational marketing guys, who are responsible for promotion and other stuff, to really understand what the creatives are doing in terms of meaning.

It helps to articulate the premise of the game and to create this alignment between creation and marketing. That's why after that we talk with only one voice when it comes the time to release the game. I don't want to talk for other publishers, but at least at Ubisoft what you will hear from a marketing guy is the same thing you'll hear from a production guy. That momentum is making sure that we have this mainstream appeal from day one.

The second reason - and I don't talk for other companies - is that at Ubisoft don't have a CTO (chief technical officer) but we do have a CCO (chief creative officer). He's a brilliant guy who is very close to Yves, the CEO of the group, and he spends a lot of time with us within the studios and helps the teams to make sure that Yves's vision is understood within the teams and vice versa.

What the teams want to do as well is carried up to Yves, who is the decision maker sometimes on the big projects of course. That helps to make sure that marketing is on board, because maybe sometimes they would have to say something, but because it's Ubisoft and the way we work we think is a good value proposition for the creatives.

Ubisoft ha incluido a gente de marketing en sus equipos de desarrollo. Eso ayuda a inculcar la importancia del mercado, a elegir los temas oportunos y cómo se empaqueta todo. También ayuda a las otras personas externas de marketing para entender lo que los creativos hacen.

Además dos de los jefazos de Ubisoft comunican su visión a los equipos y hasta toman decisiones en los grandes proyectos.