But in 2017, behind the beautiful trailer and the long sequence of play that begins in a futuristic city of Indian inspiration and ends with a dizzying unzoom in space, there is nothing or so little. "The videos were made by hand, in rush, under Michel's control," explains one developer. Everything has obviously been thrown away since then. Ganesha City, which Ancel absolutely wanted us to do with a completely stupid level of detail, we just came out three years later, and we've already redone it four or five times. Knowing that you have to do several planets, you can imagine the absurdity of this kind of reasoning." When BGE2 shines in the eyes of the world, the teams are only at the concept stage and are struggling with tools that are far from being finalized, such as this engine created for the occasion at Ancel's express request. But the most complicated thing is the constant changes of direction imposed by this omnipotent creative director. No decision, however small, can be made without his approval. Developers, designers, and artists move forward, preparing for the work sites by following the boss's initial instructions before waiting for his feedback. "Michel needs the ideas to be his own. He often prefers to improvise something of his own rather than listen to the team and look at the structured work that has been done at his request". Weeks or months of work are regularly swept away in seconds. "He's able to explain to you that you're a genius, that your idea is great, and then disassemble you in meetings by saying you're a piece of ****, that your work is worthless, and not talk to you for a month. He's someone who has a creative process that is based on erosion, erosion of his vision and erosion of the people around him."
A considerable amount of the team's energy is mobilized by this permanent knitting / unknitting. Surprise delays in one department block another. This volatility is not only due, according to our witnesses, to creative surges, but also to a need to shine, to always be the last to make a mark. "When he was talking to the press, we took notes because he was always amazed, he was always shining on the outside, he was inventing things and coming up with ideas that became guidelines. And it could concern points that we had been stuck on for months waiting for indications," explains a project manager.
Everyone recognizes that Ancel is in his role when he cuts, deletes, changes gears. The problem comes less from the reversals themselves than from their unexplained, arbitrary nature, so much so that the idea sets in that he doesn't want to create a game with the team, but in spite of it or over it. "Faced with a concrete problem, a leader must show leadership, but not provide the answer. Otherwise, the "little hands" have the impression that they are useless and find themselves dispossessed of their work," explains another employee who is also dispossessed. "We're asked to take on big challenges and we're being hindered, which is absurd," says one team member.
As the project stretches in length without showing any tangible progress, psychological wear and tear is gaining a staff yet experienced. Faced with a creative director who doesn't suffer from contradiction, one witness tells us that he held out because he no longer put any affectation into his work - not simple when you are told that you are doing a "passionate job". Others collapse. Depressions, burn-outs, requests for transfers or resignations. "Around me, I've seen a good dozen people go on sick leave, probably more... Meeting people with tears in their eyes, it happens often. It's the first time I've seen that at Ubi," confided another veteran. A statement shared by all our witnesses. Statistically, there would be nothing alarming for management," explains the Video Game Workers Union (STJV), which launched, since last week, branches in Montpellier and throughout Ubisoft, a company that until now has been very resistant to union initiatives. Before tempering: "But a lot of people are exfiltrated from BGE2 before collapsing and thus no longer fit into the counts". Other witnesses also state that some employees "would like to leave but don't dare for fear of being sapped at the time of the evaluations, of being perceived as cowardly". "A justified fear", according to STJV.
The presence of Michel Ancel is all the more questionable since the Ubisoft superstar has negotiated with management to work only part-time. He devotes his mornings to BGE2 before going to work, in the afternoon, on Wild, his other game at the Wild Sheep studio he founded (financed by competitor Sony). A pass that makes you rage within Ubisoft Montpellier. So much so that in May 2017, Yves Guillemot was singled out for this special treatment at a Ubisoft EC meeting. The CEO's response: "Someone of this caliber can change people's perception of Ubisoft [...]. Michel Ancel has a status equivalent to that of other stars in the industry, which is very difficult to change. It's up to employee representatives and human resources to find ways to protect the people who work with him". Two months before BGE2 became official, the principle was laid down: Ancel will remain at the head of the project whatever the cost. It will be repeated many times to the various managers who alert Yves Guillemot to the human cost of the project.
"Yes, there is a clear desire on the part of Yves and Ubisoft to give autonomy," Michel Ancel told Libération. Has there been too much of it? I don't know [...]. It's all exacerbated by the size of the project for a studio that has never done anything on this scale. The last big games in Montpellier were done with 30 or 40 people, now we're talking about 250 people with collaborations from everywhere. People want to work as before, they want their comfort zone, they lose their bearings. We'd love to work all the time on the skills acquired in the game before. Maybe there's been too many changes all at once, the size, the R & D, too many new things."
It's impossible to argue against the quasi-subsidiary relationship that Guillemot and Ancel forged in the early 1990s, when the heart of Ubi Soft (the original name of the company) was in Carentoir in the Morbihan region of France. The 13 million copies sold of Rayman installed in the CEO's mind the idea of giving carte blanche to creative people in general and to Ancel in particular. So on BGE2, "we organize ourselves so that people don't hurt themselves too much when they fall". The entire structure is designed to protect the teams from their creative director, this "necessary evil". Around the ships, cities, characters, we set up independent "squads" in which only one person is allowed to talk with Ancel. Preferably someone the author of Rayman has known for a long time. This should allow the "little hands" to be less exposed and to concentrate on the points that have received the imprimatur from the creative director. "This pole structure, I believed in it at first. They wanted to set up a transversal system, except that we remained in the mentality of a pyramidal operation. So it can't work. The poles compete with each other, there are turf wars, and you end up with an immeasurable number of managers." The device that is supposed to preserve people becomes in turn a source of discomfort.
In the summer of 2017, Jean-Marc Geffroy arrives "on a mission commissioned to serve as Michel's opponent". Creative director on the Ghost Recon license, more interested in gameplay, combat and the player's sensations than in narration and the construction of the world that occupies Ancel, Geffroy is "a loudmouth who's part of the family". The new game director has the full confidence of Serge Hascoët, then head of Ubisoft's creative team. Rather than breaking everything, he multiplied the work groups and put people at their head who had no special relationship with the creator of Rayman. "Every time a new senior manager arrives, he questions the methods," Michel Ancel explains today. It upsets. I can't paint an idyllic picture of this relationship and, yes, the team suffers as a result." Quite a symbol: the creative director is not coming to Los Angeles to present BGE2's advances at the E3 video game mass in 2018.
The relationship with Geffroy turned sour and Ancel distanced himself from the studio. "Michel, who used to be present two mornings a week, now only spends a small half-day here and there," explains one employee. Nevertheless, we are still chasing after the stamps of a creative director, which we have to be careful not to make him feel like he is losing control. But he finally called Yves Guillemot: "It's no longer my game. At the beginning of 2019, taking note of the impasse in which the project had reached after six years of development, the CEO and Serge Hascoët arrived in Montpellier ready to "kill" BGE2. The team won a one-year reprieve, conditional on the delivery of a "first playable", a playable sequence supposed to give, on a city-wide scale, a glimpse of the finished game. Ancel more or less disappears from the traffic and his voice is only heard through the IP ("intellectual property") team, in charge of establishing the universe in the broadest sense and its multimedia declinations (notably a film for Netflix).
A third creative leader is added to fill the gaps in the artistic side. "Someone who had vowed to no longer work with Michel Ancel. We're now down to three directors who can't manage themselves. Ultimate comfort..." A "board" emerges, a rather classic board of directors on such large construction sites, but which in Montpellier is perceived as an ivory tower lost in endless meetings from which nothing filters out. Far, far away from the horizontal management praised by Ubisoft. An employee: "To try to alleviate the Ancel problem, they sent us some big names, others of these "talents" with oversized egos and execrable behaviors caught up in a barely concealed superhero syndrome, all convinced that it would be them and them alone who would save BGE2". Although invisible, Ancel remains the favorite topic of conversation for a traumatized team, even if it means taking all the blame.
Ubisoft's management was keen to share with us excerpts from surveys conducted at regular intervals with the BGE2 team. Of course, there are ups and downs in development," writes game producer Guillaume Brunier. Today, our ups are more and more ups and our downs are less and less downs". "Yes, our producer is a pollster," laughs one employee. The six graphs commented on underscore an attachment to BGE2 that corresponds to what we observed during our interviews. However, how can we give credit to this "fun and friendly work atmosphere" curve, which sometimes reaches 100% positive responses? Not much explanation for the 30% abstention rate - far from neutral - and nothing about the Ancel case. "For the first few months, I answered. Now I abstain," comments one employee. When the figures were not in their favor, there was always a justification and the processing of the data did not lead to anything concrete".
So far, our witnesses are unanimous in saying that this year 2019 will be different, with everything accelerating on the production side. The game is moving forward, but it is not painless. Some report bloodshed, brutality in the language of chieftaincy, lack of team spirit. "The only way out of this is for us to accept the fact that, by definition, the board is right. They say, we execute. Where it gets complicated is when they disagree with each other. The further away from them, the better off we are." Others focus on this "first playable" to protect themselves, even if it means ignoring the pain around them. "We group together between those "not too tired", the new ones who don't care about Michel, and we cling to the objectives."
Validated in the spring, the demo allows to get the official passage in production and to glimpse a game. A short period of euphoria, showered by the Covid-19 and the switch to teleworking, which does not facilitate an already deficient communication. The revelations around the "Edito" service published in Libération drive the nail in. "One realizes that the passe-droits do not only concern Michel Ancel. Until then, we used to deal with them, today we know that it is systemic, that Michel Ancel is everywhere." While Yves Guillemot promises a big clean-up and more diversity, the board, made up of 18 men, suddenly opens up to a woman and discussion groups are set up in Montpellier. The fear of a return of Michel Ancel, whose ghost still weighs on the teams, does not disappear for all that. Even though he has been absent for months, there is anxiety at the idea that he might reappear and throw away the accumulated work. "With the revelations about Ubisoft, the sky opened up. Until then, the Ancel problem had existed, but there were always things that came before - the stock market price, the timing of game releases, and so on. Now, at last, it was going to be a priority. "The Parisian management might take the team's wishes into account. Instead, at the end of August, Guillemot reaffirmed that Ancel's presence was not negotiable. Incomprehension and disappointment with a CEO that everyone is nevertheless trying to excuse.
Michel Ancel's hara-kiri on his return from vacation amazed everyone. Most are unaware that he is under investigation within Ubisoft, following internal complaints. He explained himself at length to Libération that same evening. His departure is said to be linked to a need for a change of scenery after thirty years of playing video games. He acknowledges the suffering and tensions, but if you listen to him, they are due to the excessive scale of Beyond Good and Evil 2: "Of course, a person in burn-out is terrible," he says. Of course someone who stops a project after several years, it's a part of their life that goes away. I'm not devaluing that, but you have to consider the context of such a creation, its ambition, its complexity. Maybe that's what can be questioned, indeed [...]. But we signed on to put ourselves in danger. I have all the more empathy for these people because I am one of them." The team breathes a sigh of relief. Ancel's influence today boils down to a simple sheet of paper on which the original concept is condensed into eight maxims. Recruitment is accelerating, and the opportunity to start afresh and finally team up is emerging. For the veterans, the question remains: do they still want to play again for two or three years and "finish the damn game, because it's a great project"?
Originally Posted by Ubisoft
An Update on Beyond Good & Evil 2
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