The Costco Connection - September/October 2009

“The goal is quite simple: to develop better games for consumers.”

—Yannis Mallat

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 20

an obvious language affinity,” says Mallat, a 35-year- old French native who joined Ubisoft—and the Montreal office—in 1999 as a project manager. “But I think it was a natural choice. The city had many things going for it.”

A city on the forefront

In many ways, the opening of the Ubisoft studio in 1997 was the spark that ignited the VG-making craze in Montreal. Set up on trendy Boulevard St-Laurent downtown, the shop hired dozens of local artistic animators, who learned the tricks of the trade working on licensed products from Playmobil and Disney, including the Jungle Book and Donald Duck video games. “Most of them had never made games before,” Mallat tells The Connection. “The whole goal was to give them a chance to learn how.”

studio, which is by far the largest of its kind in the city, accounting for roughly half of the 4,500 VG creators who currently work at some 50 studios of all sizes in Montreal. Notably, Ubisoft has hired about 20 per cent of the 1,500 students who have graduated from the National Animation and Design Centre since it opened in 1992, and is sponsoring game-making programs at several colleges around the province.

That exercise, it seems, paid off in spades. In 2002, for example, the Montreal studio was given the mandate to develop the newest version of Ubisoft’s biggest-selling game, Prince of Persia. Titled The Sands of Time, the product—the first one the company made for home gaming consoles, as opposed to computer versions—“revitalized the franchise,” says Mallat.

“[Ubisoft] is the proverbial 800-pound gorilla in the Quebec gaming market [which generated $500 million in production revenue in 2007],” says Wanda Meloni, founder and market analyst with M2 Research, a leading American research firm that tracks digital entertainment, video games, 3-D and console trends around the world. “And being in the same city with so many other companies makes it easier for them to advance their capabilities further, like with the Avatar project.”

Keeping an eye on the prize

That same year, the first big Ubisoft title to be wholly produced at the Montreal studio hit store shelves: Splinter Cell, a stealth game that sold 6 million copies for Microsoft’s Xbox. “That’s huge,” says Mallat. “It was what we call a ‘system seller’—a game so successful that it helps to drive console sales.” Since then, the Montreal studio has produced a string of best-selling titles, including Assassin’s Creed (action/adventure), the Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six games (a tactical squad shooter game), the Far Cry games (a first-person shooter) and the newly released Splinter Cell: Conviction.

Mallat can be excused for feeling a little giddy about the company he’s been keeping these days. But he says that meeting and working with Steven Spielberg and other Hollywood heavyweights, such as James Cameron and Peter Jackson, for the development of cutting-edge video games based on their latest movies hasn’t gone to his head.

“It’s a creative and collaborative effort aimed at finding ways for two mediums to complement each other,” says Mallat, who sold Cameron two years ago on the idea of joining with Ubisoft and a Montreal partner—3-D specialist Sensio—for the development of a game in conjunction with the production of Avatar, but with a different storyline. “Fortunately [Cameron] shared our vision that, in order to be good, we needed the lead time [and] the artistic freedom to develop a really good game.”

IMAGES COURTESY OF UBISOFT

supplier profile

Name: Yannis Mallat, CEO

Company: Montreal studio of

Ubisoft

Employees: 1,900

Address: Ubisoft Montreal

5505 Boulevard St-Laurent

At the same time, the Montreal studio has become the flagship of Ubisoft’s 23 studios worldwide. Ubisoft plugged into the West Coast scene earlier this year through the acquisition of Action Pants, a Vancouver-based studio. Opened in 2006 and already recognized as a top employer and an up-and-comer in the Canadian West Coast’s growing software scene, the studio employs 100-plus VG developers who are already putting the finishing touches on their first product for Ubisoft: a licensed sports franchise (Academy of Champions) that the French VG maker is designing for Wii.

Montreal, QC H2T 1S6

The challenge now, says Mallat, is for the studio to maintain a healthy balance between the production of licensed products and the development of in-house brands—particularly in regard to VG versions of upcoming movies. “VG can explore the universe that directors create in their movies in a whole new way through interactivity, which is unique to VG,” says Mallat. “Our vision of convergence is that by crossing processes, sharing tools and having people with different skills working on the same products, we will reach the next level. It’s complicated, but the goal is quite simple: to develop better games for consumers.” C

Phone: 514-490-2000

Web site: www.ubi.com

Items sold at Costco and

Costco.ca: Most Ubisoft brand-name and licensed video game products, including four new titles this fall: Splinter Cell,

Academy of Champions,

Rabbids Go Home and Teenage

Mutant Ninja Turtles

Other titles created by Ubisoft for Wii include My Fitness Coach, Hell’s Kitchen, Six Flags Fun Park, Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party and Shaun White Snowboarding.