-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
[Libération] Exposé on Michel Ancel’s brutal and demoralizing management style at Ubisoft (depression, burnout, and more)
- Thread starter Orbulon
- Start date
It's a good thing I lost interest in most Ubisoft games this generation, makes it much easier to avoid buying their games going forward.
Haven't liked the new AC direction, Watch Dogs never interested me (I did get 1 + 2 for free, but never played them), none of the Tom Clancy games have interested me, etc.
Only games I've truly enjoyed from them this generation was Mario+Rabbids and Starlink.
I just don't see them investing more years into this game that's a sequel to at best a cult classic, but that most people don't even remember these days.
Haven't liked the new AC direction, Watch Dogs never interested me (I did get 1 + 2 for free, but never played them), none of the Tom Clancy games have interested me, etc.
Only games I've truly enjoyed from them this generation was Mario+Rabbids and Starlink.
I'm guessing the game's new direction will be into a garbage can.
I just don't see them investing more years into this game that's a sequel to at best a cult classic, but that most people don't even remember these days.
I loved BG&E 1, and since that came out I've been through school, worked in the industry, and turned 30.
But I really just want the sequel to be cancelled. Games in "dev" this long with nothing to show are not worth the suffering, the wait, and the impossible expectations. A lot of really unhealthy behavior around the entire project (including the sneak peeks that cost a lot to make but amount to nothing.)
But I really just want the sequel to be cancelled. Games in "dev" this long with nothing to show are not worth the suffering, the wait, and the impossible expectations. A lot of really unhealthy behavior around the entire project (including the sneak peeks that cost a lot to make but amount to nothing.)
BG&E is one of my favorite games of all time, and I was afraid Ancel was a part of the shit culture that's been exposed at Ubi. This is so disappointing to hear. Hopefully the BG&E2 team are working under much better conditions at this point, wherever they are.
Yeah I didn't want to say it in the original thread about Ancel leaving, but it seemed far too coincidental that he would just drop out of the company to play with animals precisely around the time Ubisoft was finally being scrutinized for it's abuses. Good riddance.
Rayman, Rayman 2, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Rabbids Go Home, King Kong, Beyond Good & Evil, Rayman Origins, Rayman Legends. He also contributed to Rayman 3 (console version) and Tonic Trouble. He is amazingly talented, but he probably should not have had a three digits sized team. I will very much miss him, though, because him and Gregg Mayles are probably the two western developers I have the most respect for in terms of quality of output.
Everyone else made the same conclusion, but I can't help tying this to his retirement.
The section about how he'll psychologically build you and up then tear you down sounds a lot like the strategies you'd haer from pick up artists and drill sergeants, so I'm also left wondering if he was trying to do the same thing that they were. They use that kind of psychological abuse to break people's confidence and rebuild them so that they're reliant on the approval of the other - the pick-up artist or their superior - in order to feel validated.
The section about how he'll psychologically build you and up then tear you down sounds a lot like the strategies you'd haer from pick up artists and drill sergeants, so I'm also left wondering if he was trying to do the same thing that they were. They use that kind of psychological abuse to break people's confidence and rebuild them so that they're reliant on the approval of the other - the pick-up artist or their superior - in order to feel validated.
The game was made as a Wii U exclusive and the team crunched to have it finished, only to then get told that they now have to port to PS360 with extra content and the Wii U version would be delayed by six months. I am farily certain that wasn't Ancel's decision though.
Cory from GoW at least looks like a caretaker. A big "it seems" because I don' heard anything bad about him so far (hopefully he's cool, for his team, the Santa Monica studio, and the franchise).
im pretty sure when referring to the 2017 "in engine demo" this is whats being referenced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjrzemJvUCU
and not the cgi trailer..
and not the cgi trailer..
I don't remember hearing that, but I could easily be forgetting. What I remember of Molyneux is that he was generally known as a nice guy, but he wanted to impress people too hard, and that led him to make promises just to get a crowd reaction which means he'd cause scope creep at the drop of a hat. Bad project management in a very textbook sense.
He had a pm that kept him in line if I'm not mistaken vs a full control situation.
What''s a PM?
That sucks... Now Ancel is saying that most of the accusations toward him are false, and that he's going to sue people. Oh, well.... Poor Rayman...
Sorry project manager. I can't recall her name at the moment but she def helped that project a lot of I remember correctly
This talks about it
What convinced God of War’s director to return to the series
God of War took five years to create, and its director took over a decade to return to the series. Here’s why.
www.polygon.com
I don't think it was Ancel's call to delay the game but he certainly was privy to that info (because, again, he's a close friend to Guillemot and Hascoet and people who made that call) AND STILL continued to crunch the team until the very last day of the deadline.
Also the development of Rayman Legends was a shitshow and it's a miracle it even managed to get done.
Between that and ACIII you couldn't tell which was gonna be the biggest shitshow 6 months from the initial deadline.
And from what I've heard, the issues raised by Libération with his management style for BG&E2 is so far from being new he has that reputation.
Hopefully Chahi is a cool guy who isn't into using dev bones to make his projects....
In a way it's kinda like being a Silent Hill fan, your best days are behind you and they both are horror stories for different reasons.
Yumi Yang, she's now the head of SSM.Sorry project manager. I can't recall her name at the moment but she def helped that project a lot of I remember correctly
This talks about it
What convinced God of War’s director to return to the series
God of War took five years to create, and its director took over a decade to return to the series. Here’s why.
Thank you! I'm not much into the process of games development.Sorry project manager. I can't recall her name at the moment but she def helped that project a lot of I remember correctly
This talks about it
What convinced God of War’s director to return to the series
God of War took five years to create, and its director took over a decade to return to the series. Here’s why.
Yeah a lot of underlying things It all still project management but then you have all these roles and it sounds like Ancel was playing a dual role and sounds like he had no check to him and it's easy to see how these things get bad on projects. Morale is a huge thing in project management and managing that it had a great impact on how well a project outcome is. That's why shit like crunch etc can also just destroy the team.
I understand that things can get intense at times in these environments but this is something else. What the fuck, Michel.
Massively bummed to hear this.
Massively bummed to hear this.
I was afraid Ancel was an abusive boss as well after everything else that has been revealed of Ubisoft recently, but kind of hoped the silence about his team/studio in particular (until now) and relatively small team sizes he had worked with meant that maybe he didn't have to be an asshole.
Oh well, shit sucks.
Oh well, shit sucks.
I mean, he speaks like the employees should had spoke with him when things started to go south. But if you are a good boss (no matter the job), you see when people start to get anxious and depressed. I had 2 employers how were the worst, they always blamed me whenever things didn't work out, and every time I needed help with a certain aspect of a task, they said "I'm busy".
Yup exactly. I think it sounds like he was more wrapped up in his "vision" and people saw how he was acting and never felt like they could tell him anything on top of others condoning the behavior. Just a snowball effect. Guys like him sometimes get huge heads because of what they made and have excessive hubris. It's sad. But I hope the people working in these projects are more relieved and can work in a better environment. It seems like he spent way more time with BGE2 than WiLD Which is probally why we don't hear much from the other side of things. And maybe sony pushed him out earlier
This most be a heaven for clickbaiters. Iam sure working on a big project is tough for all sides.
Michel is explaining himself here, sounds like the newspaper didn't even bother to reach out to him: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFkrhX3KXu6/
Michel is explaining himself here, sounds like the newspaper didn't even bother to reach out to him: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFkrhX3KXu6/
From the latest Libération articles, we know that Ancel was the type of guy to badmouth you in meetings after telling you you were doing awesome.
You don't really go to someone who has this reputation for help about anything.
The OP literally has a link to Libération's interview with Ancel.
WTF are you talking about.
"I abused people working under me to the point they burned out & quit, buy hey, I felt a little sad afterwards" isn't the great defense you think it is.
I really fear for the team well-being, and for the future of Rayman. It seems like the only light on the darkness that is Ubisoft is Davide Soliani.
Yep. Terrible management style. Can't trust him yeah no wonder it was so bad.
Read. OP.
Not even going by the fact that Libération is the outlet which brought to us most of Ubisoft's toxic management stories all Summer.
And Ancel's response fucking sucks.
That's a atrocious defense, "it wasn't me it was those damn managers not doing their jobs!" c'mon.
This is disappointing.
Ultimately I see this as a failure of senior management. They ignored continual warnings of his bad management and created some kind of bizarre rube goldberg machine to keep him involved. Just astonishingly badly run.
Ultimately I see this as a failure of senior management. They ignored continual warnings of his bad management and created some kind of bizarre rube goldberg machine to keep him involved. Just astonishingly badly run.
I feel people like this tell people their ideas are shit, reframe or retell the ideas to their boss, and get all the credit.
It goes with what is said in Libération.
In cases like this, if you can't bypass this manager or box him out you work around him.
It's really an issue with anyone untouchable in a corp structure.
A manager who has an untouchable employee ends up giving that employee tasks that can fail or be in limbo.
If that untouchable is a higher up, that's where it gets fun and basically what we have here.
Kinda like Bioware, they had a disfunctional working structure but it worked so far so there was no need to change any of it until it broke down and consequences start being seen.
In the game industry, consequences are never about employees' health though and that's a goddamn shame.