Recent information has come to light suggesting that Mike Laidlaw - creative director for the Dragon Age series for a good eight years - most likely left gaming mega-company Ubisoft because a King Arthur-inspired game (code-named Avalon) he had conceptualized got shot down.
Actually, said game apparently got shot down multiple times throughout 2019, as Laidlaw and his team who were working on Avalon tried to re-conceptualize its themes and settings in hopes of gaining the approval of the guy in charge. Yes, because there was one guy in charge of creative decision-making - chief creative officer, Serge Hascoët. After a series of re-pitches the game was ultimately canceled completely around Fall last year, and Laidlaw left Ubisoft in January this year, without having released any games at all.
According to some people who were on the Avalon team, the game had some great potential and was humming along quite nicely before its cancellation. It was meant to be a big-budget role-playing adventure game themed around King Arthur and his Round Table, set in a “sword-and-sorcery fantasy world full of knights and legends.” It was also set to feature a cooperative multiplayer world similar to Capcom’s Monster Hunter series.
From the information gathered from both past and current employees at Ubisoft, it looks like the game was vetoed because Hascoët himself didn’t like its setting. He was also evidently setting the bar particularly high, saying that if they were going to make a fantasy game, it had to be “better than Tolkien.”
While it’s one thing to have high standards for a new AAA title - especially if it’s set to be yet another fantasy-inspired game - the fact that the ultimate yay or nay was being given by one guy with “an unusual amount of control over content” is what is responsible for all the eyebrows being raised over this whole thing.
The norm amongst other game publishers is rather to have a team of individuals who are responsible for making big creative decisions. Cowen & Co. analyst Doug Creutz says that “vesting all that power in a single person is risky.”
But earlier this month, Hascoët resigned from Ubisoft anyway, following the string of sexual misconduct allegations that surfaced amongst employees at the company. Hascoët himself was accused of directly fuelling a “frat-house-like culture.” Besides that, he seemed prone to alienating high-profile employees and rejecting new creative ideas that held great potential.
For the time being, chief executive officer Yves Guillemot will be filling Hascoët’s chief creative officer position at Ubisoft.
Source: Bloomberg
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