When we were told that while spending our semester abroad in the cold climate of Canada, we would be participating in a game competition that lasted only 10 weeks between 21 teams from schools across Canada, I figured it would be a nice experience to compliment our time abroad. What I was not prepared for, was meeting the CEO of Ubisoft Montréal, several 12 hour work sessions, and all of the complications that designing for an audience would bring to the table. Needless to say, the experience from start to finish was more than I was expecting.
When we first arrived in Montréal for our 2019 spring semester study abroad program, we already had our team for the Ubisoft Game Competition ready to go. I was one of two designers, and my roommate Mitch, as the producer of the whole operation. Besides that, we had two artists, and three programmers that were ready to tackle this project. The very first week that we were in Montréal, we had an information meeting where Ubisoft was set to announce the theme of this years game. Every year, the game competition chooses a theme that the teams must solely focus on for the direction of their game. Years past have included themes like "Change the world", and other abstract but thought provoking themes.
We still didn't know too much; our school was the only one from the U.S. that was allowed to join the competition. All of the other schools were primarily french speaking schools from all over Quebec. The reason they allowed us to participate is because of an opportunity that we got with our study abroad package. Still, we were excited to get underway.
As we sat huddled as a team of 8, we listened to the sea of French words cascading from the other teams around us. We all speculated on what we thought the theme for this year would be, and what games we could make based off of our ideas. Before too long, the presentation began, and we eagerly turned, eyes glued to the front, awaiting the theme. After a brief introduction, they announced that this years theme for the 2019 Ubisoft Game Competition would be... Spectacle! When I first heard the word, my mind started to race a million miles a minute, jumping from carnival, to colors, to a pair of reading spectacles.
But Ubisoft wasn't done.
For on the next slide, something they had never tried before, a new requirement for all of our games to adhere to. Audience integration. What? Like an audience also playing the game with everyone else? Puzzled, I turned to Mitch, but he just shrugged, as confused as I was. Little did we know, that one seemingly small requirement would terrorize us and shape our game from the ground up.
When we got back to campus, we immediately began to brainstorm ideas. A platformer set inside a theater where the audience controls the crowd throwing tomatoes, an open world parkour game where the player can face off against breakdancer teams generated by the audience, the list went on. And the longer it did, the crazier the ideas got. But, like any development process, we had to prototype our ideas and test their merit.
After a few mediocre prototypes, we eventually created what would later be known as Escape Artist. Our take on a dungeon-crawler where we wanted to emphasize the spectacle of a heist. The idea came from a joke about an Oceans 8 style game, where the player had to steal art from an art show. At first we weren't sure about the idea, but after prototyping and some good feedback, we decided to move forward with it.
The design portion of the 10 week development process was more like a roller coaster than anything else. The first couple weeks we hashed out the main movement mechanics and game loop of the game. We added a dodge roll, and worked on room generation, and things began to fall into place. We had regular meetings, and weekly standups to discuss what we'd worked on, and for the first few weeks, everything was going pretty smoothly. Most of my tasks involved working on primary systems of the game and documenting them best I could.
The challenges started just after the halfway mark. Things started to break down in forms of communication and the tasks that needed to be done. We started to feel the time crunch, and we still didn't have any art in the game. I think what really happened is that we lost focus on our game's goal, and people started to panic. The pressure to create a full game was real, and it really started to affect our morale. At about the week 7 mark, a lot of work stopped getting done. We all still tried to maintain positive thoughts, but it was hard; we thought we weren't doing good enough work.
I think out of everything I learned through this process, that hit the most towards home. We really felt like we needed to be doing better. When week 9 rolled around we managed to kick it into overdrive and pulled a few all-nighters to salvage our game and make something that we could at least present at the competition.
On April 1st, we woke up, exhausted at 7am, unable to sleep the night before, and made our way to the metro, and from the metro to Ubisoft's Montréal studio. I think in the end, we were surprised at what he had made. Setting up our game build on that computer, with all of the other teams doing the same, all of our doubt began to wash away. When the judges came over and people started playing our games, they actually gave us positive feedback. Something none of us were expecting. They enjoyed playing our little vertical slice of what we had created.
Now don't get me wrong, there are still a lot of things we could have done better, and my biggest take away from this project is to keep communication constant, and morale high. A lot of our problems and setbacks came from a lack of communication, and people not feeling proud about their work. That said though, this was our first major game to build with a time crunch, and based on all of the feedback we got, it was actually a nice success! And it finally feels good to be able to "release" something to the public, knowing how much time and effort we put into this. Overall, it was a good experience of which I will have a lot of takeaways for future projects.
I will update this post once the results of the competition are announced!