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Ubisoft cites new games' longer playing times as a sign of success

john2gr

Member
In other words, expect the new Splinter Cell game to be full of collectibles (and pretty much everything we hate in Ubisoft's games).
 

Dick Jones

Gold Member
The real metrics is how many Dicks are playing? People should be asking why Ubisoft are silent on these numbers 🤔
 

Zeroing

Banned
They don't need to reinvent the wheel, their old games like AC2 or Black Flag were good cause they made you care for the stuff you did in the game, why you climbed that tower or killed those enemies. I played Watch Dogs 3 for a good 7 hours, nice premise but the story was just boring and told through characters which were literal cardboard cutouts, it just didn't grab me at all. It's like they need to capture the soul of their old games again somehow. That's why their games feel like they come fresh off a factory assembly line.
Their old games were groundbreaking back then! AC2 was best of what they were tying to archive in AC1
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
There’s no hope for games to be more diverse and creative. Nobody wants to risk new ideas or break from the formula! It’s now all about big IPs and repetition

Repetition runs counter to "longer playing time". When gamers start feeling that tasks are becoming repetitive, they tend to grow bored and quit.
 

Zeroing

Banned
Repetition runs counter to "longer playing time". When gamers start feeling that tasks are becoming repetitive, they tend to grow bored and quit.
I was saying repetition as in the formula! Same thing being made but with little differences like main character etc to make it “different” from the previous game.
 

Saber

Gold Member
So they straight admit that bloats the games with boring, tedious and mundane stuff only to make people waste more of their precious time, because the more time you waste the more likely you are to spend money on it.

And the quality go all the way down.
 
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Fahdis

Member
My Playtimes So Far;

AC Origins: 130 Hours - All DLC Complete
AC Odyssey: 135 Hours - Finished Half the Game, No End in Sight 😫
AC Valhalla: Will Skip - Ok I Know, I Won't

Moral of the Story, I hate the fucking bloat but at the same time I don't spend jackshit on microtransactions. Ubi is never getting my money outside of buying the game at $15.
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
So they straight admit that bloats the games with boring, tedious and mundane stuff only to make people waste more of their precious time, because the more time you waste the more likely you are to spend money on it.

And the quality go all the way down.

No, they're not saying this at all.

They're saying they identify when gamers quit their games due to boredom, and they fix the issue for their next game.

Bloat, repetition, tediousness etc are all feelings that make gamers quit games. Ubisoft is literally identifying these negative characteristics in their games and removing them.
 

kiphalfton

Member
Artificial padding isn't impressive. Having that genuine fullness is what gets people going and fills a heart with joy.
 

Saber

Gold Member
No, they're not saying this at all.

They're saying they identify when gamers quit their games due to boredom, and they fix the issue for their next game.

Bloat, repetition, tediousness etc are all feelings that make gamers quit games. Ubisoft is literally identifying these negative characteristics in their games and removing them.


From the OP

The company’s thinking: the longer people play, the more likely they are to spend more in the game.
While some fans and critics have complained about the bigger games (and while some love it), the company seems to have benefitted.
During a call with investors Thursday, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said that 2020’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, already 130+ hours long and repeatedly expanded with more free and paid content, passed the $1 billion “consumer revenue” mark in December. He said it's a first for the top-selling franchise.

The first important part is that they discovered that the longer their customers play, the more are the chances of they spend real money into the game. No indication of fixing the boredom aspects. The second line supports this, as they don't seem to be bothered by bigger and repetitive negative traits(as it looks like it benefits them financially, even though it has criticism).
The third line confirms this way they gonna move foward(meaning will be ACV all over again).
 
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Kuranghi

Member
The best games are the ones that aren't 100s of hours long but you play them for that long because they are just awesome games that are fun to replay, this fucking bloated shite needs to stop.

I'm partly responsible for it happening as well! I ate up those early AC games, I played every one to 100% completion but that was back when it was novel what they were doing with open worlds and AC's traversal, its been massively downhill since Unity for me though.

I appreciate the change of combat and openness of Origins onwards but I never played AC that, I played it for amazing graphics, a big part of that being animation/facial motion capture which they papped to save money/time and the not challenging & repetitive but really cinematic and cool feeling fighting, which went away with the new combat.

I would prefer to go back to the old style of AC but not gonna happen at this point, its an RPG-lite now, as is the way of all things computer games now.
 

Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
From the OP



The first important part is that they discovered that the longer their customers play, the more are the chances of they spend real money into the game. No indication of fixing the boredom aspects. The second line supports this, as they don't seem to be bothered by bigger and repetitive negative traits(as it looks like it benefits them financially, even though it has criticism).
The third line confirms this way they gonna move foward(meaning will be ACV all over again).

Your assumption is wrong from the start.

People don't play boring games. Boring = bad for all gamers.

It's obviously easier to monetize fun games rather than boring games because people play games to have fun.
 

yurinka

Member
Well, these companies that make GaaS (or games with many dlcs, or microtransactions) measure the time spent on a game because it's a sign that if you continue playing a game it's because you like it/find it fun, and traditionally on average the more you play a game, the more likely is that you'll spend more on dlcs or microtransactions.

So yes, the most important metric is the revenue that a game makes. But is also important for these types of huge games with DLC or MTX the amount of time people plays, because it indicates potential additional revenue per player from the game.
 
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poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Your assumption is wrong from the start.

People don't play boring games. Boring = bad for all gamers.

It's obviously easier to monetize fun games rather than boring games because people play games to have fun.
Yeah I don't see how this is a bad thing. Can't rememeber the number of times I have come to a game months after release and gotten an achievement like 'completed level 4 - 40% of gamers have this achievement'
I would be more interested in the median time not the average - but overall this seems like a positive metric.
 
Ubisoft don’t know what they’re talking about. They are always chasing trends and making their collectathons bigger and less engaging.
 
But i love Ubisoft games. As an open world game fan Ubi IMO make the best.
In fact when i was doing my Top 10 games of last gen, like 5 or 6 of the places were taken by Ubisoft games.

My Playtimes (when available) for the Ubisoft games i played last gen -

Assassins Creed Origins - 122 hours
Assassins Creed Odyssey - 367 hours
Assassins Creed Valhalla - 92 hours
The Division - 89 hours
The Division 2 - 157 hours
Ghost Recon Wildlands - 66 hours
Ghost Recon Breakpoint - 92 hours
Far Cry Primal - 72 hours
Far Cry 5 - 82 hoiurs
Far Cry New Dawn - 18 hours (it sucked)
The Crew 2 - 49 hours

Played WatchDogs 1 and 2 but its not giving my playtime for them on Uplay for some reason.

Dont really get the hate for Ubi games, never have.

Some combination of superiority complex ("Ubisoft games are for casual gamers,"), upvote/like/reaction farming (Ubisoft = bad.... LOL), and the heavy bias towards Japanese games over Western games that only occurs in places like this. When it comes to games from Ubisoft or EA I've learned to just ignore the boring people who's life goal seems to be to making sure everybody knows that those games are trash
 
When you’re making giant bloated open world slogs yes playtime will go up…

Sony and Nintendo studios copying you isn’t a success either Ubi you’ve just poisoned the well.
 

odhiex

Member
Wow, so much hate towards Ubisoft games. Maybe, it is okay to hate on popular games in general.

They are popular because they are fun to some people? and people willing to spend money on them. What a surprise!?

I don't play all of their games, but I do believe that Ubisoft is amongst successful companies that really nailed service games.

P.s: I had fun memories playing the Division 2 online with my late friend (R.I.P) who passed away because of Covid last year.
 
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Tschumi

Member
Well let's see how it's working with me:
Unity playtime: approx. 3 hrs *
Origins playtime: approx. 8 hrs. *
Odyssey playtime: approx. 1 hr.
Valhalla: nil

Fc2 playtime: 100+ hrs
Fc3 playtime: approx. 2 hours *
Fc4 playtime: approx. 5 hrs *
Fc5 playtime: approx. 30 mins *
Fc6 playtime: nil

* Purchased on big reduction years after release


Yep, in general I'm happy to report that i haven't paid a cent in extra content, purely because none of the games after fc2 were any good to me.

Phew.
 

Amiga

Member
Ubisoft has been an auto no buy since after AC3. Gave them a chance with Origins and that was it.
 
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