Ubisoft Singapore Scaling Up; Working on Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
















By ROHIT SHIRKE

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7 December, 2010 - 16:48



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Ubisoft expanded their Asia operations by establishing their latest studio in Singapore in July 2008. Speaking to AnimationXpress Asia Pacific was MD of Ubisoft Singapore Olivier de Rotalier, "We have shipped 4 successful titles since our inception and this is a very satisfying achievement for us." In slightly more than 2 years time, the studio has worked on Ubisoft's top selling games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, international bestseller Assassins Creed II and the recent blockbuster Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (ACB) for both consoles like Xbox Live, Play Station Network etc. and PC.
 


















What's more, this promising latest installment to Assassin's Creed - ACB - broke pre-order record in Ubisoft history and managed to win top ratings from leading video game critics and fans alike. Utilizing an internal engine to develop their games, Ubisoft Singapore has worked on 10 ACB's game levels in the single player mode over the past few months. Their contributions were evident in areas such as Level Design, Art, Animation and some game play development which made up for more than 3 hours of the gameplay.

Recruitment and scaling up is always cited as one of the toughest tasks when establishing a new company but that doesn't seem to deter Ubisoft Singapore, which currently employs about 170 studio members and plans to scale its strength up to around 300 by year 2013. The studio has a fair mixture of talents including a few experienced veterans from Ubisoft Montréal, Ubisoft Paris, alongside other skilled game developers in the Asia Pacific region not forgetting the budding game developers from major universities in Singapore like NUS, NTU etc. 


With professionals from over 28 countries, the Singapore team consists of various roles including Producers, Game Designers, Level Designers, Artists, Animators, Programmers, Sound Designers, Q&A testers and General Administrative positions and looks to strengthening the current team in time to come.


Other than developing high-quality AAA video game titles, the Singapore studio also contributed to the local Infocomm and Digital Media scene with its collaboration with established academy Digipen Institute of Technology Singapore and Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA). They collectively developed the one-of-the-kind DigiPen-Ubisoft Campus Program that gives future game developers a unique and specialized education by blending the best of the gaming industry and academic excellence.


Participants of this unique 10-month program have a chance to experience the full game development process under the guidance of professionals in this industry. They first go through a 5 months theory and skills training phase in game design and programming before embarking on another 5 months of actual production. To date, the first batch of this program has since graduated with seven of them now pursuing their game development dreams in Ubisoft Singapore. The second batch is in its full swing of production while the third batch is well underway in their educational journey of game development.