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Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Ubisoft's Franchise-Only Philosophy — Unity Falls, Division Wins

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It's not only right, but it bodes well for the future.

Recently Ubisoft executive Yannis Mallat said that,
We won't even start if we don't think we can build a franchise out of it, there's no more fire and forget - it's too expensive.
That means that everything Ubisoft is working on now is going to become a franchise. Everything except ZombiU, apparently.

Franchises are good. KoopaTV loves franchises, because they encourage designers to make endearing characters that will stick compare to generic unlikable losers. Because you can make a generic guy last one game and you don't need anything else. Try doing that with more than one.

Nevermind, they do that all the time. But they probably aren't well-received. A perfect example, which I know the GameFAQs Board 8 Contest guys love (for infamy), is the Driver series. Coincidentally made by Ubisoft. Just look at those descending review scores. Now look at its main protagonist, John Tanner, who is the same protagonist throughout the entire series.

Until Chester, this guy was the weakest entrant in GameFAQs Character Contest history. Look at him! So generic!
Apparently this is a mainstream series but it looks like shit.

Alternatively, you can try the "new character every sequel" approach. But that's harder to monetize. And harder to maintain, because you get a segmented fanbase and a lack of marketing consistency.

The most important thing that can come from all of this is Ubisoft's new game, Tom Clancy's The Division. We all know Division is awesome. Planet Koopa has a board dedicated to it. So it's about time a game properly pays respect to this glorious mathematical operation, something that, to my knowledge, hasn't been done since Donkey Kong Jr. Math.



This is an Xbox One and PlayStation 4 exclusive, not because of technical limitations, but because of audience. You know what? Nintendo systems have a HISTORY of respecting Division, not Sony, Microsoft, or even Sega.

Just imagine this game with Miiverse and the GamePad. You walk around talking and shooting things. In a massively multiplayer online sort of way.

...I dunno.

But if we use our Donkey Kong Jr. Math skills, we can deduce that if The Division is being produced by Ubisoft and Ubisoft will only make games it can turn into a franchise, then we should be seeing sequels! This is astounding news for math-aficionados everywhere, and may even be a system seller. Hell, I might get a PlayStation 4 just to have access to this new franchise in its entirety.

How do you make a sequel to a game called The Division? Maybe "The Fraction" or "The Multiplication". Or if you wanna be really sexy, "The Exponent" or "The Square Root". That last one can even be a pun if you want.

It's the future. Sex culture and public teacher unions have teamed up to eliminate math from the minds of American children. You must save what remains of the mathematical operations so society can be maintained. Basically the precursor to Idiocracy.

So screw Assassin's Creed IV and WATCH_DOGS. This is the game I'm interested in the most from Ubisoft. And I play the Rayman Legends Challenge App every DAY.

Imagine this: An MMO edutainment game. This could replace schools. This is the wave of the future for both gaming and education. And we all know the education system needs a complete overhaul. And Ubisoft is extremely wise in investing in this now.

I mean, this isn't just going to be yet another lame open-world generic shooting game with brown as the whole colour palette, right?


You might find Ludwig using the Donkey Kong Jr. community on Miiverse as a proxy for Donkey Kong Jr. Math discussion. Follow him at NNID PrinceOfKoopas to be sure.


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