Friday , March 29 2024
Patrick Plourde from Ubisoft and I share a candid discussion about Assassin's Creed 2.

MIGS 09: Interview with Patrick Plourde, Ubisoft

Patrick Plourde just achieved a major milestone by completing Assassin's Creed 2 and he attended the Montreal International Games Summit (MIGS) recently to discuss the design process for that game.

A valuable and senior member at the company, Patrick joined Ubisoft in 2003 as a 3-D Artist and quickly shifted toward design, shipping Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Lockdown as a Level Designer. He then worked on other major productions such as Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas and Assassin’s Creed as a Game Designer.

Patrick's big break came on Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 when he took on his first Lead Game Designer role. Patrick was Lead Game Designer on Assassin’s Creed 2 where he oversaw all aspects of the game design. This is a true blockbuster sequel and Patrick further perfected his role as a lead designer on the title.

Talking to aspiring designers, game developers, artists and his peers, Patrick conducted a seminar discussing the design process. With more than 300 developers on the project, the team had to deal with the numerous challenges of such a production all the while keeping the game development on track.

Patrick broke down the technical approach the design team took during the production of the game:

  • Keeping the design focused on the right things
  • Building a game around a strong documentation structure validating the results with players In identifying the core experiences of the game
  • Influencing risk management and ensuring the game’s success by having a solid design structure

During my coverage of the show I was lucky enough to catch up to Patrick while he was at MIGS and we ended up having an entertaining discussion that covered a lot of topics. It comes through clearly that Patrick is very passionate about the franchise, game design in general and the team at Ubisoft.

During our talk Patrick discussed how they designed the game based on the criticism from the first title. He also delved into the reasoning behind the renaissance Italy setting and the new economy system in the game. Patrick also discussed his love for the achievement/trophy systems and that he maintained sole control on the design of that system for Assassin's Creed 2.

Near the end of our talk he discussed the integration of connectivity between the PSP and PS3 with the also recently released Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines. We ended off our talk with a discussion on DLC, the no comment and no day one DLC responses from Patrick let you draw your own conclusions on the topic.

Below is a link to an audio stream of the interview, it is an energetic, free form discussion that is well worth listening to for fans of the series or game design in general.


MIGS 09: Interview with Patrick Plourde from Ubisoft

About Michael Prince

A longtime video game fan starting from simple games on the Atari 2600 to newer titles on a bleeding edge PC I play everything I can get my hands on.

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