but we all know which types Haven Studios are looking for, so the "diversity" is really not that diverse.
AAA games traditionally have a lot of people from many countries, skin colors, cultures, etc. There are LGTB people but are a small portion of people as they are in the whole society. In tech areas there are a less portion of women and in marketing & communications related ones there are more. But since tech positions are the big majority of these teams there's a small percentage of women (around 20% of the total). Now studios try to have more 'diversity' (meaning less heterosexual white cis males), but what they find to hire isn't very different of what they already got.
Ah we've found the Jade Raymond simp.
Her only credit before UbiSoft handed her credit for AC on a silver platter was one Sims game. Patrice was responsible for the successful reboots of Prince of Persia and because of that UbiSoft allowed him to create Assassin's Creed.
Jade Raymond being credited for "creating" Assassin's Creed is no different than someone having a career in this industry for licking a PSP.
Ah, we've found the uninformed hater who has no idea about Jade's and Patrice's careers and roles, and thinks that the work of a thousand people in a AAA is really made by the single guy who appears in some PR interviews, and thinks she can't be talented because she is hot.
As the producer of AC, Jade was in charge of the game development team, in the same way the brand or product manager was in charge of the marketing team. One of the guys of that development team managed by the producer is the creative director. They three report to the editorial team of Ubisoft, who set the overall corporate style, vision, workflow and guidelines for all the games and overviews and supports the production, product management and creative side of all their games.
With the corporate vision and guidelines, the product manager provides market research and player feedback to see what works in the market and what people wants, and chooses between different options pitched by the team after testing it with playears what it's going to work better in the market and sets sales goals, prepares marketing and communication campaigns etc. They are the ones of the fictional 'excel sheet' that according uninformed people mention in places like neogaf makes a game. For some reason people also thinks games aren't made by like a thousand people working during years, but with an excel sheet, and some even think by a single guy.
The producer gets a budget for the game, builds the team making hirings if needed and manages the game development team making sure they keep achieving the milestones with the available time, budget and resources they have, helping to solve issues between departments or blockers that may appear, etc. One of the persons of that gamedev team is the creative director, which is the guy in charge of let's say setting the vision the game design and art departments and choosing or approving stuff made by concept artists, writers or game designers.
Which doesn't mean he makes all that work, there are concept artists setting the art style, working on the environments and character designs, an art director who is in charge of the art, there are writers who write the lore and there are game designers working on the mechanics, level design etc. And obviusly the rest of he team implementing everything, testers testing stuff etc.
And all this development team is managed by the producer, not the creative director (which isn't the same as a game director). Patrice wasn't the game director of AC or Prince of Persia Sands of Time, he was he creative director. And he wasn't making whatever he wanted, the decisions of a creative director have to be agreed and greenlighted by the producer, the product manager and the editorial team, and the lore / art / mechanics / prototypes were designed and created by other people. He was another piece of the giant puzzle that is the development of a AAA game.
So to replace him was easy and with Jade and without him they had over a dozen AAA hits including new IPs like Watchdogs, The Division or For Honor or rebooting/refreshing series with games like Splinter Cell Blacklist or Rainbow Six Siege first at Ubi Montreal and later at Ubi Toronto, team build and lead by Jade before she left to create and lead Motive to work in games like Battlefront II or Star Wars Squadrons. She got hired at Ubi after being a producer at The Sims Online (which was pretty innovative and successful back then in 2002), and before that a programmer at Sony Online Entertainment R&D. Patrice instead, after working with Jade and this team all he released was a game with monkeys on it.
They worked in different roles but Jade was in a higher position and has a way longer list of big hits on her CV. And just to be clear, I know how they work there because I worked at Ubi for years, met personally both Jade and Patrice, I think both are very talented for their positions but never worked in their games.
Only 53 people. This game is probably 5 years away.
I assume they have been working for a year in preproduction with a smaller team, this size means they started to escalate it as they entered full production. Probably for this game they will double its size during the couple of years or so, and like in every AAA game around 90% of their staff will be in other offices of the publisher and in outsourcing studios. And yes, I assume they will release it in 4 or (more likely) 5 years from now.
But being a new IP, a non traditional blockbuster concept, a new team (even if most of the leads already worked together and are very experienced and talented), working for a new publisher and considering covid you could add another year on top.
