How and when did the idea for Uplay originate and was it developer or marketer inspired?
It started about two and a half years ago and it was three people: me, Ian Chambers, who managed digital marketing in EMEA, and Cyril Marchal, who was on the production side. We worked on a vision for how we could organise an online service that would work across and serve a lot of different departments within Ubisoft and then presented it to upper management and all the various departments as a direction that we could all work towards.
What are the key objectives of the service?
I guess if you were to take the top level objective, because I think each service provides different values and a different set of objectives, I think ultimately it’s about providing a relationship with the consumer. One of the problems of large scale publishers with lots of different titles is that they don’t necessarily have an identity or connection to the consumer. I think the idea with Uplay is to provide something where it’s familiar. It’s like someone’s favourite chain - you know what to order and you know where everything is, and the idea that you’re being recognised over time with it is of additional value.
What level of resources and investment has been pumped into the project during development?
We have a development team that started building the actual in-game piece about a year ago and it’s a decent sized team of about 20 people. We’ve also had various resources in the marketing groups building websites, developing smooth programme specifics and working with the first parties to make sure that it’s integrated properly.
Were there concerns from a developer perspective that Uplay might hinder or impact the game creation process?
Certainly, when you’re creating something that works across all products, it’s ambitious and it can be complicated. I think one of our goals with Uplay was to take some of the common things that users do in lots of different games, whether it’s accessing and sharing content, purchasing DLC, being rewarded or helped in how to progress… [and] that by having these common services across most games and by having a standardised UI and development would actually save a lot of time for a lot of the teams because they could leverage a consistent set of services in all of their games.
Assassin’s Creed II sold 1.6 million copies in its first week. How many of those customers have accessed Uplay since the service launched alongside the game?
I can’t disclose the specifics but I can say that we are getting a very high percentage of users using it. It’s only accessible if you’re online but… what we’re seeing with Assassin’s is very high.
