For Honor is a sword fighting game that debuted earlier this year. Despite many problems with the online infrastructure and servers, the "chop-em-up" production has become quite popular amongst gamers. Ubisoft creates new brands and IPs regularly, but making brand new "AAA" games is rare.
Venture Beat had an opportunity to talk with Luc Duchaine, the brand director of
For Honor. The project was born in the head of Jason VandenBerghe, the creative director who wanted to show what it was like to be a knight, viking or samurai. VandenBerghe imagined them as special forces of the medieval times.
For Honor was green lighted in the fall of 2013. The game was shown to the public at the E3 2015 when the creative director got up on the stage and gave a 148 words long speech.
Duchaine joined
For Honor in the summer of 2013 as a brand director, he was responsible for the marketing. His team was embedded with the developer team. They started working early on the future of the new brand and had to find the core audience for the game. Duchaine and VandenBerghe worked together to define the theme of
For Honor. "
It’s important for me, even when you design the game and when you build the campaign, to have this picture of who you’re making the game for. It helps to keep the focus. For me it was helpful to — OK, what would Mike think? One was named Chris. One was James. We tried to always bring in that thinking,"
the brand director explained.
Working for three months on a 148 words speech may sound meticulous, but the developers knew that they have to make an impact. They wanted something short and meaningful, rather than giving away too much detail. Ubisoft's E3 2015 was scheduled between Microsoft in the morning, EA right before them and Sony afterwards, four big press briefings, seven hours long. Ubisoft didn't give the team a time limit, but they tried to keep it short. They managed to keep the show under ten minutes.
The planning of the little details takes a lot of time, but Duchaine doesn't mind as it helps him focus.
"The announcement was big. We’d been working on that for almost two years before. I don’t know if people are aware, but it takes almost a year to plan something like that, when you’re working on a big CGI trailer. It takes a long time. We had this target in mind. We didn’t mind spending extra time on the speech because it was part of something bigger." The trailer surely delivered, no doubt.
Ubisoft have a list of key performance indicators they're tracking, including sales, number of players, interactions on the community side and revenues. The developers haven't announced any numbers, because they're quite shy on that. Shortly after the launch, the servers became the main issue, but thanks to the communication with players, the developers managed to fix it.
The Ubisoft Montreal team had a big discussion about chopping off the guy's head in the presented demo. "
Should it be a clean shot like, zip? Or does it go, shink, and then the head goes? What do we do? Is this too brutal? For us, when it sticks, it brings so much." Finally, after two years of preparation,
For Honor was shown to the public. The game won many "Best of E3" awards and became one of the most talked projects of 2015. Almost a year after its initial launch,
For Honor is supported with many free additions and events. It looks like keeping an eye on the smallest details payed off, honorably.