Ubisoft Singapore shows how the gaming juggernaut snags the best talent around the world

On the Assassin’s Creed: Rogue Wikipedia page, Ubisoft Sofia is credited with the development of the game. But did you know the Ubisoft Singapore studio had a huge part to play in Rogue, too?

The team in Singapore worked on the game’s naval gameplay, its ice and ocean technology, and everything – missions, locations, side quests, destructible icebergs, polar bears – within its North Atlantic open world. But a studio doesn’t just get such responsibility overnight. The Singapore leadership group for Assassin’s Creed Rogue waited nearly six years for the opportunity.

“Many of the leads on Assassin’s Creed Rogue have been in the studio for over five years, and all of them are now in more senior positions than they were when they first joined Ubisoft,” says Karl Luhe, associate producer. He says that the leads had all worked together on previous iterations of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, and another associate producer, Ian Ng, believes this helped create a strong team spirit.

While there was no denying that quite a few members of the team had been put into core positions for the very first time, Ng says it seemed a logical progression that Rogue would be a good opportunity for the team.

“Many factors are also considered when matching studios up with projects, including team experience, ability to deliver, studio objectives, timing, among others,” he adds, noting that the Singapore team’s collaborative experience with Ubisoft Sofia was “fantastic.”

But it wasn’t easy getting to this point.

Getting started

HR specialist Cammy Goh says that Ubisoft has always been a “very organic company in terms of growth.” In order to kick off the Singapore studio on the right foot, a pioneering team was recruited internally from Ubisoft’s global network, alongside hires from the regional talent pool.

“Although the local gaming industry was at its infancy then, there was already a sizeable community of qualified talents thanks to the highly educated workforce and a vibrant and well-developed IT industry here,” Goh says. She adds that in Singapore itself, relationships with government agencies like the Media Development Authority of Singapore, the Economic Development Board, the Workforce Development Authority and local tertiary institutes were “invaluable” in Ubisoft’s search for talent.

Although Goh acknowledges that freshly graduated hires are “consistently good” and that Ubisoft has been satisfied with their performance, she also says training is definitely required for all new Ubisoft staff. These staff need to be orientated to “the Ubisoft way of doing things,” be it learning proprietary technologies, industry-specific knowledge, or simply tools and methods essential to their daily roles.

There’s a system in place for expertise sharing in Ubisoft Singapore. Called the the L33TS Experience, it stands for learning, enriching (the numeral is ‘3’ used interchangeably with the letter E in internet slang), exchanging ideas, and team sharing. The studio has also been exploring e-learning via Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), and often engages in cross-studio sharing of ideas and tech innovation on the Ubisoft group-wide e-platform, MANA. Staff also frequently attend Ubisoft Academies and technical summits to share expertise, challenges, and learnings across projects.