Ubisoft Head of Player Intelligence Benjamin Pommeraud reported on the company’s efforts to make the games players are looking for during his speech at Casual Connect Asia 2015 “Every year we collect data — we collect billions of data points to understand how our customers behave inside our games,” he says. For his advice on how more developers can use player feedback and internal expertise, watch his speech below.
Benjamin Pommeraud insists, “When you see no solution to your problems, you can try crazy, disruptive things. Of course it does not work all the time, but it can be so rewarding, and it is much more fun than doing things by the rules.”
Doing the Unexpected
The time in his career that brought him the greatest satisfaction came when he discovered and followed this insight. In 2004 he had just launched production of his first short film, Waiting for Tomorrow. He had no network, no experience, no funding and was new to the film industry, but it was his dream industry. Then inspiration came: He would ask people over the internet to provide funding; perhaps they would also like to share the dream. He created a website to give people recognition in the credits and DVD in exchange for their donations. This was five years before Kickstarter was created, so everyone thought they were crazy. But they spammed their contacts and went viral when the big websites promoted the initiative. Within two weeks they had raised $50,000 from all over the world; not only did they make the film, they won more than 30 awards in international festivals. And today crowdfunding has become an essential part of filmmaking.
Benjamin has repeated this plan of doing crazy and disruptive things several times since then. And while it doesn’t always work, it costs little to try.
Keeping Players at the Center
As head of player intelligence at Ubisoft, Benjamin is charged with ensuring that players are always at the center of game development. His division serves most of Ubisoft’s AAA titles as well as a number of mobile games. Two years ago he joined the company after years of dreaming of working on its story-driven titles, starting out in customer acquisition and marketing strategy for Ghost Recon Phantoms. He was then asked to create the Player Intelligence Division to regroup all customer insight activities for Ubisoft’s studios in Singapore and Chengdu. Among other things, the responsibilities of the division include business intelligence, play tests and market research.
Before he came to Ubisoft, Benjamin worked in strategy consulting for startups and film production and knew how much he enjoyed working in a creative environment. He had been a gamer for many years when he noticed the games industry was hiring talents from the film industry and recognized they had caught up with films in terms of visual quality and storytelling. And the fact that the market was so widespread made the games industry even more appealing. However, he has discovered creating games is actually quite different from making films.
For him the most enjoyable aspect of his job is working with his colleagues. He says, “I don’t think I know any other job line where you can in the same day have lunch with a guy who created Paris in the XIX century for Assassin’s Creed Unity and take coffee with a guy who is using neuronal networks to transform the way we use artificial intelligence in games. I’m learning from many people, and this is really fascinating!”
Finding the Balance: Creativity and Analytics
Benjamin finds his business background especially useful in his current work. As a consultant he did extensive marketing and also became heavily involved in business development, finding appropriate solutions to clients’ problems. He now finds this experience very helpful, since his work requires him to understand the needs and expectations of Ubisoft’s players in order to develop the games that match their expectations.
He recognizes that people in creative industries often rely on intuition for many of their decisions. But Benjamin has always adopted an analytical approach; analytics are a way to reduce risk and build more efficient businesses. But balance is always necessary because analysis without action is useless. He emphasizes, “Nobody can fully remove uncertainty, and data should never replace judgement.”
To those interested in following the same career he has, he advises: “Take it seriously. Come prepared. I don’t think you need to be a gaming professional to be a good analyst, but it’s definitely better to be a gaming enthusiast. It will make the learning curve less steep, the culture fit way better, and the recommendations way more impactful.” And since he is currently hiring for his team, anyone interested could contact Ubisoft’s recruiter at singapore@ubisoft.com.
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