Ubisoft's new Scalar technology will allow the company's game developers to create worlds on ever larger scales. The game worlds should be set almost no limits.
Does that mean games will only get bigger in the future?
Patrick Bach, head of the Scalar project at Ubisoft Stockholm, asked himself this question.
With the unveiling of the new Scalar developer tool, Ubisoft has announced that it will not only open up completely new possibilities for in-house game development, but that there will be almost no limits to the game worlds created with it.
The open worlds of the last releases from the Assassin's Creed and Far Cry series were already so big that some players criticized them.
Do games really need limitless worlds? Patrick Bach, Managing Director of Ubisoft Stockholm, answered this question in an interview.
Ubisoft Scalar is a new foundational technology that enables Ubisoft titles to utilize the power of the cloud to ensure that developers aren’t limited by time or hardware, but by their imaginations. The result could enable game worlds that are bigger, more social, and richer than anything that’s ever been seen before at Ubisoft.
-- More on Scalar on the offical Ubisoft News
Do games have to keep getting bigger?
The developers at Ubisoft also have to face the question of whether game worlds should keep getting bigger.
The Ubisoft subsidiary in Stockholm is currently working on the new game development technology: Scalar. What has been heralded as groundbreaking has some skeptical. Is bigger always better?
According to Patrick Bach, who leads the team behind Scalar, that's not the case at all. The managing director doesn't think games need to keep getting bigger, but he does think some titles could benefit from it.
In an interview with GamesIndustriy.biz, he explains that Scalar technology will give developers the opportunity to create bigger games, but he doesn't see the connection that bigger means better quality:
I don't think there's a real connection between games being bigger and them being better or worse. It depends on the creators and how they want to spend their energy achieving their vision.
Always been a fan of physical maps! img source
Scalar is not intended to be licensed
Ubisoft's new Scalar technology is a cloud-based production tool that will enable developers to develop games faster, more efficiently and at scale that Ubisoft says was previously impossible. This certainly sounds like a tool that developers outside of Ubisoft would also like to use. But the French games company thwarts such ideas.
Bach added that Ubisoft has no plans to market Scalar to other studios like Epic does with its Unreal Engine. "We're not trying to sell you anything, we're just talking about what we want to do." According to him, Ubisoft just wants to give an indication of what the future will look like.
Side fact: Top 10 biggest game worlds:
- The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (160.000 km²)
- Guild Wars Nightfall (39.000 km²)
- Fuel (14.400 km²)
- The Crew (4.900 km²)
- Final Fantasy XV (1.800 km²)
- Test Drive Unlimited 2 (1.600 km²)
- Asheron’s Call (1.300 km²)
- Just Cause 3 (1.000 km²)
- True Crime: Street of LA (620 km²)
- Burnout Paradise (520 km²)
[...] - Grand Theft Auto V (125 km²)
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (39 km²)
How about you?
Have you already got lost in huge game worlds?
For me, game worlds as big as Skyrim are already "pretty big" but yet just small figures compared to the top 10.
I actually prefer small but more detailed worlds over huge "waste lands"