"Ideas Become Dated Over Time" — Assassin's Creed III Creative Director on the Strange Development of Skull and Bones
Alex Hutchinson, creative director of Assassin's Creed III and Far Cry 4, in a conversation with PC Gamer called the development of Skull and Bones "strange" and drawn-out. According to him, Ubisoft ultimately released "essentially the same thing" that his team had made 14 years earlier — only as an expensive service.
It was in the third Assassin's Creed, which Hutchinson worked on, that full-fledged naval battles first appeared. Later, this idea was expanded upon in Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag, where ships became a central element. Years later, Ubisoft tried to turn that same foundation into a standalone project — Skull and Bones.
The path to release turned out to be torturous. The game started as an expansion for Black Flag, then transformed into an MMO spin-off, and later — into a standalone project without a direct connection to Assassin's Creed. Development was rebooted multiple times, deadlines were pushed back, and the concept changed. When the pirate MMO finally launched, it became clear: it wasn't a hit.
Hutchinson admits it was strange for him to watch what was happening. In his opinion, ideas don't live long: if you delay their implementation, they become dated. The naval battles in Assassin's Creed III were an experiment that even within Ubisoft wasn't initially believed in too much. However, they became one of the game's important strengths and were developed further in Black Flag, Freedom Cry, and Rogue. By the time Skull and Bones was released, this element no longer felt fresh.
The developer also believes the team simply lacked experience. According to him, the creators tried to cross Black Flag with World of Tanks or World of Warships, but didn't have sufficient expertise in either service projects or independently developing major titles.
The Ubisoft Singapore studio had long been helping other divisions with the Assassin's Creed series. When its staff grew to hundreds of employees, it had to take on a much more ambitious task. Hutchinson recalls that specialists from France and Canada often came to Singapore as if on "a year-long vacation," rather than to systematically strengthen the team. In his opinion, the studio lacked the personnel base to pull off such a large-scale project.