Last week, speculation hit the internet following a series of trademarks relating to the word ‘Motherbrain’ from Ubisoft, and what the company’s next push into GenAI could look.
Insider Gaming has since learned, since those trademarks went live, that Ubisoft’s ‘Motherbrain’ isn’t just another fad as it chases trends; instead, Motherbrain will serve as a global entity within Ubisoft, implementing GenAI across its games.
A GenAI Future for Ubisoft
Several sources tell Insider Gaming that Motherbrain is intended to be implemented across as many of Ubisoft’s games as possible, and is now viewed internally as just as important as Ubisoft’s Creative Houses and Core Services. It’s said that Motherbrain will help to ‘accelerate gameplay innovation’ across Ubisoft titles.
Xavier Manzanares, a 23-year Ubisoft veteran, will lead Motherbrain and has been the lead producer on games including the Mario + Rabbids series and probably Ubisoft’s canceled Zelda game. However, in the past few years, Manzanares became the Research and Development Director for Ubisoft’s Gen-AI initiatives, including Teammates and Neo NPC.
In an internal announcement across Ubisoft, it was said that Motherbrain will “now operate as a global entity dedicated to supporting gameplay innovation across the group. The team [Motherbrain] will continue to develop proprietary AI technology and middleware dedicated to generative gameplay, which will serve as a shared foundation across our studios.”
The announcement comes at a fragile time for Ubisoft, as it’s still undergoing its “third and final round” of cost-cutting measures, aiming to save an additional 180 million euros across the company. As part of these changes, the company announced in September that Massive Entertainment will now lead Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, and The Division.
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Developers across Ubisoft tell me GenAI has become increasingly common and is used at all stages of game development. Ubisoft’s most recent annual Game Developer Conference (GDC), where developers across Ubisoft talk internally about new tech, lessons learned, and so on, was flooded with AI presentations. In fact, developers tell me that it was refreshing to watch a presentation where GenAI wasn’t the focus or mentioned.
The move from Ubisoft comes as game studios are increasingly interested in GenAI, mainly because it can reduce game development costs. Capcom recently took to the stage at a self-hosted tech conference to talk about the future of the business and also to talk about its own future GenAI plans.
What are your thoughts on GenAI becoming more prevalent across the industry? If you’re a developer and in the industry, you can give me your thoughts anonymously at [email protected] for a potential future story.
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Tom Henderson is Insider Gaming's Co-Founder and Editor-In-Chief. When he's not running one of the industry's leading independent video game websites, he's probably playing an FPS like Call of Duty,…
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