What happened to Ubisofts ‘Beyond Good and Evil’?

Gaming has played a massive role in my life, and my first real childhood game was Ubisoft’s 2003 release ‘Beyond good and evil’. This game meant so much to me as a kid, and still as an adult to this day as I recommended it to friends and co-workers religiously. The writing, characters and world are still so unique, intriguing and exciting compared to today’s titles. If you’re interested about this game and the story, read here for the synopsis.

‘Forgotten’ is a broad term to be mentioned when we discuss beyond good and evil, because of original launch, the game didn’t sell well. This was due to ubisoft poorly marketing the product, as the story and overall game seemed quite obscure to general audiences and reaching a larger demographic was a challenge. This is just an example of another title ubisoft has failed to follow through with, (see here for more info). But, for the gamers who gave this game a chance was lucky to experience such an amazing game for its time, easily one of the most underrated rpg games to hit the 2000’s consoles.

The game had created a fanbase and audiences that became invested with this ever-growing story wanted to know more about the potential and future of the game. As the game was distributed worldwide for Gamecube, PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC, reaching many demographics of gamers, there was a dedicated audience, even with the the failure at launch.

But what made beyond good and evil such an amazing experience for the players was its ending. This still has the community of fans in discussions, posting in forums and online spaces wanting to know more about that the ending, and why it had to be left on such a cliff-hanger.

Skipping to 2008, a trailer is released to the public teasing more content about beyond good and evil universe, but nothing else was followed up until at E3 2017, a cinematic trailer is showcased from Ubisoft, promising a new open world adventure game with an array of new characters. This looked promising to audiences, but as typical ubisoft fashion. the game has been on held due to funding and the project being too big for developers.

The reason i chose to talk about this game is because i think it’s a great example of audiences and video games, video games are much more than what they are advertised as. the stories, experience and personal interests that can be taken out of medium really separates itself from other media and artworks. Drawing to Huhtamo’s example about game studies, he discusses the idea how audience’s engagement with content creates an extra level of immersion for the player, a machine-human relationship within the medium. Players receive more personal experiences through this.

References:

E, Huhtamo, 2005, Slots of Fun: Slots of Trouble: An Archaeology of Arcade Gaming, Handbook of Computer Games Studies.