Serge Hascoët recounts the emergence of “open world” games
Spotting talent, imagining new worlds and enhancing the player’s experience have been Serge Hascoët’s daily tasks for nearly thirty-five years at Ubisoft. Over the last twenty years, this creative director headed “L’éditorial”, Ubisoft’s central division, dedicated to the orientation and production of video games. Serge Hascoët looks back at the evolution of video games and tells us about the emergence of so-called “open world” games.
Serge Hascoët talks about the “anecdote factory”
Ubisoft was created in 1986 and is today the world’s third largest video game publisher. Recruited as a game designer in 1987, Serge Hascoët has progressively evolved within the company and has observed, and even encouraged, certain changes in the style of the games.
Serge Hascoët says that over the years Ubisoft has become an “anecdote factory” by developing video games towards “open worlds” in which nothing is written. The challenge is to allow the player to write and live his own story, thanks to a random scenario. The aim is to offer the player a unique experience in which his skills and autonomy are valued. By providing these possibilities, Serge Hascoët considers that the player will be more engaged and concentrated on the game to the point of reaching a state of “flow”, i.e. a state of maximum engagement and satisfaction. This evolution in video game design, of which Far Cry is a significant example, is in response to a necessary adaptation to the market’s needs in order to be inline with the constant progress of technology. In the design of a game, Serge Hascoët is looking for an infinity: in a book or a film, for example, the end is written and inevitable. Video games, on the contrary, can go on without end. For Serge Hascoët, this shift from linear games to “open world” games is one of the reasons why video games have become the leading cultural industry in France. The shift took place about ten years ago with the first Assassin’s Creed, which took place during the time of the Crusades and allowed systemic games to truly overtake linear games.
Serge Hascoët also considers that beyond the evolution of games themselves, the way video games are viewed has also evolved.
The positive effects of video games according to Serge Hascoët
“Gaming disorder” was officially recognised as a high-risk behaviour by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2019. According to the organisation, “gaming disorder” is a disorder linked to intense video game playing that leads to addiction and therefore has harmful effects on the player. However, Serge Hascoët emphasises that video games can also have positive and, above all, active impacts.
Indeed, if inaction is one of the damages underlined by the WHO, Serge Hascoët underlines however that some games can stimulate movement like “Just Dance” for example. Furthermore, Serge Hascoët also considers that video games can be seen as a vector for social learning: players must learn to understand each other in an interactive relationship in order to progress and reach a collective solution. Finally, thanks to neuro and cognitive sciences, the game can be a tool to fight against certain school difficulties such as dyslexia. For Serge Hascoët, the exploration of new fields of possibilities has become the indispensable counterpart of tecnological developments, in particular virtual reality which is revolutionising the profession.
