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Ubisoft Montreal Discusses the Past, Present, and Future of Rainbow Six Siege X
While attending Gamescom Asia x Thailand Game Show in Bangkok this week, IGN was given the opportunity to sit down with Rainbow Six Siege X’s creative director Alexander Karpazis to talk about how much the tactical live-service shooter has evolved in the ten years since its launch in 2015, where it might go next, the possibility of a campaign mode and Switch 2 port, the use of generative AI in development, and more. Read on for our full chat below!
IGN: 10 years is a great achievement for a live service game, particularly since we’ve seen so many others come and go in that time. What do you put the longevity of Siege down to?
Alexander Karpazis [AK]: I think one of the big points is just the sheer depth of the game. Like even within 10 years, I don't think you'll be able to master a game like Siege and as a gamer that's incredibly rewarding. It means that you're on a journey to learn, master and discover new things with a game that's always changing. And I think because of that, it's just grown and resonates with so many people.
IGN: Has Siege evolved in ways that you could have never predicted at launch?
AK: Yeah, absolutely. I mean if you look at 2015 when the game first launched, the Bomb game mode wasn't the number one game mode. It was split between Hostage and Secure Area and Bomb. Back then eSports was something that was very grassroots and new, and now it's become this entire ecosystem where people make their livelihoods off of it, and that's something we could have never anticipated when it first launched. And so in these interesting ways it's built up to be something that is really significant and humbling to be a part of.
IGN: You’ve previously said that Siege X is setting the table for the next 10 years. Do you take it one year at a time? How much of a road map is there for the future? Are there 10 more years worth of ideas in the bank?
AK: When it comes to ideas, we actually sat down and we interviewed the entire team about their ideas for the game, and came up with over 40 pages of concepts that the team still wants to push for. So there is no end in sight when it comes to what we want to do with the game, and it's a balance of short term and long term. We're looking at the seasons ahead of us but also because of Siege X, we're looking at anticipating new technology, new platforms, stuff that's going to come out and it's going to affect the game. And so how can we anticipate that too over a longer stretch of time.
IGN: Hitting a 10-year milestone, does that increase the pressure on your team for the future, or do you feel like you’ve mastered it now and you know what you’re doing?
AK: We're always learning and we'll never stop learning. There's so much that goes into building a game like this, and it really comes down to listening to the community. They'll always be vocal in what they want to see and how things change and so yeah, it's not a matter of mastering where we are right now. It's being comfortable and knowing that we still have to listen to our community, we still have to adapt, and we still have to innovate as well. Maybe we're getting a little bit more comfortable in being uncomfortable, and that's how we keep on rolling the next 10 years.
IGN: On the topic of listening to the community, how much of a challenge is it to balance your team’s vision for Siege X with the wants, needs, and complaints of the players?
AK: It is a challenge, and it isn't. Firstly, because this game's been around for so long I think the DNA is very well understood by players, new and old actually. They know it's a tactical game that has a lot of unique elements like destruction, like asymmetric attacker-defender characteristics. But it does mean that players do want to see change, and more of it more often, and that's where we have to anticipate better, adapt even faster. And in a way, that's sustainable, right? We are humans at the end of the day, the dev team is very human as well, and we want to encourage something that can last another 10 years and not only focus on the short term.
IGN: What impact will Ubisoft’s creation of the Vantage Studios subsidiary have on you guys? How do you feel about it, and will it have any noticeable impact on the players?
AK: So when it comes to the player perspective, Vantage Studios is not player-facing so it won't be anything that's noticeable for players in the day-to-day or even long term. And even on the project we're not seeing any major changes, the focus is still on making sure that Siege grows, that it's invested in, and so that's something that we can confirm today. And it means that again, we're still very excited about the future. So it doesn't actually change anything for us right now.
IGN: When Siege X launched in June, it surged on Steam to around 150,000 concurrent players. Now it appears to be hovering around 40,000. Is that sort of drop-off a concern?
AK: Firstly, the players coming to the game, especially like a record number of new players checking out Siege X? It’s always awesome and it’s exactly what we had hoped for. And then yeah, there's always a bit of a tail afterwards, especially as the team was also kind of recovering from launching something as massive as Siege X. There are ebbs and flows, and a lot of it's expected.
So for us, we're really happy with the game. We're happy with where it's going. We have the Munich Majors in November where we'll be sharing even more about where it's going next. And again, excited to see players continue to join Siege and grow from there.
IGN: Is it a similar trend on consoles?
AK: Yeah, it is. PC and consoles share the same player habits that we see all the time.
IGN: At this stage, do you feel like switching to free-to-play was the right thing to do, or is it too soon to tell?
AK: For us, we're seeing the benefits already. We have more new players joining the game than ever before since launch, and that's exactly what we’d hoped for. We're seeing a new generation of Siege players as well, which again is really great even as we try to balance the needs of new players and also veteran players. It is hitting the mark.
IGN: You’ve got so many characters and 10 years’ worth of lore built into the game now. Have you at least entertained the idea of a campaign mode? Rainbow Six Vegas had such an awesome co-op campaign.
AK: It’s absolutely part of the heritage and yes, it is something that our players ask about. All I can say right now is we're still really focused on the PvP aspect. We have been playing around with storytelling within PvP, and we had an event called Assault on Hereford that players really loved, that did build on what our characters are doing, the tone of the game, and we will continue to explore that realm. But yeah, we have nothing to announce right now.
IGN: What’s your stance on the use of generative AI in games development, do you have plans to use it for Siege?
AK: If we just talk about AI at its core, it's something we've always been using, like machine-learning, developing new tools not only for anti-cheat but for things like our AI bots, where they're actually trained on our real player data. So these are all incredible tools that make us faster and more efficient. And so it's not a new concept.
However, when it comes to generative AI, this is stuff that's still really new and so we haven't incorporated it into our pipeline of Siege.
IGN: What's the fan response been like to the Dual Front mode? I know a lot of players were of the opinion that the District map was a bit too big at launch, are you reevaluating that?
AK: Yeah, there was a lot of feedback on the new mode especially when you're comparing it to veterans and new players. We see new players really jumping in more often than veterans, which is great. It's something that we hoped for. But there are still ways to improve it.
So we will be taking some time to make some bigger changes to the game mode that we’ll be really excited to share for Year 11 - Season One. So at the start of next year. We'll keep on shaking things up and seeing if we can get more good feedback on it too.
It's definitely something that we want to stand apart from core Siege. Core Siege is very much competitive. The main draw is Ranked where it has this kind of competitive progression. Dual Front is still the place where we want to give all of the sandbox ingredients that you have in Siege in a more free form so you can play around with all of it, mixing attackers and defenders, mixing different kinds of strategies to attack and defend too. That's where it really shines. So making sure Dual Front is answering a clearly different need than Core is something that we're focused on.
IGN: We’ve seen Star Wars Outlaws come to Nintendo Switch 2, and Assassin’s Creed Shadows is rumoured to be on its way too. Is Rainbow Six Siege 2 likely to be next?
AK: For us the focus will always be on the platforms we’re on right now, making sure that it's the best experience and when we do new gameplay [that] it makes use of the platforms that we're on. So right now, any new platform isn't necessarily a focus for us. But again, we're a live game, it's 10 years. I learnt a long time ago to never say never, so we'll see as platforms grow and new opportunities come up too.
IGN: Finally, do you have anything special planned for the 10-year anniversary?
AK: We’ve spoken a little bit about it and we'll share even more at the Munich Majors, but our plan is absolutely to celebrate this major milestone with our players. We have a big event planned for in-game. We have rewards that we have planned for our players as well. So yeah, we'll absolutely be taking advantage of this big moment and celebrating it with everyone.
IGN: Looking forward to seeing what you have in store. Thanks for your time.
AK: Thank you so much.
Tristan Ogilvie is a senior video editor at IGN's Sydney office. He travelled to Bangkok as a guest of Gamescom Asia.
