![]() ![]() Today, in addition to Schmitter and Kammersberger, the group has five other members from the United Kingdom, the United States, Ireland, and Germany – all volunteers who carry out ambitious modding projects. We also needed public representation as a group to collaborate directly with publishers.” Together, they founded NOMAD Group in 2015. “We wanted to bring together people who have the skills to reverse-engineer, and there are not many people who can do that. “We decided that we needed to form a united group, and not just continue as people living in different corners of the planet, competing in the creation of mods,” Kammersberger explains. Using this, they were able to manipulate and modify assets from Counter-Strike and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. They began learning to mod using Garry’s Mod, a physics sandbox game developed by Facepunch Studios. They met while working on mods for Grand Theft Auto V, and they’ve both been involved in modding since a very young age Martin started when he was 10 years old. Understanding a game, diving into its code, and enriching the experience even further are the passions of modders like Jan Schmitter and Martin Kammersberger, from Germany and Austria, respectively. It makes it possible to evolve the technique, in terms of tools and game design, while giving more opportunities to players.” “Our team's mandate is to identify innovative and independent projects or players with a desire to potentially partner with Ubisoft,” explains Bardot. Several exchanges followed with different Ubisoft teams before the Open Innovation Accelerator team officially picked up the project. The game seemed ideal to them: a AAA open-world with an urban environment and a high potential for encounters and adventures. At the time, NOMAD Group was working on a modded prototype of Watch Dogs 2, with the goal of developing a multiplayer mode. It can be a new building block and the logical continuity of UGC.”Īt an event in 2018, Enguerrand Pinot, a member of NOMAD Group, met Nicolas Pouard, VP of Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovation Lab, and presented his group's ambitions. Modding offers additional possibilities and, why not? Sometimes it can be a source of inspiration for developers. “However, no matter what modders create, the base game is still available in its entirety. “The desire to preserve a creation as we intended and created it is totally understandable,” says Mathieu Bardot, communication coordinator in the Ubisoft Open Innovation Accelerator, a team that works with indie developers to build positive synergies. Nevertheless, there are certain reservations about it in the industry – modding is perceived by some as the alteration of an original work and a diversion of its primary purpose. ![]() ![]() This has always been a source of discussion when we talk about creation and art, and some developers were very excited about it.” “Preserving the integrity of Watch Dogs: Legion's single-player campaign was our main concern when discussing how the mods were going to interact with the game. “There were discussions from the development team on the artistic aspects of this project,” Stakenborg says. Mods are often created by fans and can range from small changes and tweaks to gameplay to complete changes in environments and worlds. “Modding”, the process of altering pre-existing aspects of a game, fosters players’ creativity and extends the scope and content of the games. As many developers know, projects of this type – a collaboration between a videogame studio and “modders” – are rare. “I recently presented a talk about this project at the Ubisoft Developers Conference, which was rather unexpected for me,” adds Stakenborg. As part of the collaboration, Stakenborg learned he would work with people outside Ubisoft and allow them to modify and enrich Watch Dogs 2 and Watch Dogs: Legion – basically, to mod the game. I joined the project almost two years after it started,” says Stakenborg. “He believed I was a good fit, so I tried to learn as much as I could about them. In 2020, while he was working on Watch Dogs: Legion, his producer mentioned a collective he didn’t yet know about: NOMAD Group, a global network of modders who work to bring user-generated content (UGC) to AAA games. Rene Stakenborg joined Ubisoft almost a decade ago as a pipeline technical director at Ubisoft Montreal on franchises like Assassin's Creed and Rainbow Six. ![]() This article was originally published in French on Ubisoft Stories.Ī Cultural and Artistic Movement in its own Right ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |