Analysis of Ubisoft's Leadership, Teamwork, and Global Impact

This report analyzes the French gaming company Ubisoft, focusing on its leadership culture, teamwork dynamics, and issues of inequality, while connecting these aspects to globalization, rational & social power, and political influences. Ubisoft, known for games like Assassin's Creed and Far Cry, operates with a decentralized structure, encouraging coopetition between studios. The report examines the leadership of Yves Guillemot, the impact of female leadership, and the challenges of gender imbalance. It also explores the company's approach to teamwork, employee incentives, and the influence of its games on social and historical perspectives. The report highlights the company's response to internal issues and the global structure with studios across continents.

REPORT

Table of Contents
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4

MAIN BODY
This is a short report on effectiveness of work and organisation of the French Gaming
Company UBISOFT based on certain key aspects, such as : leadership culture, teamwork and
inequality while also linking the same with globalization, rational & social power and politics.
Ubisoft has been a key player in the market of publication and distribution of video games and is
quite popular through games like Rayman, Far Cry and Assassin's Creed which is specifically
based on its Duniya Engine.
Leadership culture
The leadership culture in Ubisoft has been dynamic at individual units spread across the
globe. The company is headed by Yves Guillemot who has been the CEO for more than 30 years
now. The unique feature of Ubisoft in this regard that it doesn't have a centralised R and D centre
(Chiambaretto, 2019) and thus has quite a vivid understanding between its separate units
cooperating for the development or employ an individual setup with different creative directors
at a particular country unit heading the R and D of the new creation.
It has had several key games delivered by the Ubisoft Montreal unit. One of the most
famous and even news - mongering launch was that of Assassin's Creed led by Jade Raymond.
The same was highlighted as a rare instance of female led creation at such high levels of video
game content creation. The leadership in the industry though has always suffered from gender
and social imbalance, whose impact is visible on Ubisoft structure as well (Johnson, 2010).
Teamwork
There is a peculiar structure at the company which is highly decentralised. The term for
such kind of cooperative competition between different units is called as Coopetition. This is
quite paradoxical in itself but Ubisoft encourages competition between its own studios and
several different projects to instil the feeling of excellence. The teamwork at certain units has
been great and studios have excelled due to the free hand they get in creative sand designing
parts (Chiambaretto, 2019).
Such decentralised control fosters growth of new ideas and methods in the hierarchy.
This develops the teams at the indigenous levels as they are presented with better opportunities
to be heard and most crucially that of job satisfaction.

Teams are allotted their fund at the project level and no bureaucratic delays get a chance
to desist the process of development. Employees are rewarded as per the success of the game.
The proportional scheme of remuneration pushes for continuous efforts for better game
development as a job incentive is aligned to the process (Chiambaretto, 2019).
Inequality
Ubisoft is known for giving credit where it is due. The game development industry is
highly male centric. The players and the developers are prone to devising games on the aspects
that depict male hegemony. Assassin’s Creed was a powerful message (Johnson, 2010). It was
not only a game that featured female protagonists as an alternative; the game was headed by Jade
Raymond who further took the reins of campaigning and advertising of the game. A position of
authority to woman in this industry is a rare sight (Johnson, 2010).
She was praised but then there was a shift in approach once she dropped the franchise.
The same slipped to the Chief Creative Officer Serge who modelled the game on the similar
masculine aspects. The female characters were dropped in the name of excessive repetition of
animation while the internal culture also suffered a hit due to several sexual harassment issues
that were not duly attended to. The internal structure of the employee population was skewed and
concerns like these became prominent. The philosophy of Ubisoft suffered from the social
inequalities in the gaming industry with the ratio of male to female being 4:1.
Rational and Social Power
Ubisoft with its unique team structure is a key player in the market. It holds a popular name
especially due to games like Far Cry and Rayman. A cult following of Beyond Good and Evil
made it reach to all sorts of people. Tom Clancy franchise is powerful with the input of political
ideas it nurtures. The gaming philosophy has been given a touch of social reality which gives
Ubisoft a power to influence a lot many people.
The MeToo wave brought into front Gamergate and several sexual allegations levelled
internally were made public. Ubisoft was quick to react and a policy has been recently set up.
Key figures that can be termed as growth engines of Ubisoft have been axed or stepped down on
their own. The matters have been dealt in a way that has potential to influence other companies
to follow. It can’t be denied that the same culture of social and rational undercurrents was not
paid due heed internally.

Games like Assassin’s Creed have a large fan base and there are studies that show how these
help in consuming history (De Groot, 2016) and development of interest in past cultural themes.
The extent of its effect is seldom discussed but the Gaming news is fraught with Ubisoft’s soft
style to influence thoughts by the narrative themes of the game.
Historical and Political Influence
Assassin’s Creed franchise and others like Tom Clancy highlight not only the underlying
social currents of present subtly, but also focus on the cultural themes which are often classified
as subaltern(Ess, 2019). The sheer details of the narrative scheme are praiseworthy. These are
further added to by the architectural inputs in the graphics (De Groot, 2016).
Moreover, the aspect of developing social thoughts on the lines of virtual reality that
allows the player to choose for oneself is a novel way (Ess, 2019). It not only respects but also
enriches personal values of an individual giving primacy to liberty of thought. Yves has been
heard saying that these games are political but definitely not the way people want them to be.
The philosophy has been instilled throughout the structure.
Globalisation
The Global control of Ubisoft contributing to its diverse cultures is from presence of its
45 studios in 3 key continents. Australia and South America haven’t yet featured on their list.
The key point to be taken note of is that this global structure was created slowly with
globalisation as the Guillemot family took note of the potential in gaming.

REFERENCES
Chiambaretto, P., Massé, D. and Mirc, N., 2019. “All for One and One for All?”-Knowledge
broker roles in managing tensions of internal coopetition: The Ubisoft case. Research
Policy, 48(3), pp.584-600.
De Groot, J., 2016. Consuming history: Historians and heritage in contemporary popular
culture. Routledge.
Ess, J., 2019. A Revolutionary Western:" Assassin's Creed III" and Visual Depictions of
American Indians.
Johnson, R.S., 2010. The digital Illusio: gender, work and culture in digital game production.