Ubisoft Massive: ‘Being openly political is bad for business’

The Division’s developer actively tries to avoid political messaging in its games, according to the studio’s COO speaking at the Sweden Game Conference in Skövde.

As reported on GI.biz, Ubisoft Massive COO Alf Condelius says his studio avoids being ‘openly political’ with its games. “For example in The Division,” he says, “It’s a dystopian future and there’s a lot of interpretations that it’s something that we see the current society moving towards, but it’s not – it’s a fantasy.

“It’s a universe and a world that we created for people to explore how to be a good person in a slowly decaying world. But people like to put politics into that, and we back away from those interpretations as much as we can because we don’t want to take a stance in current politics.”

But why would that be the case? Because it’s ‘bad for business’, of course. “But it is interesting,” Condelius continues, “And it is a discussion that we have, and it’s an ongoing discussion we have with our users, of course, because people want to put an interpretation into the universe that we create and they want to see their own reality in the fantasies that we give them, and the stories that the games are.”

It is, of course, a ludicrously privileged position to be in to be able to make near-future science fiction worlds based very closely on our own, with a society literally taken down by our capitalistic tendencies, only to then wave your hands and say ‘nah, not political mate’. But hey, don’t worry – that’s not a statement either – it’s just some words in a sentence.