You might not know it, but one of the biggest success stories in the multiplayer gaming space is Canadian.
In December 2015, Ubisoft Montreal launched Rainbow Six Siege, a tactical shooter that garnered praise for its focus on tense, strategic online matches. In the decade since, the game has accumulated more than 85 million registered players and, earlier this year, was relaunched as the free-to-play Siege X. Now, nearly 1,000 Ubisoft developers around the world are working on the game, with the Montreal flagship studio leading the charge.
It’s an impressive feat for any game in the increasingly competitive multiplayer space, and it’s especially noteworthy since it hails from a Canadian team. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Siege, MobileSyrup sat down with creative director Alex Karpazis and game director Joshua Mills at a special fan and developer event at Ubisoft Montreal.
Together, the pair talked about how the team constantly creates new content, the impact of Ubisoft’s new Vantage Studios subsidiary with Tencent that includes Rainbow Six, their favourite Siege memories and the role that Ubisoft Montreal’s Canadian identity has played on the game.
What’s it like to have a game that’s gone on for 10 years like this? It’s not common to have a multiplayer game be this successful and this popular for so long. What would you say is the sort of secret sauce behind making it last this long?
Joshua Mills (Image credit: Ubisoft)
Joshua Mills: A ridiculously dedicated team. Being on Siege, there’s ups and downs — a lot of different things happened there. And when the game originally launched, it needed extra love, and the team didn’t back down from that. They took that opportunity to push forward — we’re 10 years in now, and continuing to keep that same mentality alive. Beyond that, obviously the community. Because they bring the absolute craziest factor to the game. Because they constantly are surprising us, taking whatever we put in the game and then showing us how to actually use it, which is fantastic. But honestly, those are the two major factors, community and then an absolutely dedicated team.
Alex Karpazis: I would also say the incredible depth that Siege brings. You could play Siege for 10 years and still not feel like you’ve mastered everything to it. So having that kind of skill ceiling really contributes to a community that’s really dedicated to it and just wants to further master what they’re playing.
Another thing that I really love about this success story is that it’s a very Canadian success story. There’s a lot of very popular multiplayer games, but they’re made elsewhere. Development on Siege is led here. What do you think having a quintessentially Canadian team leading the charge Siege has added to the game and helped it last so long?
Alexander Karpazis. (Image credit: Ubisoft)
Karpazis: That’s a good one. I would like to think — not to say any other team wouldn’t do this — but we approach it with a lot of humility. We’re not afraid to say when we made a mistake, and then we try to make good on it, so we’re pretty good at saying “sorry.” [laughs] But also, the team brings a lot of character to it as well, and that may be through the French-Canadian side, where they sneak in a very hidden French line —
Mills: You heard one earlier! [He’s referring to a behind-the-scenes demo at Ubisoft Montreal we saw of the audio being added to a cinematic trailer and an audio designer throwing in Quebecois in the background.]
Karpazis: A good ol’ Quebecois swear word or something like that. These little things add character to the game, and I think the community picks up on that, too.
Mills: Yeah, I think the diversity of the team and the fact that there is a lot of multiculturalism that comes into our team as well showcases and comes through into the game. Because we have people from all over the world. Rainbow is from all over the world. So half the time, before we’re calling in a consultant, we’re just talking to somebody on the team who might already know what’s going on and whatnot. But I think that’s part of it. Honestly, I think we’ve got some grit living up here. [laughs] The reality is we can weather the storm and we do that with a live game all the time.
Literally and figuratively weathering the storm!
Mills: [laughs] Yeah! I think there’s some pride in that too, to be able to hold in on that. But I do like what Alex is saying — there is humility there. We know we’re not going to be perfect on everything, and we want to work and be humble and continue to move forward. And I think that makes us stronger.
I’m always fascinated with these games that go so long and how to keep coming up with new content to sustain it. And then there’s obviously that tricky balance of you’re introducing new Operators, maybe you make tweaks to the old ones… How do you find that line? How do you approach continuously building content for a live service? Where do you get your sort of inspiration, your ideas from — how does that whole process work?
Mills: It sounds kind of weird to say, but it comes from the game itself, because the game kind of writes its own story. Basically, whenever you’re playing and you ask a lot: you go, “What if I did this? Could I do this?” And all we’re doing is facilitating that answer to, “Yes, and this is what will happen.” And as long as we can keep that conversation back and forth, we can keep building anything and everything for it. And I think that’s really where it comes from, because as technology advances, we get opened up to more answers that we’re able to actually produce. And that’s a really exciting part, because the sandbox of Siege is completely full of depth, but again, it’s really scratching the surface of what we can do.
Recently, Vantage Studios was formed, and Rainbow Six was one of the properties that was folded into that. So I’m curious what impact, if any, has that delineation between the franchises had on the development of Siege?
Karpazis: For us, Vantage Studios just means that there is a commitment to Rainbow and there is a commitment to the future of the game. For the players, they won’t really see anything; Vantage Studios is just an internal thing for us, so they won’t see too much of that name. But what’s reassuring is that when we say, “Hey, we’re around for the next 10 years,” Vantage Studios will help with that.
When you knew that this big milestone was coming up, how did you decide how to celebrate it?
Mills: It’s funny, we talked about a bunch of different things. When it came up, we knew we wanted to do an event — that came up really quick. We’re going to do an event and because they’re a nice touch point with community. But the different forms in which it was taking was up for debate for a bit, until we focused on just turning it all and making it about the community — making it an absolute celebration about all the different moments we’ve shared together. And I think that’s the really fun part, because if you were there from Year One, you’ll get references, you’ll see easter eggs and the map and different things like this that’ll allude to that story that we’ve had.
Or maybe you showed up in Year Seven, and you’ll have those ones from that point as well. And then maybe you’ll learn about the other ones from other people playing. Or you’ll see the modifier system and be like, “I have no idea what Raptor Legs are.” Well, now you can go back and see what that was back when that happened. And it just turned to that focus on the community at that point. Instead of going like, “It’s all about us,” it’s like, “No, it’s about us collectively.”
Karpazis: Yeah, and it was important too to involve the community. So when we have the event, we have actual character designs that are coming from some of the members of the community, too. So wrapping that all up together, plus bringing back the original opening video, that’s such a simple thing. It’s like a zipper that kind of suits up and then a stitch that gets embroidered onto a uniform. We had that when the game launched, and then we removed it. And actually, it turns out players love something like that. So we decided, “All right, let’s bring that back. It’s a little something that is nostalgic and players enjoy, too.”
Related to a previous question about the idea of constantly coming up with ideas… With Siege X, specifically, I find that really interesting, because you’re making changes to a game that’s been around for so long, and there could be some trepidation about how to approach that. So, going in knowing that you were going to make those changes and hopefully open up the audience — what went into the sort of thought process behind, “Hey, we’re going to rebrand the game and do all these different things with it?”
Image credit: Ubisoft
Karpazis: Yeah, there was — and still is — a core to the game that we want to protect. We are a tactical FPS that is more about outsmarting your opponent than just running and gunning. So we want to make sure that we hold that sacred, as long as we can do that, and reinforcing it with things that can just build on it and accentuate it. It’s really important. So when we’re looking at Siege X, it’s really about, “Okay, we know what the core is — what are the things around it that will help modernize the experience, that will help new players kind of discover the magic of Siege as well? And, in some ways, make it more approachable with new tools to learn the game and new onboarding so that when you first jump in, you’re not immediately drowning in everything that you have to learn in the game.”
Mills: Yeah, and Siege X for us isn’t a stopping point; it’s just a new starting point. So the back-end development of a bunch of things that are not necessarily player-facing went into play. So it’s us rebuilding and reinforcing that foundation of the game to set us up for a much longer runway as well. So like we talked about, the audio system got totally overhauled, the lighting system got overhauled. Both of those will continue to mature going forward, but now we have new bases to work from. So this is that kind of investment in the game to continue to work on these things, but like Alex said, protecting that core and reinforcing it as much as possible.
I’ll admit one of the most terrifying things was messing around with the actual movement of the characters. We did an update to the momentum of movement. It feels so good. But whenever we tested it, we didn’t tell anybody that we had done it, and we just let them play. And within like 15 seconds, someone noticed it, and they’re like, “Wait, wait, wait.” And then they all gathered around that one person and watched them running up and down a bunch of air conditioners, and they realized, “Look. You don’t stop anymore. You just go straight down. It feels so smooth.” And it was like, “Perfect!”
This 10-year milestone is also a time of reflection. So I’m curious for both of you: being on the game for a number of years now each, is there a particular favourite moment that stood out to you, either in terms of a content launch, or an interaction with a fan at an Invitational or something else that stands out to you?
Mills: I got two, but do you want to go first?
Karpazis: [laughs and pauses]
Tricky question, I know!
Karpazis: Yeah, it’s tough! I think some of the best moments happened with the team, when something like COVID took place, and we all had to work from home, we didn’t miss a beat. We ship [updates] every three months, and even though we had to do it remotely in really trying times, the team totally delivered. And to have the world turned upside down, but then everybody rallies behind what they loved and makes sure that they can still deliver something — that I will never forget.
That’s a great answer.
Mills: Yeah, that’s better than my answer.
Everyone: [laughs]
Karpazis: There is no right answer!
Mills: One of them for me: it’s my first year on Rainbow, I had been tapped to go down on the SI [Siege Invitational] stage and help present the roadmap next to this guy [Karpazis]. And I get down there. But what we had done was we had come together, and we flew one of our squadmates in from the UK so he could be at that SI. So not only was he there, but the rest of the squad was there, and then my wife was there, too, all watching me on that stage. But the year before that, I was in the stands, so that was super surreal to know that and hear them cheering and stuff.
But then the other time was with you [Karpazis]. We were in Sao Paulo for SI, and like the best game of Siege ever was played. And then the game’s over. The two brothers are walking around the stadium, and I’m standing next to Alex, and we’re just like, “That crowd was insane, absolutely insane.” And I’m just like, “Dude, how did we get here? How is this real right now?” And I will never, ever, ever forget that, because it was just like that moment you realize how much this game is affecting other people’s lives, and how much us squabbling over, like, how many rounds should be in this magazine or whatever, but it matters so much [more] than those moments.
There’s no better time than now to jump into the game. So for people who haven’t played yet, or maybe haven’t played in a long time, what advice would you give to ease in, jump in, start enjoying Siege?
Image credit: Ubisoft
Mills: Clear House. A new mode that just came out in Season Four. It’s essentially a new training module, kind of based off of what T [Terrorist] Hunt was. It allows you to run the maps. There’s a mini map in the corner. It gives you a better map understanding. But also you have multiple targets, so no punishment for if you get marked by one of them — you just keep going. It’s a great way to get comfortable with the mechanics of the game, learn an Operator and learn the map. Maps are the hardest thing to learn in this, so this is probably one of the highest tools for new players now.
Karpazis: And if somebody hasn’t played for a while, this season is great because the Wildcards event is about celebrating everything. Maybe you were playing three years ago, four years ago, you’ll notice something that we call out all the way back then. It’s just a really fun game mode to jump in with friends and enjoy.
This interview has been edited for length, clarity and language.
Rainbow Six Siege X is now available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC and Amazon Luna.
Image credit: Ubisoft
