Rainbow Six Siege director: ‘It’s one of the top games in the world’
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Rainbow Six Siege has been quiet for a few years. The addition of major content like new maps and operators has slowed to make room for dozens of technological improvements and quality-of-life changes. It’s a vital job, but it’s less likely to convince someone to boot than a new character that can change the gameplay.
Creative Director Alexander Karpazis and the team at Ubisoft were well aware of this dilemma, and their solution was in the form of Azami, a new operator that had a tool that could block line of sight, mend damaged surfaces and create entirely new defense setups. Gadget. She’s a true game-changing addition to multiplayer FPS games, and according to Karpazis, her presence in the upcoming Operation Demon Veil represents a return on the technology investments made over the past few seasons.
Ahead of the release of the new season, we spoke with Alexander Karpazis to learn more about Azami, her development history, Year 7, and the importance of reaffirming Ubisoft’s long-term ambitions for the game.
You said you spent a year working on Azami, so how many iterations has this gadget gone through?
Azami has a long and storied past, largely because the idea behind her gadgets—fixing the breakage or patching the bug—is an integral part of Siege. We’re very focused on sabotage and opening up rotations or new avenues for attackers to break through, so that’s pretty much an idea since the beginning of Rainbow Six Siege. You can see this in Castle, but his gadget is more binary when it comes to covering doors and windows. But the idea persisted. The idea of growing up in that field has always been there.
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I think about five years ago we had a prototype called Patcher that worked a bit like a remote castle barricade. You basically shoot castle barricades at doors and windows as well as reinforced walls. It’s always this square patch to connect and fill the space, but it’s very hard to get it right, and we couldn’t find a good way to make it feel unique compared to what Castle did.
Over a year ago, we had a prototype called Flubber. It’s basically like Ela’s Grzmot mines, so you toss them and they explode into a radial pile of green slime. So you can pile Flubbers all over the place. This gives us a new direction for organic that we really, really love.
We have a prototype called Patcher which is like a remote castle barricade
But it’s still crazy hard to develop. For example, our sound engine never anticipated the need to organically block the sound from broken holes in floors and walls. So that means we have to go back and do a lot of homework if we want to get things right. A year and a half ago, we started in earnest at Azami’s Kiba Barrier, making sure the metrics were right, the ideas were right, and we tackled things like sound passage barriers. Honestly, it’s been an incredible journey.
We’ve seen content creators use Kiba Barriers to create parts of the platform and access previously unimaginable areas of the map. Did you know that specific interaction before?
No, because it was never intended to work that way. Azami is an architect, not a parkour athlete, so the Kiba Barrier was never meant to be a device that could be used to let you into hidden spaces. The intent is always to have a unique operator that can help rebuild the site while the game is in the action phase. Again, in this case, our players far exceeded our initial expectations from the operator, so we had to respond very quickly.
There are a lot of references to Velvet Shell action in the reveal stream, which suggests that Azami will have a huge impact on metadata like Mira – I think it’s more impactful than Mira.
I think the team will agree with that too, because Mira and Velvet Shell redefine what it means to defenders on the field; it allows them to access information and open up new ways to play. But Azami answers a more fundamental question, one that’s only really seen in Rainbow Six Siege: sabotage. That’s probably why it’s resonating with so many people right now.
Do you think this is a new character in Siege?
So we call her an architect, and in a way Castle is an architect: he has a lot of utility in helping defenders shape the field. The idea behind the character is always there, it’s just a challenge to execute. We’ve never seen this character grow so fast as we’ve seen other characters expand in Siege’s roster. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in Pro and Ranked and see how the metadata fits in; maybe we need more of this character to get into the game.
Azami’s gadget animation and “hidden blade” setting reminds me of another famous Ubisoft character – was Assassin’s Creed an inspiration?
The game will have all the support it needs to succeed
Initially, we didn’t know the character would come from Japan. So in previous iterations, the device was more of a butterfly knife, bringing a lot of unique personality. However, when we knew the operator was a bodyguard from Japan, we wanted to make sure the device fit the character’s aesthetic and their origins, so we had to change it. So we’re not directly taking inspiration from Assassin’s Creed Hidden Blade, but we actually have several developers from Assassin’s Creed under siege, including an original rigger for the Hidden Blade. So we’ve got the knowledge out there, and it’s actually fun to bring that knowledge to the world of Siege.
In the proposed ranked rework, I do find it interesting that everyone – including the pros – is back in bronze, do you get a little joy out of that?
Well, two things are happening here. One is that your ranking should always feel like an improvement, it shouldn’t be this constant state of frustration that you don’t think you’re improving. It’s important to us to separate MMR from ranked progression, this allows us to do things like no longer need to soft reset your MMR so you’re always in the pool of players you’re supposed to be playing . At the same time, you can also get all the rewards for advancing each season. So hopefully this means that even if you get bumped back to bronze, you can now get more rewards from ranked play.
By separating the MMR attributable to a player from the actual rank (whether it’s Bronze, Platinum, or Diamond), you’ll always maintain a matching rank. So even if everyone has the bronze title, you’ll be placed in the same MMR rank that you should be in when you play qualifying. So the experience of high MMR players and the experience of low MMR players will be very different, the difference between them is only their obsession with pushing up the MMR ranking ceiling.
Is this all transparent to the player?
Everyone will still have an MMR number that they can follow and it will be adjusted after each game, so we definitely maintain that transparency for players.
At the end of the reveal stream, you end by saying “Siege is here to stay”. Why do you feel this is an important time to reaffirm Siege’s long-term ambitions?
It was important to us, the community that has been with us and loved the game, to hear and understand that this game will have all the support it needs to be as successful as possible. We do believe that Rainbow Six: Siege is one of the top games in the world, thanks in large part to the community. Their requirements and what they consider important help us define our roadmap each year.
This game has more packs than six years ago
I think we’ve done a lot of homework and we’ve laid the groundwork for the game. So this year we’ve actually seen more ROI than other years. While we’ve made huge specialized improvements to features that may not be facing players, this year will help players understand why we’ve chosen to invest so much in core gameplay, online technology, anti-cheat or anti-cheat. Even anti-toxic. This year is the year players start seeing all those returns. We’ve established that there is trust there, there is support, and we have long-term ambitions. When you back a game like Siege, that’s what you’ll get.
Are you surprised we haven’t seen Siege’s AAA competitor yet?
Honestly, I’m sorry for any game trying this recipe now. We have seven years of technology, systems, operators and stories. This game is more of a pack than it was six years ago. Because we’re a service game and we’ve made a lot of investments, I think it’s actually pretty daunting to compete with a game like this right now. So we’re very proud of that, even though it feels like it’s an obvious game, it wasn’t when Siege first came out, so we’re very happy that it resonated with so many people.
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