Storytelling has always been kind of like a social highlighter, and the interesting
things to me about a story is the sharing the experience of what it's like to be human.
Video games are still evolving as a medium.
Less than 20 years ago, it was, you know, little pixels on screen and they were very
arcade-like and there wasn't much story at that point.
Each time that there's new ways that people are interacting, the new ways that we're engaging
as humans, there are new opportunities to tell a different kind of interactive story
and have different kinds of game experiences.
What, is that it?
Really interesting shifts have been going on across many different entertainment industries,
not only games, and I think it really has to do with the engagement model, right?
A single storyteller or creator telling their story to a large audience--that was the broadcast
model, but there's a new model that's coming, what I'm calling an "ecosystem model."
Before it was one way from a creator to an audience, then it's two way audience and creator,
back and forth.
Now it's tons of different roles that all participate in the experience in different
ways, right.
You have some people that are playing, but you have some people who are viewing.
You can have co-creators who are maybe doing important things within the game that become
part of the lore.
You can have a broadcaster, a commentator who's commenting on the experience.
All of the different roles that people can play, not just audience and creator, but what's
the spectrum of things that you can do in-between, and how do all of those roles interact, how
does that evolve the way that we think about making stories, um, and obviously in my case,
video games.
[Voiceover] There are rules, there is nothing if we do not abide by the Assassin's Creed.
[Jade] About 14 years ago, when I first set out with my former team to create the first
Assassin's Creed, we knew from the start that we wanted to create a franchise.
And part of my goal in that was we would create a franchise where you could hand it off and
give creative freedom to other teams, but it would still automatically be consistently
on-brand.
I think now the next step is not just being able to hand over that core creative seed
to other creative teams, the question is how do you structure it from the start to be a
real ecosystem, where it's not only other professional creative teams that can take
your franchise and make stuff that fits in canon and have their sandbox, but where players
can?
And how do you structure version 2.0 of a franchise that's thought of from the start
not only to live on through other creative teams and other media and professional teams,
but how does it live on and really be owned by the fans?
And that line between creator and audience is completely blurred all the way through.
That's what we're really trying to create when we're looking at the next big blockbuster
franchise.
[Darth Vader breathing sound] [Jade] Star Wars is almost just as much defined by the
connections that the fans have and the stories that they tell each other and their involvement
with the franchise, as it is by the actual movies or toys or other products.
It has become a kind of ecosystem.
When we look at our own new franchise that we're trying to create here, we're trying
to figure out how we spark those opportunities in a more integrated way into the initial
experience from the start.
So that's where a lot of our questions and creative searching is coming from.
I think a great example of the thinking behind that is if you look at a lot of sort of things
that have become big conspiracy theories.
All of the stuff about how if you play a Beatles's record backwards, it's the devil.
And then everyone's doing it and there's all these stories and everyone's engaged and there's
so many of these conspiracy theories, but it does show us something about the power
of having a mystery where people can be involved in creating the truth.
And is there anything we can build in so that the stories that are the most interesting
ones, the most interesting conspiracies if you will, get folded back into the story that
we're crafting.
That's where a lot of the creative challenges and questions still are unanswered and also
where we're able to experiment and figure out what works.
[Character speaking] Impossible.
[Jade] We have an opportunity to completely evolve the way that we're telling stories.
Any time you have an idea, flip it upside-down, look at it backwards, kind of go "What are
the things that I'm taking for granted because they've always been this way, but no longer
need to be that way?
I think if you can create that atmosphere and you bring in great people who like the
same thing, you get to some interesting results hopefully [laughs].
[Director] Questioning everything, back to questioning everything.