Ubisoft asks fans to design content

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, director of HitRecord, Guillaume Brunier, Senior Producer of ‘Beyond Good & Evil 2’, and Ubisoft Narrative Director Gabrielle Shrager speak onstage during the Ubisoft E3 conference at Orpheum Theatre on June 11, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (AFP)

LOS ANGELES: French video game giant Ubisoft is teaming up with a firm founded by actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt to crowdsource material for a new title, it was announced on the eve of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).
Ubisoft has long tapped into feedback from players while designing games, but the latest step will allow some to have content woven into scenes.
An invitation to collaborate went live Monday on the website of Gordon-Levitt’s Hit Record, with the first project being to make music to be aired on a space pirate radio station in Ubisoft’s “Beyond Good and Evil 2,” a science fiction shooter crafted to be a space opera.
“The point of Hit Record is for people to make things together,” he said. “This is the first time we are going to make assets going into a video game, which I think is really cool.”
“This is not just submitting songs,” he added. “We will be making the music together.”
Someone in one country may come up with a bass line, and another elsewhere the drum beat or various instrumentals, according to Gordon-Levitt.
Among other coming games shown off by Ubisoft was psychological thriller “Transference,” a collaboration with Hollywood star Elijah Wood, which will see players grapple with twists and mysteries of a deranged mind.
Wood promised the game “will leave you with haunting memories long after you put down the controller.”
Ubisoft gave clips of a sequel to its history-based adventure franchise “Assassin’s Creed,” set in Greece in the time of Socrates, and roused the crowd with a marching band and performers introducing a new entry to the hit “Just Dance” dancing game franchise.