STACK Mar #137

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52 MARCH 2016
GAMES
Panic
on the Streets of
New York
Start spreading the news. NewYork has been hit with a virus and the Big Apple needs you.
We speak with IP director on Tom Clancy's The Division, Martin Hultberg.
I t is of course tradition for Ubisoft to save
a thunderbolt for the conclusion of its E3
media briefing in Los Angeles, and the
five-minute gameplay demo for The Division back
in 2013 became the game that everyone at the
show was talking about.
A tentative launch date of 2014 was pinned to
retail schedules, but as details of The Division’s
depth and ambition surfaced, it soon transpired
that Massive Ubisoft, the studio behind the game,
had little hope of finishing it in time. 2014 became
2015, and deadlines were set and broken.
"With The Division, we had to do a lot of
'firsts'," IP Director at Swedish-based Massive
Ubisoft, Martin Hultberg, tells STACK. “We
needed a new next-gen game engine (Snowdrop),
which we developed ourselves. Then we needed
to create a new niche within the Tom Clancy
franchise.
“On top of that we needed to marry several
genres into one cohesive gameplay experience,
and at the same time we had to do what all
games always do; create stories, build a universe,
design missions, etc. It was, simply put, a highly
complex project that needed this amount of time
to reach its full potential.”
Traditionally, Tom Clancy-endorsed games
could be classified as the thinking person’s
military shooters, where strategy is requisite, and
espionage, Cold War and covert operations all
recurrent themes. The RPG genre is, as Hultberg
clearly identifies, totally new territory for the
franchise, and coupled with this new direction,
the studio also decided to make The Division
online only.
“The original mandate was for us to create a
Clancy online RPG,” says Hultberg. “The online
part is key because we want a vibrant world
that brings people together in different social
experiences. With easy transitions between
playing alone or with others, we hope to give
everyone a chance to experience the full potential
of our world.
“I think one of the main things you have to do
[to attract campaign players] is create an inviting
and interesting universe for people to play in.
Once you have that, you need to look at ways
of making sure the experience is smooth and
immersive. That is why we developed seamless
transition between single-player, co-op and player-
versus-player, for example."
Hultberg describes The Division as "a proper
loot and statistics-based RPG”.
“The loot mechanics are at the core of the
game," he continues. "What that means is that the
gear you use is a strong indicator of how effective
you will be in the various tasks you engage
with. Player skill is naturally still important, but
understanding the different attributes and how
they relate to skills, gear, and other mechanics is
crucial."
New York City is faithfully recreated as a
backdrop to game, where an outbreak of a deadly
virus on Black Friday sends the world’s most
iconic city spiraling into a tumultuous terrain of
dog-eat-dog on the eve of Christmas. Playing as
an agent of Strategic Homeland Security (The
Division) thrown into the epicenter of chaos
in the hope of restoring some sense of order,
communication between team members is key,
but not always essential.
“Of course, if players decide not to talk to
each other, they don’t have to communicate at all.
But a team of people communicating will always
be more efficient than one that doesn’t,” says
Hultberg.
GAMES FEATURE