A collaboration between Ubisoft Montpellier’s and Beyond Good & Evil 2 and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s HitRecord was announced at E3 2018, and we were able to sit down with the game’s Producer, Guillaume Brunier, to find out how it all works.
While Brunier told Stevivor that some of Beyond Good & Evil 2‘s massive galaxy will be procedurally generated, HitRecord content is an entirely different beast.
“It’s humanly generated,” Brunier said to Stevivor and Press-Start Australia. “We’ve worked with [HitRecord] for over a year right now and I’m really, really happy we’re working with them. The way they work is that people can come to their site [and] answer our brief.”
Brunier said that Ubisoft Montpellier designs specific briefs for would-be designers to then work upon. Montpellier can prepare a brief for any media they’d like, including pirate radio songs, radio host segments or anti-hybrid propaganda that can be posted on the walls of Ganesha City.
“We give reference, we brief everyone,” Brunier continued. “And then people can contribute with their ideas with their drawings. What ends up in the game is a collaboration of the work; if you have an idea for a poster but you don’t know how to draw then just write the slogan.
“If you know how to draw, hit up the slogan, remix the slogan and put it in a picture. If I know how to colourise it, I will release the stuff then hit record.”
Ubisoft Montpellier will then review the content through a “great validation process.”
“If we consider this is validated to go into the game, we can give direction, ‘More like this or that’,” Brunier said.
If Ubisoft Montpellier decides to use the work in Beyond Good & Evil 2, then HitRecord steps in and then helps to allocate payments for the work.
“HitRecord will manually look at all the contributions that have led to that specific artwork,” Brunier explained. “They’re going to say, ‘okay you [made] the tagline, you did the drawing.’
“So they will propose a payment for every one of us and they will have this payment validated by the community. You can go check on the site right now, that’s how they do. After two weeks’, we will get some money for what we made.”
Perhaps the best result of the partnership between Ubisoft Montpellier and HitRecord is something any gamer would be proud of.
“[They’ll] get credited in the game, as such,” Brunier finished.
C’mon — who wouldn’t want that?
Beyond Good & Evil 2 is planned for release on Windows PC, Xbox One and PS4. While a beta is expected in 2019, a proper release window for the game has yet to be detailed.
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