Rock, Paper, Shotgun

There’s been a clarification by Stanislas Mettra, creative director at Ubisoft, about contentious comments he was quoted as making regarding PC gaming and the then-unlikelihood of climbing-based survival title I Am Alive appearing on this platform. In a statement sent to IncGamers, he claims that “I would really love to see a pc build of the game and I don’t think I meant to say “the game won’t happen on PC”, observing that it might have been a breakdown in communication as he’s not a native English speaker. (He isn’t; I met him too that day).

“We are still working to see the feasibility of it,” he says of the PC version, “which is not necessarily simple. I gave some examples to illustrate the problem, but obviously it is not in my hands and not my part to talk about this.” Said examples were the ones about piracy and presumed low sales, which carried more than a whiff of inadequate research. Now he’s saying he was the wrong guy to ask – which was always my personal take on the controversial quotes, to be honest. They came across as one guy coming up with a unprepared response on the fly about a question he probably wasn’t expecting, rather than endemic of company policy, and I wasn’t thrilled that his words were taken by many as an excuse to spank Ubisoft again.
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Gosh, we’re seldom angered by a developer’s words, but I Am Alive‘s creative director Stanislas Mettra is going some to tempt it out of us. With frankly astonishing arrogance, he declared that his team is not bothering to create a port of the game for PC because “no one will buy it”, even though people are demanding a version. Of course he aimlessly blames piracy, even though being with Ubisoft he has the option to stick so much DRM up its arse no one will be able to play it without his personally coming around their house to type in his password. But then, in a moment of just remarkable hubris, Mettra declares that the “no one” means fewer than 50,000.

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I Am Alive has been kept hidden in Ubisoft’s cupboard for years. First announced in 2008, with this trailer, it’s been through a bit of a journey. The original developers, Darkworks, left the apparently almost complete project after a “mutual decision”, with duties taken to Ubisoft’s own Shanghai studio. Come 2009 screenshots were leaked, but little more was heard. The last time Ubi set a release date was for last year, and rumours of something happening by the end of this Summer have proven unfounded. And now a leak has happened again, this time a slightly unfinished trailer. Which you can see below.

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And I am very tired. I’m also enticed by this cutscene from a new Ubisoft game. About, hey, a post-apocalyptic world! There’s certainly a theme to E3 2008…

No clue about the game itself – but it’s a neat cinematic. It’s gotten me interested, certainly. Doubly so if it’s a game in which you avoid combat, as implied by the water bottle trap-setting scene. Intriguing. And hopefully not another Alone In The Dark.