Former Assassin's Creed, Watch Dogs Director Likens Large-Scale Game Development to Working With 'Flaming Barrels Falling Down From a Construction Site,' Months After Parting Ways With Ubisoft

Watch Dogs and Splinter Cell development veteran Clint Hocking has described the experience of leading a large team within Ubisoft as like working while "flaming barrels [are] falling down from a construction site," akin to a scene from the arcade game Donkey Kong.

Hocking made the comment as part of a lengthy discussion about how his role changed as development team sizes grew, leading him to feel less effective while leading Ubisoft's multi-studio effort on Watch Dogs Legion.

Hocking and Ubisoft parted ways abruptly earlier this year amid a reshuffle at the top of the publisher's prized Assassin's Creed brand, despite being in the middle of leading development on Assassin's Creed Hexe. The franchise's next blockbuster, Hexe is understood to still be on target to arrive in 2027.

"On [Splinter Cell] Chaos Theory, I would just walk over to the desk of the person who was making a thing, and sit down with them and talk to them about what they're doing," Hocking recalled, speaking via the FRVR podcast.

"We could have a conversation," he continued, suggesting a scenario where he was able to offer granular input such as the placement of a specific light source to better guide player movement.

"But on a huge game with 1,000 people, you go into a meeting to review some piece of content — some quest, say, or some location — and there's 30 people in the meeting," Hocking continued. "Directors and producers and project managers, and very often even the level designer who built it isn't even in the meeting.

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"And it's like, 'where's the person who worked on this?' 'Ah, they're working on the thing they need to do for their next meeting. But don't worry we'll take notes and put it in Jira for them.' So there's people there writing down what you say, making tasks of it.

"Then you finish the review, you say, 'OK, when are we going to see the iterations and the improvements we talked about?' And they're like, 'Well... so it's going to be six weeks before we see an iteration on this because the person who needs to do the iteration is working on this [other thing].' Then, by the time you get back there six weeks later, maybe the whole context is different. It very often feels like... you know those flaming barrels that Donkey Kong throws down at you? Very often game development feels like this stream of burning barrels falling down from a construction site."

Hocking initially joined Ubisoft to work on the legendary 2002 stealth action adventure Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, which he contributed to as a designer and scriptwriter. Hocking then served as creative director on its follow-up, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, before holding the same role on Far Cry 2.

During a period away from Ubisoft, Hocking served years at LucasArts, Valve, and Amazon. Hocking then returned to Ubisoft to serve once again as a creative director, this time on Watch Dogs: Legion, which launched in 2020 to a mixed response. Following that, Hocking moved over to Assassin's Creed, and had been leading work on Hexe out of the company's Montreal studio. Legion remains Hocking's only shipped title since Far Cry 2 back in 2008.

Hocking's role leading Assassin's Creed Hexe has now been taken up by Jean Guesdon, the Assassin's Creed franchise's Head of Content, who is seen as a steady and experience hand with a lengthy track record working on numerous titles in the series.

Photo by ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social