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Ubisoft Veteran at Red Storm - Telegrams for Guests (Patreon)

Published:
2021-10-14 20:47:04
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Broken Silicon's next guest will be Keith Kadera - a veteran of Ubisoft.  He is currently an "animator," but has been a concept artist, modeler, texture artist, rigger, UI artist, and much more in his decades at Red Storm.

This guy has directly animated sword fighting in Assassin's Creed games, and done work on the Division and Ghost Recon series.  He knows his stuff when it comes to game development!

In fact, Tom met him in person this year!  Keith doesn't just know game development, he clearly also has a deep understanding of the required hardware and even what's causing the shortages going on right now.

This episode is likely the best one yet for questions regarding game development, optimizations, consoles, and PC Hardware.  The conversation will be heavily influenced by your questions!   

You have 48 hours to submit questions (until Saturday Night).  Be concise, use good grammar, and be thoughtful in your questions/comments to be considered :).

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kkadera/

https://www.redstorm.com/games

Comments

theRemedy

Hello Tom, and welcome Keith! My question is about how developers see the current landscape of game feedback. Right now with the recent BF2042 beta, there has been a lot of hostile feedback with regards to some specific design features of the game. Many people have also come to defend the developers, explaining that very old builds released for a game beta are inevitable. This is apparently due to how segmented developer teams can be and how there needs to be a choice on when to cut off active development for a certain beta build. Can you at all elaborate on how beta builds for a game are determined (and some of its nuances)? And maybe share some of your thoughts on how game developers and gamers can better communicate with and understand each other for the betterment of the industry? Thanks again for coming on the show!

Cameron Harper

What software level improvements will we see on pc in the future around optimisations for current hardware? And will we see more improvements when games start getting direct access to the graphics card through newer APIs?

Swiggles

How much more time consuming is it to make high-quality assets of any kind, versus, PS2 or PS3 era? If not harder how much more time consuming?

Falto

Hello! My question is regarding "console optimization"....how exactly are you guys able to make game run better on console with similiar hardware to a pc. For example if I built a pc with the same specs as ps4 i would get weaker performance overall....in order words what's the consoles secret sauce lol

Falto

How much better are graphics gonna get? Also this might be a stupid question but is it possible for a game's graphic to be better than real life?

Brian Scanlon

Ubisoft seems to be having major problems with DX12 game releases (such as the notoriously unstable and unresolved Assassin’s Creed Valhalla). What is it about the transition to DX12 that the studio seems to be struggling with - not enough experienced programmers, too much pressure from leadership to release things before they are ready? What changes to the development process do you think might be necessary to get the studio back on track for AAA game development?

Cleansweep

Hey Tom and Keith. Just a quick question about UI in games: how much of a nightmare is it to design something that needs to be legible and scalable across an insanely variable set of screensizes, even though there may not be tools to allow for proper prototyping before implementation, and almost no QA testing will be done on larger screens? It seems to me that in an era where customizable UIs are becoming more of a thing in some games, the industry doesn't really actually do a great job of figuring out how to accommodate the wide variety of setups gamers have, never mind actual accessibility issues like text size or anything that isn't a color grading option.

GemuNeen

Hi Tom and Keith! I am currently a fresh college student and will be starting game design next semester and curious as to what your thoughts are regarding game development with Ai assistance being a possibility in the future. Any tips and tricks for starting out in this field?

Travis Gooding

Hi Tom and Keith. Keith, are there any new technologies coming or are currently available that you're interested to get your hands on that could help move forward animations and physics in games? 2nd Q. Are there any primary and or support studios you'd love to work together with that you haven't had the ability to before?. I heard Capcom were thrilled working together with Sonys VASG and using Santa Monica studios Mocap Stage for RE8. And Acti uses VASG for CoD etc.

Ryan Davis

Hi Tom and Keith. I was wondering about what the artists and writing staff think about some of the character design choices in games like AC Valhalla and Odyssey. Did any of the staff ask questions about why a sub Saharan African female would be chosen as the blacksmith for a Viking raiding group in early middle ages England? Or about how so many of the mercenary characters in Odyssey were women? I know it is a video game but it all seems so anachronistic and out of place. It would be like putting an Irish character in an ancient Chinese setting. It doesn't make sense.

Eleriam

Hi Tom and Keith, thank you for doing this interview, it's much appreciated. Do you happen to have any insight on the impact of AMD's sponsorship of Assassin's Creed games? The first game they sponsored they lost badly in benchmarks, but came out on top in the following two games, indicating that developers were now putting in an effort to reward AMD's hardware the most. A follow-up question would be: does AMD really need to actively sponsor titles for its customers to benefit for choosing AMD at the shop?

Type2501

Hi Tom and Keith, I would like to ask for some insight about the unique situation of gaming development that leads to so many delays and mishaps despite the best effort from the devs and management? Because I works in theaters where no delays are allowed. Improvements can be made after premiere night, but when the house is open, everything has to be there and works. So we can only plan accordingly and improvise if we have to. I am in no way suggesting game devs are not working as hard nor as smart. But yet, it seems to be impossible to accurately plan a development from the beginning to gold. What are the unique difficulties you guys has to overcome? What is the most common source of delays and changes of plan? Sorry for such a long question, and thank you again for Tom and our guest making this podcast possible.

Laz

Hi Tom and Keith. Are the games currently in development made purely for the new consoles, or is cross compatibility with the older gen here to stay for a while?

Laz

Since we had the new consoles out for a while, can you tell us about how this changes game development? Can you give us an example of features that now became possible or easier to implement?

Polarde

Hi Tom and Keith. I understand that Keith cannot comment on the company stategy but I feel that Ubisoft came into the last console generation with different attitude of excitement (for ex. the famous Watch Dogs trailer, Rainbow 6, the division reveal trailer). Was the backslash so big internally/externally that a different "more grounded" approach was choosen for the new gen? Part of me misses the hype of those amazing trailers.. ;) + second question: the wikipage of Assassin's Creed Valhalla credits 15! different Ubisoft teams working on it.. how is communication between them handeled. Is part of the sometimes controversial, shallow open world feeling maybe attributed to that?

Deepest Learners

With the new generation of consoles out a kind of standard compute architecture for gaming has emerged. You have a CPU with main memory keeping track of what is going on in the game, GPU either on-socket if it’s an APU or on the PCIe bus if it’s discrete that draws the scenes, and storage is a flash SSD over PCIe. We can all see the iterative improvements that will be made to this architecture - faster CPUs and GPUs, more memory, higher bandwidth interconnects, etc. My question is what do you think will be the next big shift in this architecture? Most recently we moved from HDDs over SATA to SSDs over PCIe, what’s next? What is the weak link here?

Timo H

Hi, a bit late to the party... My questions concerns overall of Ubisoft and its "subsidiaries", eg Toronto and other locations + comparison to other few giant game studios/publishers like EA, Activision, Epic. How culture differs inside Ubi (NA vs europe? as it is french company) , different locations, and overall company culture and concept vs other giant game companies. These big ones get lot of hatemail, but Id like to see more detailed view and perhaps what is gained criticism and what is not(company culture as in to allow supporting devs and other employees to focus on games and make better ones each next year). Im conflicted, coz yea there is improvements in Ubi games to be made technically, but I also like a lot story, setting, environments of eg. Far Cry series and other titles, taking directions other big publishers dont(of course more boldness is always welcome in these big titles, but I see progress over long period).