Ubisoft Montreal discusses the past, present and future of Rainbow Six Siege X

While in Bangkok this week for Gamescom Asia x Thailand, IGN had the chance to sit down with Rainbow Six Siege Read on for the full chat below!

IGN: 10 years is a great achievement for a live-service game, especially since we've seen so many other games come and go in that time. What do you think is the reason for Siege’s longevity?

Alexander Karpazis (AK): I think the most important thing is the depth of the game. Even in 10 years, I don't think you'll be able to master a game like Siege and be incredibly rewarded as a player. This means you're on a journey to learn, master, and discover new things through an ever-changing game. I think because of that, it's grown and resonated with a lot of people.

IGN: Is Siege developing in ways that you couldn't have predicted upon launch?

AK: Yes, absolutely. I mean, if you look at 2015 when the game first launched, the bomb game mode wasn't the number one game mode. It is divided into hostages, safe areas and bombs. Esports was a very grassroots and new thing at the time, and now it's become an entire ecosystem that people rely on to make a living, which is something we couldn't have predicted when it first launched. So, in these interesting ways, it was built into something really important and humbling.

IGN: You've said before that Siege X is laying the groundwork for the next 10 years. Do you take it for a year at a time? How many roadmaps are there for the future? Are there any ideas in the bank that will last another 10 years?

AK: Speaking of ideas, we actually sat down and interviewed the entire team to get their thoughts on the game and came up with over 40 pages of concepts that the team still wanted to push forward. So we don't see an end in sight when it comes to what we want to do with the game, it's a balance between short term and long term. We're looking ahead to the season ahead, but also because of Siege So how can we predict this over a longer period of time?

IGN: Reaching the 10-year milestone, does that increase the pressure on your team going forward, or do you feel like you've got the hang of it now and know what you're doing?

AK: We are always learning and we never stop learning. There's a lot of work involved in building a game like this, and it really comes down to listening to the community. They're always going to be vocal about what they want to see and how things change, so yeah, it's not a matter of grasping where we are now. It's a sense of comfort and knowing that we still need to listen to the community, we still need to adapt, we still need to innovate. Maybe we become more comfortable in being uncomfortable, and that's how we continue to move forward in the next 10 years.

IGN: On the subject of listening to the community, how challenging is it to balance your team's vision for Siege X with players' wants, needs, and complaints?

AK: It’s a challenge, but it’s not. First of all, because this game has been around for so long, I think its DNA is very easy to understand for both new and experienced players. They know it's a tactical game, with a lot of unique elements like destruction, like asymmetrical attacker-defender characteristics. But it does mean that players do want to see change, and change more frequently, and that's where we have to predict better and adapt faster. To a certain extent, this is sustainable, right? At the end of the day, we are all human, and the development team is very human, and we want to encourage something that will last 10 years rather than just focus on the short term.

IGN: What impact will Ubisoft's Vantage Studios subsidiary have on you? What are your thoughts on this? Will this have any noticeable impact on players?

AK: So from a player perspective, Vantage Studios is not player-facing, so it's not going to have any noticeable impact on players on a day-to-day or even long-term basis. Even if we don't see any major changes on this project, the focus is still on ensuring development and investment in Siege, which we can confirm today. Which again means we're still very excited about the future. So it doesn't actually change anything for us right now.

IGN: When Siege X launched in June, the number of concurrent players on Steam soared to about 150,000. Now it seems to be hovering around 40,000. Is this decline a cause for concern?

AK: First of all, the players coming to the game, especially like the record number of new players coming to play Siege X? It's always great and that's exactly what we hoped for. Yes, there's always some tailings after that, especially when the team is also recovering from releasing a big game like Siege X. There are ups and downs, and a lot of them are expected.

So for us, we're very happy with the game. We're pleased with its progress. We'll be hosting the Munich Major in November, where we'll share more information about what's next. Once again, it's great to see players continue to join and grow from Siege.

IGN: Is there a similar trend happening on consoles?

AK: Yes, yes. PC and consoles share the same gamer habits that we see all the time.

IGN: At this stage, do you feel that moving to free-to-play is the right move, or is it too early to tell?

AK: For us, we are already seeing the benefits. Since the game launched, more new players have joined the game than ever before, which is exactly what we hoped for. We're also seeing a new generation of Siege players, which is really great even as we try to balance the needs of new players with older players. It hits the mark.

IGN: There are so many characters and 10 years of story built into the game now. Have you at least considered the idea of ​​a campaign mode? Rainbow Six Vegas has a great co-op campaign.

AK: It's definitely part of the tradition and yes, it's what our players ask about. All I can say right now is that we're still really focused on the PvP aspect. We've been trying to tell stories in PvP, we ran an event called Hereford Assault that players really enjoyed and it really built on what our characters were doing and the tone of the game, and we'll continue to explore that area. But yeah, we have nothing to announce right now.

IGN: What's your stance on using generative AI in game development? Do you have any plans to use it in Siege?

AK: If we just talk about the core of AI, it's something that we've been using, like machine learning, to develop new tools not only for anti-cheating, but also for things like our AI bots, which are actually trained on our real player data. So these are incredible tools that make us faster and more efficient. So this is not a new concept.

However, when it comes to generating AI, this is still very new, so we haven't incorporated it into our Siege pipeline yet.

IGN: How have fans responded to dual front-facing mode? I know a lot of players thought the region map was a little too big at launch, will you re-evaluate it?

AK: Yeah, there's a lot of feedback about the new mode, especially when you compare it to veteran players and new players. We're seeing new players really joining more often than old players, which is great. This is what we hope for. But there are still ways to improve it.

So we're going to be taking some time to make some bigger changes to the game mode, which we'll be very excited to share in Year 11 – Season 1. So early next year. We will continue to make improvements and see if we can get more good feedback.

That's definitely something we wanted to differentiate from core Siege. Competition in Siege Core is fierce. The main attraction is the ranking with this competitive progression. Dual Front is still where we want to provide all the sandbox content in Siege in a more free form, so you can try it all out, mix attackers and defenders, mix different types of attack and defense strategies. This is where it really shines. Therefore, ensuring that Dual Front can meet significantly different needs than Core is our focus.

“Rainbow Six: Siege X”: dual front mode screenshots