"Assassin's Creed" writers Jill Murray and Hugo Giard have one thought in mind when creating a game: a title doesn't have to just be "fun" for gamers want to take on your titles.
Ubisoft Montreal gave a presentation during the Narrative Summit at the 2014 Game Developers Conference in California, meant to inspire and give insight to other industry professionals.
According to Gamasutra, Murray and Giard explained the most important aspect when creating a game is to make it complex, allowing gamers to get caught up in the narrative and become attached to characters.
"Much the way that something like 'fun' would be irrelevant to a movie like 12 Years A Slave, Freedom Cry relies on the fact that players will play for other reasons, and that games can bring us something extra," Murray told the GDC crowd.
"Players will play for empathy, or justice; they'll play because strong emotions can be more motivating than positive emotions," she added. "And they'll play because sometimes the most complex relationships between people and their worlds can be more effectively explored through gameplay than a more traditional narrative vehicle."
Giard added developing a riskier kind of narrative in a game shouldn't strike fear, but rather inspire the writer to be bold, Gamasutra reports.
"Don't panic," Giard said. "If we didn't make games about other people, we'd have no diversity in our industry - players would get bored."
As for why the "Assassin's Creed" franchise has become immensely popular, Murray explained it boils down to curiosity; humans want to know where they come from.
"It's a natural human instinct to want to see yourself, and your history, in stories," Murray told the GDC crowd. "We currently don't have the most diverse industry, so it's easy to see why we have the same kinds of protagonists in games...We should look around our cities, our communities, and put those people - our friends, our families - into our games."
