Prepared at Daybreak, a now-shuttered studio that was acquired by Meta in 2020 and shut down in 2024, has a protracted historical past in sport growth. Whereas by no means fairly a AAA studio, the Irvine, California-based developer labored on video games like Daxter, God of Conflict spin-offs, and the extremely profitable VR titles Lone Echo and Echo Enviornment. The latter titles acquired the eye of Oculus Studios underneath Meta, prompting their acquisition.
Earlier than the Meta acquisition, Prepared at Daybreak created a number of titles underneath totally different publishers, most frequently PlayStation. In an interview with MinnMax, Prepared at Daybreak co-founder Andrea Pessino spoke candidly about working with these totally different publishers, together with a doomed venture with French online game developer and writer Ubisoft.
“We had an entire stint with a special venture we had been making with Ubisoft,” Pessino says. “I’ll inform you one other time,” he follows up, earlier than being cajoled by host Ben Hanson to talk about it now.
Pessino relates a narrative the place Prepared at Daybreak was making a sport for Ubisoft and having month-to-month conferences in Paris that included Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot. Throughout one assembly, the builders at RAD acquired notes from the writer about modifications the writer wished to see from the sport. After numerous reward concerning the sport, the record of modifications included that the younger lady protagonist the builders had been intending on was not, by Pessino’s recollection, “badass.” Ubisoft needed the builders to alter it to a person. “To which we needed to maintain within the puke,” Pessino added.
Prepared at Daybreak then selected to train an escape clause of their contract whereas work on the sport was nonetheless early and cancel the venture on their finish.
Whereas Pessino doesn’t state a particular time this occurred, he signifies this venture was between the 2 God of Conflict titles that Prepared at Daybreak had developed for the PSP. This is able to put their venture for Ubisoft someplace round 2008 – 2010. A 2020 article from Bloomberg reported that Ubisoft would usually intervene in video games in growth across the described time to stop girls from being sole protagonists of video games to make sure they promote higher.
“That’s not gonna fly,” Pessino says of the writer interference.
