Europe games industry on edge as ‘Assassin’s Creed’ hits shelves

The Korean edition packages of "Assassin's Creed Shadows" for PlayStation 5 are displayed for sale at video game shop Hanwoori in Seoul on March 20, 2025. (AFP)
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Updated 21 March 2025
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Europe games industry on edge as ‘Assassin’s Creed’ hits shelves

PARIS: Thursday’s release of action-adventure epic “Assassin’s Creed Shadows” marks a make-or-break moment not just for struggling French games heavyweight Ubisoft, but for the entire European gaming ecosystem.

With its almost 18,000 employees and global footprint, Ubisoft has nevertheless suffered one setback after another in recent years with disappointing releases, a dwindling stock price, harassment allegations against former bosses and repeated strikes.

The company is falling back on its longtime major money-spinner “Assassin’s Creed” to pull it from the doldrums, this time with an episode set in medieval Japan.

“I’ve never seen things this way” as the whole European industry looks to Ubisoft, Midcap Partners analyst Charles-Louis Planade told AFP ahead of the launch.

More than 17 Ubisoft studios employing hundreds have poured five years of work into “Shadows,” with an estimated budget running into hundreds of millions of euros.

Early reviews have been positive, with the game receiving a “generally favorable” score of 81/100 on review aggregation site Metacritic.

That was one point higher than “Valhalla,” the 2020 release that has so far been the high point of the series’ profitability.

The latest instalment “looks better and plays better than nearly any other entry in Ubisoft’s 18-year-old series,” American games journalist Stephen Totilo wrote on his website Game File.

Meanwhile, gaming site IGN’s review of “Shadows” said it “sharpens and refines (the series’) edge without fully reforging it.”

“Shadows” was partly developed at Ubisoft’s studio in Quebec City, Canada.

The artistic director of Ubisoft-Quebec, Thierry Dansereau, told AFP at a launch event in the city that the company’s “developers did everything they could to create the best game possible.”

A lack of major changes to the game’s mechanics could risk “leaving some players worn out,” said Julien Pillot, an economist specializing in the cultural industries.

He suggested that Ubisoft’s recent underwhelming releases “may be a sign that audiences are falling out of love with its games.”

Nevertheless, Planade said that “everyone is crossing their fingers for this release to be a huge success.”

He said a poor sales showing could provoke a knock-on effect across the entire industry, noting that in France alone, Ubisoft accounts for almost one-third of the country’s 15,000 jobs in games development

In a social media post, Ubisoft said the release appeared to be a success.

“It’s not even 4PM here in Canada and Assassin’s Creed Shadows has already passed 1 million players!” the company said on X.

Many budding creators pass through Ubisoft after completing their training, while former employees have founded new studios in France and around the world.

The company in 2023 launched a cost-cutting drive including studio closures and almost 2,000 layoffs.

The belt-tightening did not save Ubisoft from judgment on financial markets, with the stock falling from more than 100 euros ($109 at today’s rates) 10 years ago to its all-time low of 9.01 euros in September.

Ubisoft shares had fallen almost 5.6 percent on Wednesday to trade at 12.60 euros by the time markets closed, despite the good early reviews for “Shadows.”

Even before release of the hoped-for blockbuster, Ubisoft said it was “actively exploring various strategic and capitalistic options” for its future.

Early rumors suggested that could involve going private with help from Chinese tech giant Tencent, a major investor that holds 10 percent of Ubisoft.

More recently, multiple outlets have reported that the group could sell off much of its games catalogue to focus on its core titles.

“Every option is on the table” for Ubisoft’s future, Planade said, with commercial success for “Shadows” likely to strengthen Ubisoft’s hand in the negotiations.


What We Are Reading Today: Pico Iyer’s essay ‘The Joy of Quiet’

Updated 21 May 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: Pico Iyer’s essay ‘The Joy of Quiet’

Pico Iyer’s essay “The Joy of Quiet” dissects modern life’s paradox: the louder our world grows, the more we crave silence. The essay was first published in 2012 in The New York Times.

With the precision of a cultural surgeon, Iyer — a travel writer famed for his meditative prose — exposes how digital noise erodes human connection, leaving us drowning in a sea of notifications yet thirsting for meaning.

But this isn’t a diatribe against technology; it’s a forensic examination of our collective burnout.

He maps a silent counterrevolution emerging in the unlikeliest corners: Silicon Valley CEOs fleeing to Himalayan monasteries, Amish-inspired “digital sabbaths” trending among younger generations, executives paying to lock away their phones and nations like Bhutan trading gross domestic product for “Gross National Happiness” as radical acts of cultural defiance.

Iyer’s genius lies in reframing silence as an insurgent act of self-preservation. A Kyoto temple’s rock garden becomes a “vacuum of stillness” where fractured minds heal; a tech mogul’s secret retreats — funded by the same wealth that built addictive apps — mock his own industry’s promises of liberation.

The essay’s sharpest insight? Our devices aren’t just distractions but “weapons of mass distraction,” systematically severing us from presence, empathy and the sacred monotony of undivided attention.

Critics might argue Iyer romanticizes privilege (not everyone can jet to a Balinese silent retreat), yet his message transcends class: in an age of algorithmic overload, solitude becomes not a luxury but psychic armor.

He anticipates today’s “attention economy” battleground, where mindfulness apps monetize the very serenity they promise to provide.

His closing warning: “We’ve gone from exalting timesaving devices to fleeing them,” feels prophetic in 2025, as AI chatbots colonize conversation and virtual reality headsets replace eye contact.

Less self-flagellating than Orwell’s colonial reckonings, “The Joy of Quiet” offers no easy answers.

Instead, it dares readers to ask: When every ping demands obedience, what revolution begins with a silenced phone? What if reclaiming our humanity starts not with consuming more but with the radical courage to disappear?


What We Are Reading Today: ‘In Asian Waters’ by Eric Taliacozzo

Updated 21 May 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘In Asian Waters’ by Eric Taliacozzo

In the centuries leading up to our own, the volume of traffic across Asian sea routes—an area stretching from East Africa and the Middle East to Japan—grew dramatically, eventually making them the busiest in the world.

The result was a massive circulation of people, commodities, religion, culture, technology, and ideas.

In this book, Eric Tagliacozzo chronicles how the seas and oceans of Asia have shaped the history of the largest continent for the past half millennium, leaving an indelible mark on the modern world in the process.


Book Review: ‘Hope in the Dark’ by Rebecca Solnit

Updated 21 May 2025
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Book Review: ‘Hope in the Dark’ by Rebecca Solnit

In an era of climate collapse and political upheaval, Rebecca Solnit’s “Hope in the Dark,” first published in 2004 and later updated in 2016, redefines hope not as naivete, but as a radical act of defiance.

Part manifesto, part historical corrective, the book resurrects forgotten victories to prove that progress is often invisible, nonlinear, and collective.

Solnit, a historian and activist, dismantles the myth of powerlessness by spotlighting movements that reshaped history despite seeming futile in their moment.

The Zapatista uprising of 1994, she argues, redefined revolution not as a single explosive event but as a “slow conversation” across generations. The fall of the Berlin Wall — unforeseen by experts — she wrote exposes the fragility of oppressive systems when met with sustained dissent.

Her 2016 update weaves in Black Lives Matter and the Standing Rock protests, framing them as modern iterations of this “subversive hope.”

Central to Solnit’s thesis is the metaphor of darkness, rejecting apocalyptic fatalism: “The future is dark … like the darkness of the womb.”

Hope, for her, is the audacity to act without guarantees, a lesson drawn from anti-nuclear campaigns of the 1980s and post-Katrina mutual-aid efforts like the Common Ground Collective.

Stylistically, Solnit merges lyrical prose with critical urgency. She chastises media narratives that equate activism with failure if immediate victories are not won, noting that the eight-hour workday and abolition of slavery were once deemed impossible.

Her chapters unfold as interconnected essays, blending memoir (her 1980s anti-nuke protests) with global dispatches (Chile’s democratic revival, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution).

Critics may crave more policy prescriptions, but Solnit’s goal is philosophical: to reframe activism as a practice of storytelling, where every protest rewrites the dominant narrative.

The book is not a roadmap but a compass, guiding readers through despair with historical proof that “the impossible is inevitable.”


What We Are Reading Today: ‘How Birds Evolve’ by Douglas Futuyma

Updated 20 May 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘How Birds Evolve’ by Douglas Futuyma

“How Birds Evolve” explores how evolution has shaped the distinctive characteristics and behaviors we observe in birds today. Douglas Futuyma describes how evolutionary science illuminates the wonders of birds, ranging over topics such as the meaning and origin of species, the evolutionary history of bird diversity, and the evolution of avian reproductive behaviors, plumage ornaments, and social behaviors.

In this multifaceted book, Futuyma examines how birds evolved from nonavian dinosaurs and reveals what we can learn from the “family tree” of birds.


What We Are Reading Today: The Great Escape by Angus Deaton

Updated 19 May 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: The Great Escape by Angus Deaton

The world is a better place than it used to be. People are healthier, wealthier, and live longer. Yet the escapes from destitution by so many has left gaping inequalities between people and nations.

In The book tells the remarkable story of how, beginning 250 years ago, some parts of the world experienced sustained progress.