How Ubisoft visits real places to make its open-world games like The Division

LAS VEGAS — Ubisoft game creator Tommy Francois shared how the big French video game publisher creates the animated worlds of its video games such as The Division and Ghost Recon: Wildlands. It basically sends teams of developers out to real-world locations to capture the full spirit of the places in order to re-create them in video games.

Francois, the vice president of editorial at Ubisoft, described the process of creating open worlds today at the DICE Summit, the elite game event in Las Vegas. Francois believes that if creators build an immersive world, it will pay off in more engagement, which will lead to more word-of-mouth endorsements and better overall sales and player loyalty — a key tactic in a game market valued at over $90 billion.