Interview with Joshua Mills - Game Director of Rainbow Six Siege
Feature
Hooked Gamers: Firstly thanks for taking time out from your busy schedule to chat with us. For our readers, can you explain your role at Ubisoft and for Siege?
Joshua Mills
Sure. I'm the game director on Siege. What that means is, I work really closely with Alex Karpazis (Creative Director) to take the overall mission of the game and then convert that into essentially actionable features and mechanics and content for the players. I mainly focus on everything that's in game, in moment-to-moment action. So anything that you're doing in the hub or like matchmaking, we have an amazing live content director named Christopher Budgen who handles that side of things. But then when it comes into all the operators, all the balancing, all that stuff, I mean, that the sort of thing I do.
OK, cool. Yeah, so you mentioned yesterday at the birthday event last night that you've been with Ubisoft for 10 years, which coincided with Siege. So looking back since the game's initial launch, what's the single most surprising or defining evolution the game has undergone?
Joshua Mills
Oh my. I mean, that's big, because it's constantly evolved and changed. And like at the event that we were at last night - which was really cool to see the turnout - you got to see the footage from the game from year one all the way up to now. I think one of the biggest things is just the refinement of the overall gameplay experience as the player base got more comfortable with the game.
The reason I say that, is if you look at the core mechanics of the game in year one - the actual shooting and ADS mechanics and everything - everything was really, really fast. And then if you look at now, players are so mechanically skilled that we actually have to make changes in the game to bring it down a little bit to equalize against the mechanical skill to make it so that we can retain the topical aspect of the game. So it has been a pretty interesting evolution over time. So honestly, I think it's kind of always ongoing, and I wouldn't say it's any single big moment. Obviously, there's big investment points, like Operator health was a huge thing, like way back when. There's game-changing operators when they come into the game, it really shakes the meta.
So you spoke about operatives and reworking some of the mechanics. So what decision felt like the biggest risk at the time?
Joshua Mills
Risk under my tenure? I can tell you one that we knew was going to be contentious. And the first time it still is, but this idea of removing 'cooking' from grenades, this was a tricky one for us because one of the key things in the game that we wanted to maintain when we talk about the balance and this is the overall action, was action-reaction. So someone takes an action, then you get to make your move because if Siege was another game, it'd be chess, right? So you need to be able to see what they're doing and then they can move off of it. 'Cooking' grenades originally - what would happen is people would bomb from below. And you saw it at the pro league as well and it was super effective. And like a good chunk of the match would be two people underneath trying to like fish for people and do this kind of thing. And yeah, it was effective, but also it kind of undercut a lot of the other different aspects of the game. So if you can flush someone out of a power position, now you have to rely on your mechanical aim and everything else. Did you set up your utility correctly? Do you have the crossfire in place? Like all those other things come into play. So I remember that one being like a big one because even internally we have a lot of dedicated players that are on the team, and we were squabbling.
Hooked Gamers: So the community has been instrumental in the game's longevity. What is one of your favorite memories or an impactful piece of feedback that you've received from the community?
Joshua Mills
Feedback, hmmm. So, I always end up speaking really personally about different things like this. We did a reload event in Atlanta just this year. There's been a lot of stuff going on with the launch of Siege X. But man, the stories I heard from all of the attendees that came up because it was a celebration of 10 years going in - this recommitment to the game. And it kind of really shakes you to your core, hearing how much it impacted them. And I know I wasn't there for all of it, but I do stand on the shoulders of the giants that came before. But at the same time to know that responsibility is there to continue to set up this experience that can continue to change lives - because it really did for a lot of people. I think those are the ones that really stand out. So, like, hearing the stories directly from the community, it's a good way to recharge the batteries, let's say.
What's the process for balancing new operators and new mechanics with existing mechanics? And how do you create synergies between roles and different kinds of players?
Joshua Mills
So, I mean, I think you kind of nailed it with the last part there. Roles are a really key aspect, because we actually do have classification for each operator to understand what is their intended role and then their experienced role, which is how do their players take it and run with it? Solis is a very good example. Actually, just around the corner, we have an update coming where she’s just getting her impacts back. And one of the reasons on this was originally that she was meant to be like an Intel designer, but she very, very quickly became when she originally released as an anti-Roamer. And it was like, okay, this is dramatic. She's very fast and she can detect when people are coming in like immediately and she's running out on people and stuff. And the reality was, it wasn't intended to be that, but it's okay to embrace it, especially if the community is driving towards it. And I think that's a big process of it, is not to be overly rigid when certain things start to pop up, but more embrace them. If they're not breaking anything, we can embrace it a little bit more. But then when it comes to different aspects of our balancing and how we make these decisions - Siege is a heavily systemic game. Which means one change here has a ripple effect across multiple operators. Like if we modify one weapon, that weapon could be used by three other operators, so it has indirect buffs or nerfs for that person, and whether they needed it or not. So it's usual to go through and use precision as much as possible as we're making our adjustments. But even with that all said, we're actually in the process of updating our balancing philosophy and having a little bit more fun with it, so embracing it a little bit more.
Okay, so the competitive scene is a major pillar of Siege. How does the flow of information and feedback work between the pro scene and the development team and just everyday players?
Joshua Mills
So, one of the big things with that is like, I'll say all our new operators or any major system changes we're doing, we actually have pro players test it,and we have sessions with them to gather feedback. Sometimes it could be as early as they're playing with the operator that is in prototype, but we also have other stuff in the chamber. We're like, on paper, this is something else we're working on. And then there's a little theory crafting that happens. The goal is to get hands-on as soon as possible, because at the end of the day, if anyone's going to truly break it, it'll be them. But it helps guide us on where we want to go. And the other thing is to make sure - and this is with any change we do in the game - is to make sure that when we are targeting the right part of our community with that change, and then qualifying the feedback we get accordingly. So, if we push an update for co-operative players, champ players, and Pro League, maybe that feedback doesn't make as much sense and maybe they won't even care because it doesn't affect them. And that's exactly the thing, right?
So with so many operators, what are the challenges involved in getting new players into the game without it being too daunting? And would it be challenging for a new solo player coming into Siege for the first time or returning to Siege for the first time in a long time?
Joshua Mills
So I think at the end of the day, the basic answer, would it be challenging? Yes. It's going to be. And there is something that we've accepted as ourselves as Siege is that the skill floor is kind of high. And it is higher than you may expect from different games and the level of commitment to jump into it. And we're actually perfectly okay with that. Now the goal is if the road to mastery and the road to learning this game is incredibly long and bumpy and goes through a mountain and then down in a river or whatever. We can actually try our best to pave that. We're not going to change the length of it because honestly it's 10 years of content and things to learn. But one of the key aspects is to try to make sure that players get their reps in as often as they can. So a little less downtime is why certain training tools are now online, like in our onboarding, but also like Dual Front was an interesting mode to bring in with the respawn mechanics and stuff like this to allow players to get reps in, get boots on the ground. That's a big part of it. But yeah, so we are constantly re-evaluating our onboarding systems. And a big takeaway for us, especially with new players jumping in, is our new AI systems. Because like our AI is crazy. Like, the complexity of Siege, but the reality is we're using machine learning AI in order to build our AI systems because they have to react to every interaction, every little thing, and then bring them on, and every new operator, we add them into that pool so you can immediately try them out with their interactions with the available operators.
So Siege is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. What are some of the core philosophies guiding the team for the next five years?
Joshua Mills
Ultimately, one of the big things we say, with everything that we do, is we always have to remember who we are. Sounds really cheesy. We have this thing called UDC (Ubisoft Developers Conference) and I did a talk about Siege and the 10 years and about who we are. And I used Moana as the reference. The reality is we look at our ancestors - it's really the franchise, Rainbow Six. We have roots, and that's where we should be looking for inspiration and how we build forward. We don't need to look in other people's backyards to find out what's best for Siege. And in fact, the whole thing was built off that franchise. It's important that we go back to it. And I think that's one of the most exciting things. And we've been doing this kind of recently with, like, Gerald Morris - who is Deimos - and Kure Galanos - who is Skopos. They're both from the previous Rainbow franchise, and we're bringing them forward and building on the legacy that we have. But it's a lot of that, it's aligning to that point and then continuing to essentially expand the system base that's in the game to just give more opportunity for creativity.
So you mentioned building on the Siege universe or the Rainbow Six universe, especially with titles like Extraction. Are there discussions or ambitions to further explore the world of Team Rainbow?
Joshua Mills
When it comes to Siege, I mean, we're always excited about what's going on and what's going on with our operators. And we do invest a lot into building their characters in the story and things that we want to tell. We release narrative pages that actually fill in a lot of what's going on in Rainbow, and this is something I don't think we want to necessarily shy away from. And we're always looking at ways to kind of bring more life into that and get players more involved in it. A good example would be Assault on Hereford was an event that we did just a little while back where we blew up the map Hereford. But it was our first narrative board-driven event that we had done in-game, where you actually were essentially doing a Rainbow operation.
And you recently introduced the Dual Front mode. How has the initial player feedback been for that?
Joshua Mills
I think one of the big things with Dual Front, it's like, especially with Siege, it's a 10-year-old game, which means there are a lot of people who are very dedicated to that rank ground, and that's where they're at, and that's where they want to be. The cool thing is, like, even today, I've run into multiple people who have been saying, like, this is their mode. This is what they do, and they love it, because that exact example, I get to respond, I get to try new operators, and the operator tool in that mode was actually reduced to help with the cognitive load of having all these operators. But it's served really well to give people a bit of a testing bed to jump into the game. We are looking at different ways to evolve this mode - more so to make it even more distinct away from the core experience, just so that even our veteran players can go in and have some fun. We broke rules.
It's a bit more casual.
Joshua Mills
It is. But we break fundamental rules in it that we would never break in competitive - like, for example, attackers and defenders working together. We don't do that in ranked. But the question that has really come up internally is like, what can we do? What else can we do that we wouldn't necessarily do over here because it might break something or it might make something way too OP? Let's have some fun.
Yeah, awesome. And I think that the 10-year roadmap includes significance in map modernizations. What is the team's philosophy on the reworks versus creating new maps?
Joshua Mills
So one of the big things here is we want to continue to invest in the experience of the game that's there. So that's why modernizing a bunch of the maps is one part of it, including the destructible ingredients, like the new identity into these maps was really critical for that too. So that's a big part of it, but introducing new maps is still very much something that we're interested in. In fact, in season four, we have a rework map coming back into the game, and it's going straight in the rank pool, and we’re really excited about that. But yeah, 100% we're still investing in making our maps and exploring those options, but the one thing I will say is that maps are probably one of the hardest parts, but see it's like operators aside, it's like even our players are intimidated when a new map comes out.
I assume it's like a puzzle, right? Like when maps and then the whole community comes together and pull this thing apart, with so many moving components of operators plus everything else, right?
Joshua Mills
Yeah, that's the thing, and it's funny because of this intimidation factor. One of the things we had to implement is that when a new map comes out, it's unbannable for the first two weeks because everybody would ban it. Even if they want new maps, but they'd ban it because they're like, there's no way I'm risking my Elo on this, but yeah, it's been good fun.
Thank you so much for your time. Enjoy PAX AUS and your time here in Melbourne.
Joshua Mills
It's been great so far.
Rainbow Six Siege Game Director Joshua Mills (Middle) with Hooked Gamers staff William and James
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