The Ubisoft Developers Conference (UDC) is the biggest internal event dedicated to production teams. The event is focused on knowledge sharing about innovations in technology in our studios, and more broadly in the gaming industry. It is also a good time to connect with our team members that we collaborate with every day, but maybe haven't met in person before.
UDC takes place in Montreal, broadcast live for all 4 days.
This year, the UDC took place from 13-16 of February and 4 experts from our studio participated as speakers. We caught up with a few of them to ask about their experience at UDC 2024. Hear from them below.
Can you explain what UDC is in a few words, and what its main purpose is?
Adam Lavender: Arguably our biggest internal event in the calendar each year, the Ubisoft Developers Conference is held on-site in Montréal showcasing key learnings through presentations from subject matter experts from across the Group.
UDC is a chance for us to learn from the experience of others, some retrospective, others ongoing, to better support our development and improve our approach to making games.
Leonardo Mariscal: The Ubisoft Developers Conference (UDC) allows us to showcase accomplishments and technology being developed inside Ubisoft.
We get to share the latest advancements in our teams and studios to other projects and productions, allowing us to learn from one another and also share best common practices.
What motivated you to speak at this year's event?
Adam Lavender: Over the last couple of years, I've been continually updating the Production Knowledge Hub I created for our local studios. Since then, the content within it has been incorporated into HQs Global Production Knowledge Base. As we move towards a unified structure and, as Yves mentioned in his opening remarks, "don't reinvent the wheel", now was the right time to create further awareness of materials we use locally to upskill and build a level of consistency with our team members, so that others across the group can also benefit from them.
Leonardo Mariscal: Having worked with La Forge for the last few months on technology focused on facial generation, we wanted to share it with the broader community.
This later evolved into a full facial pipeline update, led by David Coulombe, focusing on sharing the latest developments in this area.
What was your impression of the overall event?
Adam Lavender: Over the last 9 years I've been incredibly fortunate to travel to multiple studios across the world. Montréal really set a benchmark for hosting an event of this kind. The set up was nothing short of amazing, as were the crew, hosts and organisers. UDC is a wonderful thing. To be able to watch presentations, talks, panels either from the archives, live on the day or replays afterward is a great privilege we have. I'm very grateful to have been able to participate UDC 2024.
Leonardo Mariscal: It was an amazing experience having the opportunity to travel to the Montreal studio and getting to watch all the different presentations live.
The event itself was wonderfully executed, and it also included different in-person events for the speakers to get to know each other.
All of the presentations that I was lucky to attend were incredibly interesting, and even though some were outside of my day-to-day area, there was always something to learn.
Do you have any memorable moments to share from UDC 2024?
Adam Lavender: Travelling to UDC was a great pleasure, but even more so than visiting a new country, I had the enormous privilege to meet team members whom I've known and worked with for a couple of years but never actually met in person.
It was a joy to finally meet the Production Communities team from HQ, as well as Alexandre Pichette, Production Director of Anvil. At this point I would like to mention that I am tall. Really tall. 6ft 5in tall. So Imagine my surprise when I meet Alex in person and he's at least an inch taller than I. So how can it not be memorable that when he hugged me I was shouldered in the jaw? That's not an experience I've had before.
Not forgetting of course, the superbly wonderful Chris Blackburn and room temperature drinks-loving, Leo Mariscal. It was lovely to be with you for the week.
Leonardo Mariscal: Meeting so many talented people from all around the world, all of us working towards one same objective, creating amazing video games, was an amazing experience.
It was also surreal seeing colleagues whom I have worked with for months, in person for the first time, and I'm grateful for their warm welcome.
Alongside getting to travel and get to know Chris and Lavo from our studios better, sharing many laughs together, their support throughout the journey was invaluable, than you once again!