Splinter Cell creator and Far Cry 2 director Clint Hocking has only made four games. Alongside the in-development Assassin’s Creed Hexe, which the director left earlier this year, Hocking has released four well-received games: Splinter Cell, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Far Cry 2, and Watch Dogs: Legion.
All of Hocking’s games have been dense, systems-driven experiences. Splinter Cell and Chaos Theory both pushed the stealth genre into a cinematic lens while remaining true to their immersion sim roots. Far Cry 2, Hocking’s favourite game he’s worked on, crafted the structure of modern open-world games. Watch Dogs: Legion, while not perfect, introduced a unique gameplay idea.
Speaking to us for our FRVR Podcast episode, which is out right now, we asked Hocking how it feels to have never made a bad game. Interestingly, Hocking has a unique perspective on the situation. While the developer has consistently made quality games, he also hasn’t made many of them.
“One of my biggest regrets is how few games I’ve made,” Hocking said. “But one of my biggest prides is, you know, not to brag or anything, but like, they’re all pretty good.”
Hocking explained that hey “don’t want to ever make anything that’s not good” where even their weakest game is still great fun. With how much time goes into making a new video game, it would be crushing to work on a title that simply isn’t liked by players.
“To me, that’s just depressing, especially with the amount of effort that goes into it, years of years of work and, and passion and all of that stuff,” he said. “And then to have something that’s not good, that feels really, that would just be too demotivating for me.”
While definitely Hocking’s less beloved game, Watch Dogs: Legion is by far his biggest. The open-world game’s unique Play As Anyone mechanic was a huge challenge, and that’s the kind of mechanic that keeps developers engaged in a project.
“That game was huge and it was, man, the difficulties were staggering,” he said. “But, you know, we also found like really, really exciting things to focus our time and energy and attention on. And I think that’s a really important part of it, right? Is making sure that there’s something in the game that just inspires everyone who’s working on it through the entire, through the entire journey. You have to have some kind of hard problem in there that’s worth solving.”
For Hocking, designing games needs to be about “finding the interesting problem” and working around that. Nevertheless, they do hope to make more games before their eventual retirement, whenever that might be. “I will make at least one more, I promise,” Hocking laughed. “Maybe I got two more left in me.’
Right now, Hocking has left Ubisoft to found his own studio, Build Machine Games, working on a mysterious new project.
