From Murderer’s Creed to Simply Dance, Ubisoft has at all times centered on robust partnerships with historians, cultural specialists, and museums to create immersive historic worlds in video games. Deborah Papiernik, Ubisoft’s SVP of New Enterprise, not too long ago spoke with President of Video games for Change Susanna Pollack within the breakout session Preserving Legacy: Reimagining Historical past By way of Interactive Worlds, at iicon 2026.
At Ubisoft, Papiernik and her workforce are a driving drive behind cultivating relationships with museums and cultural specialists. This culminates in two methods: connecting specialists with builders for video games rooted in historical past, reminiscent of Murderer’s Creed, and collaborating with third-parties for real-life purposes of Ubisoft’s academic content material together with museum exhibitions, augmented actuality apps, documentaries, and extra.
For Papiernik, video video games are the proper medium for serving to gamers have interaction with historical past in a brand new and thrilling method, in addition to one of many largest inventive alternatives because it comprises lots of the items wanted to craft an immersive world for gamers whereas nonetheless leaving room for inventive liberties.
“Historical past itself is a implausible playground,” Papiernik says. “It has characters, it has mysteries, it has structure, it has artwork, it has evolution of financial system, it has just about all the things. However on the identical time, we don’t know all the things about Historical past. The additional again we go, the much less we all know as a result of it’s much less documented.”
There are occasions when builders may deliberately select to take liberties with historic illustration for contemporary audiences. For instance, the Notre-Dame cathedral in Murderer’s Creed Unity is the fashionable iteration of the constructing, not the one which was current throughout the French Revolution within the late 1700s, which was a lot shorter and didn’t have a spire. Papiernik explains that the traditionally correct model of Notre-Dame would have impeded international recognition of the monument, whereas concurrently disappointing parkour gamers who can be let down by the shorter structure. Inserting the fashionable iteration of Notre-Dame within the recreation solved each issues.
Most not too long ago, Papiernik and her workforce labored with the Murderer’s Creed Mirage workforce to develop the free app Discovery Tour: Medieval Baghdad showcasing historic artefacts discovered within the video games Codex, in a method that pays tribute to the manufacturing values of the sport, and that’s each enjoyable and academic for anybody to entry. And shortly, Echoes of Revolution, two augmented actuality apps for the Boston Freedom Path and the New York Revolutionary Path will overlay in-game renderings from Murderer’s Creed III on the historic trails. The apps will probably be out there quickly for guests to have a good time the USA 250th anniversary.
Papiernik, who was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 2025 for her work in Ubisoft and throughout inventive and cultural industries, sat down with us to dive into the thought of video games as historic immersion and preservation, museum partnerships, and the Discovery Tour sequence.
Video games as Historic Immersion and Preservation
Why is it vital for historic video games to really feel genuine?
Deborah Papiernik: Should you keep in mind your historical past class, it typically feels faraway from the historical past it’s attempting to show. Then again, we have now lovely tales of people that have interaction in historical past research as a result of they found historical past in Murderer’s Creed! In France, the American Revolution isn’t usually a part of the curriculum, however by means of enjoying Murderer’s Creed III, many have discovered an attractive entryway to study that historical past.. Folks all over the world who performed Murderer’s Creed Unity have realized in regards to the French Revolution even when it’s not a part of their college curriculum. Gamers are excited as a result of they skilled one thing compelling in video games, and that creates an emotional reminiscence.
Take the Notre-Dame cathedral for instance. After the hearth in 2019, a lot of the world ached for Notre-Dame. Folks everywhere in the world began sharing their images and movies of visits to Paris, whereas the avid gamers amongst them began sharing movies of Murderer’s Creed Unity. That is how robust feelings may be in-game! Ubisoft, like many firms and particular person contributors, donated in direction of the reconstruction efforts. We additionally made Murderer’s Creed Unity briefly free, and my workforce developed a five-minute, very emotional, immersive go to of Notre-Dame in VR, utilizing the attractive 3D art work crafted for the sport. Only a few months after the hearth, we confirmed the expertise on the Ministry of Tradition in France and shared it with the workforce behind the cathedral’s reconstruction. Whereas all of them seen that it wasn’t 100% appropriate, all of them spoke about the way it captured the emotion of bodily visiting the Notre-Dame. It was impactful to the purpose that the Archbishop of Paris requested me if he could lead on a mass in that VR expertise! We didn’t find yourself doing it, nevertheless it simply goes to indicate the form of emotion we will convey, even when the illustration of historical past just isn’t totally correct. That is an instance of the distinction between accuracy and authenticity.
Are you able to share extra in regards to the thought of utilizing video games as historic preservation?
DP: It’s actually about making historical past accessible. Many historians and scientists work on historic preservation in fact. There are additionally loads of very critical documentaries, however they don’t have the identical instruments, the identical inventive imaginative and prescient, and naturally not the identical targets because the videogames trade. By rebuilding historical past in our worlds, we make them accessible to a a lot bigger public. And after we companion with specialists of their area, we will additionally assist them understand their imaginative and prescient and innovate rapidly at an inexpensive price.
For instance, when Ubisoft launched Far Cry Primal, we recreated a prehistoric period. True to its franchise, Far Cry is a first-person shooter journey recreation, not a historical past recreation per se, however as a result of the setting was prehistory, the event workforce labored carefully with scientific and historians. The workforce rendered an incredible world with prehistoric animals, environments and every day life. As the sport was dwell, a global documentary workforce reached out to us to see if they may use imagery from Far Cry Primal of their documentary in regards to the position of prehistoric ladies. This collaboration with the documentary workforce in the end resulted in about 20 minutes of footage from the sport being included into the ultimate documentary. Due to our photographs, we will immerse and interact individuals excess of the data alone can obtain. And the info speaks for itself: documentaries that includes robust visuals to help the scientific narrative attain a broader and way more various viewers – a lot in order that we have now collaborated on a number of initiatives with main documentary producers.
After which there are some methods the place our impression in historical past preservation and illustration aligned with the specialists. Within the case of Murderer’s Creed Odyssey, which is about in Historical Greece, we rendered the statues and websites in full coloration – not as you’ll see them in museums, as white marble, their unique colours misplaced to time. This consideration to historic particulars, past the standard illustration of Historical Greece, was seen by museum curators and opened the invitation for Ubisoft to contribute to an exhibition on the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, which is the oldest museum on the planet! We contributed to an exhibition about Knossos in Greece with artifacts from the location, and we amplified the expertise by producing a movie for the exhibit using the world of Murderer’s Creed Odyssey to clarify how we labored with archeologists to breed Knossos because it was throughout that point in historical past.
Partnering With Museums
How do museum partnerships come about?
DP: Typically it’s simply assembly individuals by attending cultural trade occasions or by of us who’ve seen our initiatives and need to embrace them of their reveals and initiatives. Then, since you’ve already labored with one group on this historic and cultural context, the work positive aspects visibility and extra teams are concerned with working with us. Most individuals in “conventional tradition” are very open to working with videogames.
The primary mission I labored on took place after I was in contact with a small startup who was conducting preservation work by means of photogrammetry, particularly within the Center East. They talked about that they had an exhibit developing on the Arab World Institute about age-old cities like Mosul, Palmyra, and Aleppo, and so they requested if we wished to be a part of it. I had them ship me one in every of their fashions, and had my workforce put it into VR, and immediately we had been in a tunnel of an Assyrian temple in Mosul. It felt so true, it was implausible! So, we determined to develop a full immersive VR expertise as a part of the exhibit.
One other instance was after we labored with the Chateau de Versailles and created an augmented actuality expertise that introduced the Rabbids into the gardens of Versailles. As a technique to participating visiting kids, guests can play with the Rabbids by means of this app on their telephones and be taught quite a bit about Versailles, the fountain, the gardens, et cetera. A pair weeks after the app was made out there, the pinnacle at Versailles confessed she was criticized for letting the Rabbids into Versailles, however she was joyful she did it and noticed the worth of participating households into the go to otherwise. There are individuals able to take the chance, they belief us to do a very good job, and we belief them on location or scientific elements they need to usher in, and that makes the partnership worthwhile for each events and long-lasting. We did one other collaboration the place we introduced Versailles into Simply Dance 2024, so the entire world can now dance the minuet on baroque music 400 years after it was created.
It’s humorous as a result of all this stuff we do with museums are known as hybridization, which is outlined as an unbelievable marriage between two issues. As the pinnacle of Versailles put it, a profitable hybridization is an unbelievable marriage whose result’s so apparent that everybody says “how did we not consider this earlier than?”
Try a few of the museum collaborations beneath: