Assassin’s Creed 3 director discusses the disastrous launch of Skull and Bones, says the ‘junior’ devs didn’t have enough experience and were ‘trying to essentially make Black Flag crossed with World of Tanks or World of Warships’

• The creative director of Assassin’s Creed 3 says the idea of Skull and Bones was “bizarre” to “see essentially the same stuff re-shipping 14 years after we made it”
• Alex Hutchinson and his team were behind the naval tech seen in Assassin’s Creed 3 and Black Flag
• Hutchinson suggests the development team was mostly made up of “junior” staff with not enough experience

Alex Hutchinson, creative director of Assassin’s Creed 3 and Far Cry 4, has discussed what went wrong with the launch of Skull and Bones, suggesting it was down to a lack of experience from the development team and the fact that he and his team had already created something similar.

Skull and Bones launched in 2024, but the action-adventure pirate game was initially intended to be an Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag multiplayer experience, which was conceived in 2013.