Inside Assassin’s Creed Shadows – Building Community Through Voice, Localization & Support
In 2025, player engagement is more important than ever. At Side, we are proud to be able to work on that connective tissue that brings players closer to a game across a range of disciplines.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is a standout example of what that connection looks like in practice. In this latest entry of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed franchise, players embark on an epic action-adventure story set in feudal Japan, where they become a lethal shinobi Assassin and powerful legendary samurai, exploring a beautiful open world in a time of chaos.
The game launched in March 2025 and has already reached more than 5 million players across the globe. Lauded by fans and critics alike, the game continues to impress, and recently won the PlayStation Players’ Choice Award for Best New Game in March. With community baked into its DNA, the game brought fans directly into the fold through a global competition to join the voice cast.
Bringing Fans into the Game: Assassin’s Creed Dubbing Project
Facilitated by Side in collaboration with Ubisoft and Pavillon Noir, this project brought together global players, new talent, and cutting-edge production practices to deliver a unique opportunity for fans of the franchise to voice one of two enemy characters in-game.
In June 2024, Ubisoft launched a global casting call via TikTok, Twitch, and Twitter, inviting fans to apply via video audition for the #AssassinsCreedDubbingChallenge. Thousands of submissions were reviewed and narrowed down to seven winners to cover seven languages. The newly cast characters included professional voice actors along with fresh new talent, who were flown to London a few months later to record at Side’s flagship voice production studio.
https://www.tiktok.com/@assassinscreed/video/7484332032428920070
Led by our Audio Engineer Matt Powell, over the course of a single day, our team successfully recorded all seven cast members, each working with a dedicated director, fluent in their language. Actors and directors were taken through the creative process on how to capture the characters and story with gameplay videos and concept art. For those new to voice acting, we dedicated additional time to coach the actors through mic techniques and voice preparation.
Cutting-edge technology was also key to the project, using real-time transmission technology to minimize latency—enabling Ubisoft’s teams in France, Canada, and the UK to maintain the highest quality control when working on finessing the recordings in post-production.
But it wasn’t just our studios in London that became a second home for Assassin’s Creed Shadows. The game, rooted in Japanese culture, came to Side for Japanese QA, Community Management, Localization, and Audio Localization as well. Expert translation and localization were critical to the game’s success, due to the game's period-specific language.
To immerse players into the story and setting, some lines remain in Japanese even if the player is using another language; so our Side Tokyo team’s work found its way into the English version of the game too.
Leveraging Social to Shape the Player Experience
Of course, in 2025, a game can’t truly join the hall of fame based on perfect gameplay alone. How a franchise interacts with its fanbase is critical, particularly post-launch, when players hit the server en masse for the first time.
No amount of bug testing can truly prepare you for this moment. The only thing you can guarantee at launch is at least a little of the unexpected, whether it’s character and storyline reception or playstyle. That’s why our Player Support team was tasked with helping Ubisoft organize and interpret what players were saying about Assassin’s Creed Shadows on a global level with bespoke community management strategies.
First, looking to community discussion on public social platforms, using tools like Jira and Sprinklr, our Side Player Support team were able to closely monitor community sentiment across X, Reddit, and YouTube. Tracking trends, identifying potential risks, and surfacing critical feedback in real time meant that the Ubisoft team could quickly address and manage changes to the game, tailoring it to the people who were playing it.
As tweaks were made to the game, our team became focused on ensuring that developments to the game were included in the narrative on social. Plugging directly into Ubisoft’s own customer management platform, we could amplify key community voices who were first in line to spot positive changes. Side’s Player Support team helped foster a more welcoming and connected global community around Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
The truth is that no one is more invested in your game than your players—which is why player support and community management teams are critical to ensuring you can hear them clearly.
Bringing Stories to the World
The journey to launch for Assassin’s Creed Shadows exemplifies how multifaceted the player experience has become for modern AAA games.
From bringing fans into the game with the global dubbing project, to ensuring seamless localization, to facilitating a two-way conversation between publisher and community with expert community management—every touchpoint, from voice acting to social listening, plays a key role in creating immersive, player-first experiences.
As the gaming landscape continues to evolve, Side remains dedicated to bringing stories to the world—one voice, one region, and one community at a time.
If you’re looking to build deeper connections with your players, get in touch with our team today and see how we can help.
Special thanks to Ubisoft and Pavillon Noir for their collaboration on this project.