Celebrating Rainbow Six Siege’s 10th Birthday With Ubisoft Montreal – Interview with Alex Karpazis and Joshua Mills

"You're game only turns 10 once," said creative director Alex Karpazis as a means of an apology before showing other members of the press and me a previously released video he assumed we had already seen, celebrating Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege reaching over 100 million players across the 10 years it has been on shelves.

He has no need to apologize, of course. Anyone who was a part of building a game like Rainbow Six Siege would want to show it off and its accomplishments as much as possible. It's a game that, despite how you might feel about it now, has stood the test of time. It went from being a major miss at launch to becoming one of the mainstay multiplayer games in the industry, even after games like Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone arrived two and five years after it (respectively) to take over the multiplayer shooter space in a way that no one has dominated since.

Karpazis was showing us the anniversary video below while, just outside the cornered off room we were in, Ubisoft Montreal staff, their families, fans of the game, and content creators were sharing a large space on the bottom floor of the Montreal studio, partying and celebrating all of that, and the journey Rainbow Six Siege went on in the last 10 years to get to this anniversary.

I wasn't just there to attend a party and to watch an old video with the game's creative leads. Members of the press and I were given a tour of the Ubisoft Montreal studio, which lives in an old textile factory building that was converted into an office building, and eventually, entirely overtaken by Ubisoft after they occupied just the fifth floor when they first moved in.

I also got to speak with Alexander Karpazis and Joshua Mills, Rainbow Six's game director, all about the 10 years leading to this milestone, how the landscape of live service games and multiplayer first-person shooters has changed in the last decade, and I also got the chance to prod at a personal question I have for Ubisoft overall, which is trying to figure out why Assassin's Creed Valhalla is such an unbelievably long game.

Before I get into all of that, I want to dig into the tour of the studio during the day and the evening's festivities first. Starting with the tour, which couldn't help but feel like a school trip to the science centre. Not that I'm finding fault in that. That's just how these things seem to go, or at least that's been my experience of Ubisoft studio tours since this was my third one within two years.

At my previous outlet, I had the opportunity to visit Ubisoft Toronto ahead of Star Wars Outlaws' launch, and just prior to joining Wccftech, I got to visit Ubisoft Quebec ahead of Assassin's Creed Shadows' release. Both of those tours had a layer of that 'school trip' feeling, but each stop on the way through the building had a direct connection to the game and that team's role in its development.

Again, it is always undeniably cool to see the spaces and the technology that a massive triple-A company like Ubisoft puts behind its games, and it was especially cool to see two volunteers from our group get scanned the same way Ubisoft would any of its actors or physical objects it wants to bring into the game in detailed ways.

The foley room was also a personal highlight, but the letdown of it all was not getting to see very much about what's coming next for Rainbow Six Siege. We did get an early look at Wildcards after the tour, but overall, the tour itself just felt disconnected from the game that brought me and everyone else on the tour to Montreal.

After the tour, and before my conversation with Alex Karpazis and Joshua Mills, we hung around the celebration event, where there were displays of key moments from Rainbow Six Siege's history, including a wall documenting the 10-year journey since the game's launch and its internal pre-launch beginnings.

There were also replicas of recognizable weapons, gadgets, and armour from Rainbow Six Siege, though perhaps the most significant display was that of messages from players that Ubisoft received over the last 10 years. Not the kinds of comments and messages you'd see on platforms like X (formerly Twitter) or Reddit, but messages like a letter from a couple that met while playing Rainbow Six Siege, who were married this year on October 4, 2025, and who likely would not have found each other if not for Siege.

Or a letter from Connor, a Siege player from the US who had to deal with major health issues in recent years and was helped through his struggles by playing Siege, a game he's played since 2016. These letters, the families of the developers attending the event, and the wall of Siege's journey were some of the most tangible displays of how much impact Rainbow Six Siege has had in 10 years.

It's always good to be reminded of how games touch the lives of millions of people in ways you can't know, because the well is so vast and we have so many games at our fingertips. In that framing, the fact that Rainbow Six Siege has been around for 10 years is all the more impressive and impactful, especially when you remember that hundreds of games, even those made by Ubisoft, don't have that kind of longevity. This is all to say that, for a moment, it didn't feel like a cookie-cutter corporate party.

With that settled, here's my conversation with Rainbow Six Siege's creative director Alex Karpazis and game director Joshua Mills.

---

Could you please start by saying who you are, your role within Rainbow Six Siege, how long you've been with the game and how long you've been with Ubisoft?

Alex Karpazis: The name is Alex Karpazis, creative director on Rainbow Six Siege. I've been a part of the team for over seven years now and I've been with Ubisoft for over 14 years.

Joshua Mills: My name is Joshua Mills, [I'm] the game director on Siege. I've been with Siege for a little over four years now, but I've been at Ubisoft for over 10 years.

Rainbow Six Siege has been around for 10 years now, and for a number of those years, it was the example to other studios of how it is possible to turn around a multiplayer FPS game that doesn't hit its mark at launch. Looking at the landscape of shooters now, where do you feel Rainbow Six sits in the heiarchy of live service and first-person shooters?

Joshua Mills: Well, first, I'm still incredibly proud of where we stand, for Rainbow. Like the fact is we're going strong, 10 years in. We just crossed a hundred million players active in the game and being part of this community, which is amazing. As far as, like, [the] competition of it all, we've always kind of done our own thing as far as how we move this game forward and then where we focus, and I don't think we're going to be changing that.

We just want to continue to serve our community as much as possible and exactly what they want, because at the end of the day, Rainbow is a really, really unique experience, and we're going to continue to build and serve that. And because of it being such a unique experience, it's one of a kind, in a lot of ways. Once you play Rainbow and you really get into it, it's very hard to find that anywhere else, and I'm super proud of the team and where we are on this, and we'll just keep investing on it.

Alex Karpazis: I would say, not only just to double down on that, but we're always trying to answer the needs of our players first, and not to whatever some competition is doing. It's one of the reasons why we chose to continue invest in the game rather than do something like a sequel. So, hopefully, that sets the precedence that others can look and say, 'hey, this can work,' because for us, we're always going to want to reward and respect the time that our community puts into a game.

You've clearly carved out a community of players that play Siege, they love to play Siege, and they'll keep playing Siege. So how do you focus, with the next 10 years in mind, how do you direct for those players and then also for chances to grow the game, because you know you can't stay stagnant; growth is required. So how do you balance both?

Joshua Mills: I think one of the key things there is the depth of Siege. We haven't reached the bottom of that barrel, like, as far as what we do next, the game is constantly kind of showcasing where we should be going next, just by the nature of it being a systemic beast of a game, which is fantastic and it helps us continue to reinforce that core, which is reinforcing that core audience.

Beyond that, how can we kind of open the doors for more players to get involved and grow? It really influenced impacting on our onboarding experience, because Siege has an intimidation factor around it. It is a tough game, but it is incredibly rewarding once you really get into it and you understand the mechanics and understand, say, some of the maps and stuff. So our investment into onboarding is a pretty big focus. We literally, just with Season 4 launching this week, the Clear House mode was introduced. Which is kind of a reinvention of T-Hunt, almost, which is an awesome way for players to be able to start learning maps, learning weapons, and also it came with a mini map, which we didn't have anything like this.

In fact, I think, what was it, Year Seven, when we got our first tutorial kind of thing? So that's the kind of focus we need to have for new players coming in. Because, we've said this before, we recognize [that] we may not be your first FPS, but we're going to be you're last FPS. That's our kind of target on it because there is a step that's required to get into Rainbow, but if you're willing to make that step, we're going to do everything in our power to help guide you along the way. The road to mastery is ridiculously long and up until this point, it's been a gravel road with a lot of hills and we're paving it a little bit, but it's still going to be just as long.

So you have this time to invest and you have this time to gain that mastery, and we're going to do our best to make it a little smoother for you.

Alex Karpazis: I would say too, when you're talking about growth. First, the players who jump into Siege and love Siege, supporting us all this time, it's incredible. But this has now become a generational game. So, [if] you were 20 years old, and now you're 30, going into the game, it's about ushering in that new generation of people who haven't discovered it yet. So, for us, that's great, because we're now building this community and the next generation is just being added to it, added to it, added to it. So we can see that in our player base, just how they're evolving and how they're growing. Like, that's hugely satisfying to see that kind of impact too.

The landscape of live service games has changed so much; there are all these new challenges for developers, and all these new flavours of live service games. Where do you pull inspiration from now? How has that changed over the years, and how do you find ways to still be creative?

Joshua Mills: I think one of the key things, when we're talking about inspiration and making sure we're going true to the path that Rainbow needs to follow, is to look at the legacy of Rainbow Six itself. The entirety of Siege was built off that legacy, and we continue to reference it and build forward with it. Looking in other people's backyards for our solutions, for the game, isn't necessarily going to be the Siege solution, and it's really important we recognize that and know we are a niche experience as well.

We're a tactical hero-based shooter. Which is, there's not many in that same demographic, let alone at the level of intensity that we're offering. So, not all solutions are going to work with us. There are universal options and design theories and stuff like this that work with a lot of different games, and that's fantastic. But I think in general, it's much healthier for both your community, your team, and the industry to serve your niche as best as possible. And that's really how we focus on it.

Alex Karpazis: On top of that is, the things we are adapting to right now are still answering to the needs of the players, and that's making sure that their appetite for content is satiated, and it's a never ending goal for us, but to be able to quickly deliver new content, new events. We're seeing it with Season 4, we've just been starting to communicate it more and more, we want to be able to make more meaningful change to the game that answers to the needs of the players faster.

So whether that's meta changing updates so that our players, who love to theory craft, get to make more of those changes sooner, that's something that we want to focus on for now for the future, that answers their needs.

Joshua Mills: That's a really good example, because the reality is people consume video games in a very different way than they did 10 years ago, and being able to meet those needs, while at the same time, obviously, we're making sure we're respecting our team and respecting the core base that we're trying to move forward with and the core identity of the game, but a hundred percent this is part of the way we are changing some stuff so we can serve those needs.

How set up for success do you feel under the new regime with Vantage Studios? It's a huge change, and kind of an unavoidable topic. Do you feel set up for success and while revenue is the obvious way everyone measures success, it's not the only way, so how are you measuring success?

Alex Karpazis: At least when it comes to Vantage Studios and what it means for us, it means that there is commitment and investment in the Rainbow Six game and Siege itself. So, for us, it's when we say we're going to be around for the next 10 years, this is something that can help us build that future as well. So that's something that's really encouraging for the entire team.

And then speaking as creatives, the way that we're measuring success is looking at the player satisfaction of the game, making sure that the changes we make resonate with them and that we're not alienating our community and we're not disregarding their investment in a game that has been around for 10 years and we want it to be around for 10 more years too.

So that's why you'd never make a sequel?

Alex Karpazis: It's one of the big reasons why we did [Rainbow Six] Siege X, to make sure that we set that new foundation and we don't discard anything. We don't throw out what we've spent so much hard work building for right now.

Looking back on the last 10 years, could both of you tell me what moment you are most proud of and what you feel was your biggest mistake in those 10 years?

Alex Karpazis: I think for me, I mean, this team's seen a lot of different things, different changes. Speaking professionally, going through the COVID time and all of a sudden everybody has to work from home, but still deliver a season every three months. That's probably one of my proudest moments of being a part of this team. Not skipping a beat and finding ways to work in a new environment that we all weren't really sure about. Absolutely one of my proudest moments with the project, with Siege, and with the team itself.

Joshua Mills: I'm thinking more about the worst, the second part. But as far as proudest moments of the team and everything like that, shipping [Siege] X was big for us, because we were essentially building a second game at the same time, still supporting one, and that was tough. That was really, really, really tough, and I'm incredibly proud of the team for the work that went in there because...okay.

I get made fun of a lot on the team now, about this, because I got a little emotional a couple of moments when we were on stages. But that was because in those moments I was thinking about the blood, sweat, and tears that were going into the game, and the hard conversations that were happening and just people literally grinding to get it done, to bring everything they could to it. It was a tremendous amount of effort and work, and again, there's foundational work there, not all of it was player facing, but it set us [up] for Year 11 and beyond, with different things that we can do. But yeah, shipping that felt great, like, just getting it all out there and pulling it off because it was wild that we attempted it, to be honest. [It was] a lot of work.

Now, as far as the biggest mistake, that's a tricky one-

Alex Karpazis: That one's easy. It's Pizza Mozzie. [Karpazis and Mills laugh]. Pizza Mozzie was a customization that we released for a character called Mozzie, our Australian operation, and he looks like, I want to say, he's a pizza slice as a head-

Joshua Mills: Pizza-the-Hut from Spaceballs or something.

Alex Karpazis: Yeah, with googly eyes on it. So that one's on us.

Joshua Mills: So, I though I had to pick from me specifically, but I'll say, I'll be really honest. When I joined Siege, I was a little slow in my confidence to act on certain things because I was trying to figure out the live pace of the game and understanding how quickly we need to move on different things and stuff like this, because there was, different balancing things that were live for too long, in my opinion, where we could have resolved it faster and I really wish we had, but it was a learning experience, and that's the reality of it. You learn from these, we call them mistakes, but they're learning opportunities, and it was exactly that and it led us to being faster and being more dialed in on how we make certain changes. This is the earlier stuff though, like this is around Grim and Souls kind of things, but learning from that was a big one for me. Pizza Mozzie is a nightmare, but that one, that one's for me.

I have one final question, apologies to you Alex because it is for Josh, because I know you worked on Assassin's Creed Valhalla before Siege. You were a level designer, a lead level designer and quest designer. So, are you the reason why the game's so long?

Joshua Mills: [Laughs] Okay, so, actually I can tell you this. Anyone who had an issue with a quest after the game's launch, like they had a progression block or whatever, I was the guy who fixed it. So, I joined the team later in production, to come in as the guy to put out a lot of different fires. Like, the drainer quest system, I built that and worked with a bunch of different folks on this, but then I was sent to spot fix different things and all the different quests across the entire game.

And then after we launched, I ended up doing post-launch support for all the quests, pretty much solo, for a good while there. But, I built out the system for it, so, anytime you'd load your save and maybe you couldn't progress, and then you load it up after a patch and then it worked, I did that for a year of just fixing post-launch support stuff. So, the length of it, I got nothing on that. But I supported all of it though, as far as correcting different things in it and being a spot fixer.

Thank you for your time.

Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.