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Ubisoft and Joseph Gordon Levitt Need Your Help to Finish ‘Beyond Good and Evil 2’

Ubisoft is using Levitt’s content collaboration platform Hitrecord collaboration platform to crowdsource assets for the upcoming video game.

Ubisoft is looking for collaborators to help it finish Beyond Good and Evil 2. The upcoming video game is a prequel to the 2003 cult hit that puts players in control of a group of space pirates as they explore the universe. Ubisoft wants players and fans to help populate that universe with art and music.

During its E3 press conference, Beyond Good and Evil 2 creative Ubisoft announced it was teaming up with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s content collaboration platform Hitrecord to bring artists together from across the world to make content for the new game.

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The project is called the Space Monkey Program and, according to an FAQ on Ubisoft’s website it’s a way for “ Beyond Good and Evil fans [to] collaborate with the Ubisoft team and other artists around the world to create visual assets and music that will be integrated directly into the game, enriching the world of BGE2 with community-created content.”

Ubisoft is providing would-be creatives with music and art assets from Beyond Good and Evil to get fans started via Hitrecord. There’s lore videos, music packs, and even radio jingles and stingers from the upcoming game. If nothing else, it’s a place where Beyond Good and Evil fans can get an early look at the fluff for the upcoming game.

One of the great things about Hitecord, and the promise of this project, is that creators whose work ends up in the finished game will get paid for their labor. Ubisoft and Gordon-Levitt didn’t mention if or how creators will get paid during the press conference and Gordon-Levitt apologized on Twitter after a fan pointed it out. “You are super right. Huge oversight. I think script got trimmed at last minute and we fucked that up,” Gordon-Levitt said. “It’s hugely important to me that @hitrecord pays artists fairly. Since 2010 we’ve paid community almost $3 million.”

If you're interested in a chance of getting your work into the game, you can go here to get started. However, it's important to note that only creators whose work ends up in the game will get paid for their efforts. Creators who don't get selected are working for free, which is a not a bad setup for Ubisoft, but one that is less than ideal for creators.