Windstorm pressing ahead with game development – updates to come soon
Windstorm Studios founded by Ensemble veteran Dusty Monk is still pressing ahead with the development of their title despite that fact that recently the company providing the game engine is closing down. Windstorm is using the Torque 3D engine which closed down as of November 11th 2010. However despite the closure of the company behind the game engine Windstorm is still pressing on as they still own all the code for the game developed thus far and are far enough through the development to continue with the game on the same engine. The studio tweeted on Twitter as follows:
We are still full steam ahead. Internally, we just completed an important milestone, and the game is looking great! (biased, but its true!)We have full source, we have talented people, and we can totally ship with the engine in its current state. So.. in a nut shell, Game ON!
Sharp eyed Windstorm followers may remember that back in April 2010 Dusty Monk had hinted that they were trying to get something together to show the world what they have been working on by November. Dusty’s interview with IncGamer highlighed the following point:
The estimate right now is to try and have something out there around November. That’s the plan of attack right now. Before that point we’ll make an initial announcement about the game itself, and then we’ll start trying to build some press, and some excitement, and some word of mouth, and talk about what the actual game is and the world that’s in the game and the characters, and stuff like that. I can tell you it’s not going to be a casual game – it’s very much going to be a character-oriented world-type game.
Now that we have hit November you may be wondering when we will be hearing something about Windstorm’s endeavours. Well, we might not have to wait too much longer as the studio further tweeted on Twitter:
We have updates coming to the website in the coming weeks. “Cyclops.. keep an eye out!”
Exciting stuff! Windstorm had previously confirmed it was working on a single player RPG style game, a genre I would very much like to see ex Ensemble talent tap into. Now would be a great time to make sure you are following Windstorm Studios on Twitter: – www.twitter.com/ws_studios
Keep an eye out for updates on this exciting project!
Windstorm can be found on the web at: www.windstormstudios.com
Happy Movember!
The bots at Robot Entertainment are showing their human side this month of Movember – a time of manly moustache growing! That’s right, the bots, or “mobots” are taking up the Movember challenge by growing moustaches for the month of November. Yes this yearly event is news to me too but apparently it has been running since 1999 according the the Movember wikipedia entry having been started by a group of men in South Australia. Since then the yearly event has grown in awareness and now takes place in a whole bunch of countries such as Canada, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States. There is some blurb on the official website as follows:
Movember challenges men to change their appearance and the face of men’s health by growing a moustache. The rules are simple, start Movember 1st clean-shaven and then grow a moustache for the entire month. The moustache becomes the ribbon for men’s health, the means by which awareness and funds are raised for cancers that affect men. Much like the commitment to run or walk for charity, the men of Movember commit to growing a moustache for 30 days
A whole bunch of Robot’s have committed to the cause – 25 bots in fact! The mugshots of day 1 can be found below. If you fancy a quick game you can play spot the Robot. How many of the bots can you name from the below? If you keep your eyes peeled you should be able to spot the community bots Justin Korthof and Duncan Stanley in there!
Click to enlarge
Its great to see Robot Entertainment participating in good causes. You can donate to the Robot team at Movember.com – you can see the teams page here: http://www.us.movember.com/mospace/775376/
If you do donate you could be in for a chance to win some cool prizes courtesy of Robot Entertainment. For every $5 donated to the cause you are eligible to enter into a raffle to win some awesome Robot swag such as T-shirts, buttons and cups. There’s also a signed copy of Age of Empires 3 Collectors edition up for grabs. For details on this and pictures of the prizes head over to the full blog at RobotEntertainment.com
To donate just click on the link below and choose “Donate to the team”. You can then pay by Visa, credit card or by PayPal.
Donate here: http://www.us.movember.com/mospace/775376/
Six questions with Chris Moffitt
Chris Moffitt, Remember ES’s partnered artist in the Robot art blog has taken some time to answer some burning questions! As a partnered artist Remember ES had the opportunity of asking Chris some questions about his Robot profile, AOE-O and projects out of work. I hope these Q&A’s give you a small insight into the life of the Robot Moffitt. Here goes with the Q&A!
Q1: The competition was tough and the art was varied. – What do you think of the art from your fellow Robots?
I love all of it. Each artist brought a unique style/process to the challenge and it’s really great to see what everyone came up with.
Q2: As a Character artist on the upcoming Age of Empires Online, what are your thoughts on the new character art styles? Do you have a favourite unit?
I was really excited about the art direction and it’s a lot of fun getting to work on some of the characters. I really like the exaggerated proportions and tone of the characters and I particularly enjoyed working on a lot of the animals in the world. My favorite would have to be the crocodile
The Crocodile in question – peter pan anyone?
Q3: Your profile credits you for your awesome work on Halo Wars, have you worked on any other Age games at Ensemble or is AOE-O your first?
Yes, AOE-O is my first Age game and I was really amazed at how much content goes into an Age game versus what we did on Halo Wars. There’s TONS more depth in an Age game.
Q4: Your Robot profile says that you have worked on a feature film – can you tell us what that is?
I worked on the film, The Ant Bully, primarily as a character modeler but also did some character rigging and texture work. It was a lot of fun and a great experience but my passion is definitely in game development.
Check out the Warner Bros website for The Ant Bully here: http://www2.warnerbros.com/antbully/
Q5: Your nickname is “MuPPetman” – is there an interesting story behind the name?
It’s not that interesting, really. 🙂 Growing up, I always had different nicknames and “muppet” was one of them. A few years ago, I started posting art on different forums and just went with “muPPEtman” as my online alias.
Q6: Looking forward to your next art blog, do you often have ideas and art ideas going on outside the office?
Yes, I have several art projects going on at home that I slowly work on. Having multiple things going keeps my creative juices flowing.
Thanks for answering the questions Chris! Looking forward to seeing more of your work appearing on your Robot blog at: http://www.robotentertainment.com/blog/user/muPPetman
As part of Robot Entertainment’s art blog, swag is on route to all the community sites who took part in the community blog. As these packages start to arrive at various community websites be sure to keep an eye out for some chances to win swag! Once the box arrives here I shall be detailing ways in which you can win! Currently, I do not know what the box is going to contain so it will all remain a mystery for the moment. Now might be a good time to follow Remember_ES on Twitter to make sure you’re in the know as it happens.
Robot Entertainment art blog voting closes and website data loss
Its all over! After a week (and a few more days!) the voting for the art blog has completed. There were plenty of votes cast and in the end it looks like the winning art was Nate “N8” Stefan with his awesome military spider drone:-
Nate was very closely followed by Bart Tiongson with just a few votes but as Nate came out on top his partnered community website Age Heaven is set to receive an awesome Robot Entertainment swag bundle to give away to the community. Congratulations Age Heaven!
But thats not all! Robot Entertainment isnt just giving out swag bundles to Age Heaven, it looks like all community sites will be getting some funky Robot swag as well:
Thanks to everyone who voted for their favorite art! At the end of the day, N8 collected the most votes, so his partner community site, Age Heaven, will be receiving a bundle of Robot Entertainment swag to give away to their victorious community. But since so many of you from around the community came out to vote, that didn’t feel like quite enough for us. So we’ll be sending out swag bundles to all of the community sites that participated. If you’re a member at any of the sites below, be sure to check them out soon for your change to pick up some Robot Entertainment swag!
Thats right, all the community websites will be getting some swag, which means your chances of getting some of this swag increases too! Good news for everyone! Be sure to keep a close eye on all the community websites for giveaways and competitions. As soon as the package arrives here I will be making posts advising how you can get in with a chance to get some. So keep checking back! You might want to follow us on Twitter to be in the know as soon as it happens! Just follow www.twitter.com/remember_es
Its not all good news though..
With good news of course comes bad news to balance things out! You may have noticed that www.robotentertainment.com has been having some technical problems lately. This is because on Friday 15th October the servers where the website is hosted went down. The Robot’s sprung into action and the website is now online but unfortunately data has been lost. All forum posts made since the end of September have been lost and if you signed up to the forums since then you will need to create a new account. It is estimated more than 500 accounts have been lost.
Members who signed up before the end of September may also notice they no longer hold beta or vintage badges. Robot Entertainment has confirmed that they will work on restoring these badges in due course. Currently you do not have to do anything but if that changes I shall post an update.
It also means that precise numbers for the art blog voting are not known but I can confirm I did witness Nate Steffan in pole position shortly before the website went down.
Meanwhile hear is Robot Entertainment’s update on the situation:
Hey everyone –
As you may have noticed, earlier this evening RobotEntertainment.com was down for a while. Our web servers failed on us, and we lost some portions of the site. Our web team has feverishly worked to recover what we could from the site and get it back up and running. Unfortunately, we lost all forum and new member activity going back to about early September. If you signed up to the site since then, you’ll need to re-create your account. And if you were feverishly tracking any forum conversations from the last few weeks, they were unfortunately lost or truncated.
Over the next week we’ll be going through the site to get everything back to where it was this morning, including setting up badges again and updating FAQ files and game pages. If you see anything you have questions about or want to point out, please feel free to let us know over in the Support & Suggestions section of our forums.
Thanks again for your patience!
– Justin “SixOkay” Korthof, Community Manager at Robot Entertainment
Any questions about this downtime should be directed to Robot’s support forums.
Buyouts and Acquisitions – ngmoco acquired by DeNA and Zynga may have paid $6.3 million for Bonfire Studios
Shortly after Zynga acquired Bonfire Studios last week, Ngmoco the publisher of Bonfire’s We Farm game has also been acquired by DeNA a mobile and social games giant in Japan. DeNA is paying a huge $403 for ngmoco as reported by Gamasutra. This acquisition will enable DeNA to expand its market share from its Japanese region to cover the West as well with ngmoco’s titles according to the official press release as below:
Today we announced that ngmoco:) is being acquired by DeNA, Japan’s largest and most successful mobile social games platform company, creating in the process the world’s leading company of its kind.
ngmoco will lead DeNA’s efforts in the Western world, including launching a new western smartphone version of the incredibly successful Social Games Network, Mobage (we say “Mo-ba-gae”) that we’re building together with DeNA.
Mobage has tens of millions of users in Japan who play many hundreds of applications all woven together through a connected service. We’ll be bringing our two companies’ collective experience & technology to bear and delivering you the smartphone version of this incredible service filled with amazing games and services, wrapped inside a vibrant community.
Read more: http://blog.ngmoco.com/post/1296593011/dena-to-acquire-ngmoco-a-note-from-the-founders
Meanwhile, TechCrunch has reported that according to an SEC filling Zynga may have paid $6.3 million for Bonfire Studios. Check out the TechCrunch article below if you are interested in more details about the numbers:
Please note that this is only an observation. The exact terms of Bonfire’s buyout in terms of numbers has not been confirmed by Zynga officially.
Lord of the Rings Online increases its user base and revenues after switching to ‘Free to Play’
Earlier this week Joystiq reported that Lord of the Rings Online developed by Turbine has seen its MMO game revenue double and user based increased by 400% since the developer switched to a free to play model as opposed to a monthly subscription. Joystiq reported:
“Lord of the Rings Online Executive Producer Kate Paiz announced during a panel at GDC Online 2010 today that Turbine has done it again: Lord of the Rings Online has doubled its revenue and created over a million new accounts since going free-to-play early last month. That’s the second MMO Turbine has taken from a paid subscription to a hybrid microtransactions-based business model, with Dungeons and Dragons Online doing the same thing last year“
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/07/lord-of-the-rings-online-doubles-revenue-since-going-free-to-pla/
You might be wondering why is this relevant to Ensemble or one of its studios forming out of the closure? Well, its a relevant news story for Robot Entertainment and Age of Empires fans as it shows how successful MMO like games can be with a free to play model. Age of Empires Online as developed by Robot Entertainment will be launching with a free to play model where by the game will be free to download and play but paid for additional content will also be available. This model is very close to what Turbine have very successfully adopted for Lord of the Rings Online. The Lord of the Rings Online game demonstrates that free to play with paid for extras does work and is profitable for the publisher.
Of course AOE-O isnt quite a traditional MMO, more a MMORTS, but this article from Joystiq might help convince those doubting the AOE-O free to play model.
Vijay Thakkar of NewToy discusses the benefits of quick and easy game patching
Vijay Thakkar an ex-ES programmer who had a short spell as programmer and then lead programmer at Robot Entertainment is now at NewToy as their technical director. Vijay recently took to the stage at the GDC Online to give his insights about the need to have the ability to quickly and effectively patch games post release. Vijay compares NewToy’s ability to quickly patch games in comparison to Nintendo’s “Metroid the other M” where a game breaking glitch meant gamers had to send their SD card or console away for repair.
Joystiq reports as follows:
Vijay took the stage at GDC Online 2010 this morning to run a panel about how to embrace mobile gaming, and while extolling the virtues of Apple’s mobile platform and its constant online connectivity, he took aim at the traditional game industry’s long development times and buggy releases.
Thakkar railed for a bit on a bug found recently in the latest title of his “favorite gaming franchise ever,”Metroid: Other M. When the save-breaking bug appeared in the game, Thakkar recounted, Nintendo couldn’t use the Wii’s internet connectivity to patch the game. Instead, Thakkar pointed out, the company had to “ask players to ‘send us your memory card.'”
“That’s awful,” Thakkar added. It’s 2010, he said, developers should have ongoing access to update and patch their games when necessary, and he pointed to the iPhone as a platform where games could be released and patched quickly. “At Newtoy, we’ve completed full games in less time than it took me to design systems for older triple-A titles.”
It is only in recent years that consoles and other gaming platforms like mobile gaming have supported patching. Currently only Xbox’s connected to Xbox Live and internet connected PS3’s can download game patches. Mobile games on newer operating systems such as iOS and Android support patching through app store and the marketplace. Previously where mobile games were often deployed as Java .JAR files there was no way to notify the user to update thier game. Vijay points out to use how useful patching mobile games can be. Ensemble have been patching games since Age of Empires 1 thanks to internet connected PC’s. Having a modern console like the Nintendo Wii without a patching process can make development very tricky as game breaking bugs can be near impossible for the user to fix. The Nintendo situation of sending an SD card or even console away for repair to fix the save data certainly wont please most gamers!
Could you image an RTS developed on the Wii? If the balance wasnt spot on first time.. could get very messy!
Have a read of the ful article at Joystiq using the link below:
http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/06/iphone-dev-cheers-short-development-quick-patching-at-gdc-onlin/
Zynga acquires Bonfire Studios. Studio to become “Zynga Dallas”
Some very interesting news has just surfaced in the last hour. Bonfire Studios is no more following the acquisition from social gaming giant Zynga. You may recognise Zynga for its incredibly popular (and successful) MySpace and Facebook applications, FarmVille and Mafia Wars. It would seem as though the creative minds at Zynga recognised the talent at Bonfire with many of its staff having heritage from Ensemble Studios. Here is the press release straight from the horses mouth:
Yeehaw! We’re thrilled to announce that Zynga is moving into the world of boots and BBQ today, with the acquisition of Bonfire Studios. Bonfire Studios brings world-class talent and an impressive résumé to the Zynga team, some of their employees having created popular PC and Xbox 360 games, such as Age of Empires, Age of Mythology and Halo Wars.
Starting today, Bonfire Studios becomes Zynga Dallas and will be developing original IP for the company – with Bonfire founders David Rippy, Bill Jackson and Scott Winsett leading the charge. David will serve as GM of Zynga Dallas, Scott will be senior art director and Bill will act as the creative director. Additional information on each included below:
- David Rippy: Game industry veteran of over 15 years; served as president and CEO of Bonfire Studios and established the company’s vision, culture and direction
- Bill Jackson: A veteran programmer and producer; was in charge of the creative direction of Bonfire’s projects, specifically with driving the creation of Bonfire’s original IP
- Scott Winsett: Defined the visual style for Bonfire’s titles, with more than 14 years of relevant experience; strong leadership experience in the games industry with serving as the art lead on Age of Empires, The Rise of Rome Expansion and Halo Wars
Currently there is no word on what new games Zynga Dallas will be releasing other than the fact it will be based on new IP. There has been no announcement of games so far despite my prediction that there would be. (Sorry about that!)
Some of you may be wondering what this aquistion means for Bonfire and it its a good or bad thing. So here are my observations in a handy FAQ format:
What does this mean for the Bonfire Studios brand?
The Bonfire Studios brand and name will no longer continue and is superseded by the studio title “Zynga Dallas.” This might explain why Bonfire has been subtle about pushing its brand name with its game releases so far such as We Farm.
Why did Zynga aquire Bonfire?
No doubt to expand their studio portfolio and to pursure Bonfire’s new IP ideas. After recognising the talent at Bonfire it was no doubt a perfect oppurtunity for Zynga to form a Dallas based studio. Zynga must also believe the new IP Bonfire is working on has a strong case and market appeal. Something for us to be excited about!
Does this mean Bonfire are no longer an independent studio like Robot Entertainment?
Bonfire Studios are now part of Zynga in a similar way that Ensemble was to Microsoft. Bonfire is no longer an independent developer and is wholly owned by Zynga.
What are Zynga Dallas working on?
Zynga Dallas formerly Bonfire Studios are working on new, unannounced gaming IP. With Zynga now onboard this IP is going to be very exciting indeed.
What links should I check out for more information?
The Bonfire Studios website has been updated with a press release which you can see here:
http://www.bonfire-studios.com/
Any more updates?
I will be keeping the blog updated as anymore news about Bonfire develops. Keep checking back!
Congratulations Bonfire on the acquisition!
Bonfire Studios announcing a new project tomorrow? (Or later this week)
If you’ve been keeping an eye on the Bonfire Studios website you will have noticed they have changed the webpage with a brand new teaser image!
It looks like there could be something very exciting around the corner! Not only has the graphic changed on the website but all the links have been taken down as well. It is possible a major re-design is happening, perhaps to co-incide the the announcement of a brand new game from the studio. Bonfire Studios are indeed heading to the Austin GDC this week and it looks like they could well be making an announcement there. Infact a new announcement could be as soon as tomorrow!
Be sure to keep a close eye on the Bonfire website as something very hot might just be unleashed! I’ll be updating the blog and Remember ES twitter feed as soon as I can with any news. Keep your eyes peeled!
Voting begins for your favourite robot artist!
Its time to get your voting fingers at the ready as Robot Entertainment has opened up the poll for folk to vote for their favourite robot art in the community art blogs. Recently six artists at Robot Entertainment have paired up with six community websites, including Remember ES. Each artist has produced an amazing piece each based on the “robots” theme. Now the time has come the the masses to vote for which artist they think is the best. The winning artist will have its community partner sent a whole bunch of Robot Entertainment swag to give away to the masses in any way they choose. So if you fancy getting your hands on some Robot swag be sure to vote for an artist on the blog and keep your eyes peeled on the winning community website!
Of course you should vote for the artist you think is the best on this theme. However, I do of course hasten to add that Remember ES is partnered with Chris Moffitt with this fantastic art – so feel free to vote for Chris! :
To vote for your favourite piece and for a reminder of all the art entered so far head to:
http://robotentertainment.com/Voting-Art-Blog-Robots
