Graeme Devine describes the past and present game industry
Graeme Devine has recently given a presentation to the Baskin Engineering School in Santa Cruz, where he now resides talking about the past and present state of the gaming industry. Graeme describes the previous generation of the gaming industry as “dead” and that the industry is moving forward into new business models. Stepping away from the “four year dev cycles, massive teams and publisher budgets” and moving towards smaller teams, indie development and “creation games”. Graeme kicked off his presentation with a mention to his time at Ensemble Studios working on Halo Wars. Ensemble had a 120 strong team working on the Halo Wars project (although there were other projects in development along side). Graeme made note that 120 is alot of people to work on a game and questions whether such a team size is sustainable. Read more
Microsoft to take over Age Community
Unfortunately, the time as come for Robot Entertainment so sign off on Age Community and hand over day to day support for community operations to Microsoft Games Studios. The transition starts today, with Ryz0n 
taking the reins as community support moderator. Ryzon commented:
The folks here at MGS are transitioning into supporting the AOE community. Along those lines, I’ll be working on forum administration, account support, and generally keeping everything running as well as possible. Our goal, as we move through the transition period, is to make the user experience change very little and have the service chug along without any issues into the foreseeable future. I’ll be coming up to speed and working with Robot on the community, server issues, and support for the titles. Read more
End of the road for Halo Wars as Microsoft shuts down community website
Earlier this week Cocopjojo of the Halo Wars community moderation team at 343 Industries announced that they plan to close the Halo Wars community website in its entirety as of December 15th 2010. No doubt this decision is part of Microsoft “exciting plans” for the community. Read more
Are you a Vintage AgeCommer?
Have you been a member on Age Community before February 2009 when Robot Entertainment took over the reigns? Well if you were you can now get your very own “Vintage” badge on the Robot Entertainment forums. It looks pretty snazzy as below:
Rob Fermier blogs about Age of Empires programming history
Hot on the heels of Ian Fischer’s blog about AOE-O design and Dave Kubalak’s blog about the vision behind the new Age of Empires game, long time Age of programmer come lead programmer at Robot Entertainment, Rob Fermier talks us through the history of the Bang engine which has powered each Age game since 3D graphics started with Age of Mythology. Before the bang engine came along Ensemble Studios were using another in house 2D engine called “Genie”. By around 1999 and before Ensemble acquisition by Microsoft, Ensemble were playing around with a new 3D engine which later became known as Bang. This engine was first used with Age of Mythology taking the Age series into 3D for the first time:
The first iteration of the Bang engine produced these graphics in Age of Mythology
The same Bang engine was used again for the expansion pack Age of Mythology – The Titans. When Age of Empires 3 came along the engine underwent significant improvements:
For Age of Empires 3 (2005) it received some major upgrades – a modern shader-based rendering system, physics integration, new particle effects, and numerous unit sim improvements. Several expansion packs also were built to enhance those games, leveraging the extensibility and flexibility of the Bang engine.
After the extensive work put into the engine Age of Empires 3 turned out graphics looking more like this:
But its not all about graphics, a game engine comprises of many different parts which make up the whole thing. For example you have graphics, sound, music, UI, AI, scenarios, triggers, databases and more. There is alot going on behind the scenes of an Age game. In fact the engine is over 1.2 million lines of code. Although not all these lines are serious pieces of code, as Rob points out there is Ensemble humour buried in the code. –
(Click to enlarge)
I am certain this Ensemble style humour will continue into Robot Entertainment’s edits of the engine!
The blog finishes up with a few words about the future of the engine with Age of Empires Online and the new features it brings:
As you play Age of Empires Online (sign up for the Beta here), the technology powering your game experience is a mix of brand new online tech, new gameplay systems, and battle-tested core RTS mechanics that we have been constantly improving for over a decade. It is always amusing to come across a comment from yourself in 1999. Game technologies are often abandoned after a few years, so it has been very rewarding to work with this particularly robust game engine for so long.
As always, this is just a summary of the full blog post and I recommend everyone check out the full posting on the Robot Entertainment for more information and “fun facts”!
http://www.robotentertainment.com/blog/detail/Brief-History-Time-and-Age-Engine
Creative director Marcus Lehto of Bungie Studios thoughts on Halo Wars
Picked up on a Computerandvideogames.com interview with Bungie’s creative director Marcus Lehto today which looks back at Bungie during the Halo years and the future of the studio going forward. The interview does touch on Halo Wars and the studios thoughts about Ensemble working on the title. –
Looking back, were you happy with Microsoft’s decision to make Halo Wars? What did you think of the game, and its reception? What’s your stance on Halo spin-offs in general?
For Halo Wars I can say that we weren’t involved with it at all, but at the time we figured – and it’s still true – that if anyone would want to take a stab at a Halo RTS, Ensemble had the pedigree and talent to do it.
Ultimately, all of us were happy with how it turned out; they would have been hard pressed to do a better job at an RTS on console. Certainly elements like the cinematics – how they enriched different parts of the universe – as fans it was really cool to see that.
Would you have liked Microsoft to come to you? We’re surprised you weren’t involved with Halo Wars at all…
Well, we didn’t have any room in our schedule anyway. We had a pretty rigorous schedule to get Halo 3 out of the door, so I think Bungie has a pedigree for making those types of games, but not to the extent Ensemble did. It made a lot more sense. We were focused on getting bullets on pixels, giving people a tight, fun, action packed world, It was the right fit.
It is clear that Bungie were very pleased to have Ensemble work on Halo Wars and felt safe the studio would do a good job with the Halo IP. Halo Wars turned out to be a great game and as Marcus says they would have indeed been hard pressed to do a better job for an RTS based console.
The full interview can be found below which also contains some interesting questions and answers about Bungie’s past, present and future plans.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=261874
Age of Empires community fragmentation begins as new forums launch
As announced previously Microsoft is continuing with its new community venture for Age of Empires Online and has announced the launch of a new community website at www.ageofempiresonline.com. As a result of this launch this will see the immediate fragmentation of the Age of Empires online fan base where by there will be two official forums for the Age of Empires series, one for legacy games such as Age 3 and Age of Mythology and another for Age of Empires Online. Why Microsoft has chosen this path is bizarre as having two forums for one franchise can only offer fragmentation. It would be like Halo Reach detaching from Bungie.net and setting up shop somewhere else (Edit: Halo Reach actually does have multiple community websites). Or Lionhead breaking away its Fable 3 forum from its website. It doesn’t happen with other IP but its ok to do so with Age of Empires.
In the past Microsoft has typically treated Ensemble developed games poorly in terms of community investment. Since the closure of Ensemble Studios, Age Community has suffered a number of bugs with modern browsers resulting in the website looking terrible in , including in Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer 7 and 8. Images are cut off and out of alignment and despite launching a new game in the Age series Microsoft has still not invested money into making the website look suitable, and even usable in the cases of cut off web buttons. The website looks rough and patched together and does no justice to the Age franchise. Then we also have Halo Wars which was promised “exciting things to come” when Microsoft’s 343 Industries took over. The result was community madness with almost no moderation and no “exciting things” has ever been forthcoming.
It is a no brainer that by splitting up the community for the same franchise is bad for the community. Age Community has been incredibly successful, particularly at Ensemble Studios and boasts almost 90,000 users at the time of writing. Now all these 90,000 users will be forced to setup another account on a totally different website should they want to discuss and hear news about Age of Empires Online in an official environment. Moreover, those who check forums often will now have to flick between the two as some may not realise Age Community is not the official site for Age of Empires Online. Especially seeing as Age Community purports to be the official community website for Age of Empires as a whole based on its domain name and branding.
The whole process seems messy, unthought out and has negative impact on Age Community. Despite having a dedicated community team at Microsoft they have completely missed the massive oversight of the community fragmentation having two forums will bring and have been unsympathetic to the Age Community by not investing in that website going forward and over the past year knowing that another Age game was around the corner.
Microsoft are hiding behind legal and technical issues which had apparently required them to develop a new community. However both these explanations are questionable seeing as the new website runs on the same software as Age Community. Having looked at the website closely it offers no benefit whatsoever other than to fragment and duplicate community content. The gamertag integration could easily have been implemented into Age Community as evidenced by Ensemble’s work with HaloWars.com which shares the same community software again. The supposed “legal issues” are also dubious and Microsoft have not been forthcoming about what these issues were. Robot Entertainment has worked on Age Community and Halo Wars after Ensemble’s closure so there has been no problem before using a third party developer to look after community websites. I have not been able to determine what the legal issues could possibly be and can only assume it comes down to poor decision making and lack of attention to the fan base of Age Community that has resulted in this ill advised decision.
Age of Empires looks like a great game but the community management is way off course for Age of Empires best interests in my opinion as you may have gathered from the tone of this blog post. I am very disappointed.
Robot Entertainment has stated that they will continue support of Age Community for as long as Microsoft allows and will continue to look after the community going forward. Microsoft has not given clear indication of plans for Age Community and no-one from either company has updated the Age Community homepage beyond just an announcement so far. For reference I include comments from both Robot Entertainment and Microsoft below:
“Microsoft does have a community team in place to support Age of Empires Online, but that doesn’t change the fact that Robot Entertainment is very interested in and dedicated to all players who are a part of our community and who play the games we develop. Dunkman/Aloysius and I will continue to support and maintain AgeCommunity.com and the players there until such time that Microsoft decides to change direction with the site.”
– Justin Korthof. Community Manager at Robot Entertainment
The decision to make new forums for AOEO wasn’t simply, “we want to fragment the community”. This was never the intent but there are legal issues that arose (which I am not at liberty to talk about) that made it necessary for MGS to create new message boards for AOEO. I have every intention on keeping AgeCom updated with AOEO content. AgeCom wont be recognized as an official outlet – as AOEO.com will be – but will be up-to-date with content. I can’t tell you exactly right now how AgeCom is going to be utilized in the future, but AgeCom will not be forgotten about and abandoned to the wasteland.
Robot Entertainment’s community team isn’t being utilized for AOEO – but they do still run AgeCom. While they’re not “officially” the community team we (Cosy and myself) ARE in constant and close contact (if it assuages your fears any – I’ve been friends with the Robot team since before I took this position) and have no intention on changing that. Our (the MGS team) main concern as a community team is the community.
– BatsyBatsy. Community Manager at Microsoft Game Studios
Platform Nation’s final part in the Remembering Ensemble Studios series
Platformnation.com now has the final part of the three part series on remembering the fallen studio, Ensemble Studios The article is a fantastic resource for people looking about Ensemble history and how they came to become one of the most successful video game studios. Starting from the beginning with Age 1 right up until the unfortunate end Steven Buccini takes us through the Ensemble Studios legacy.
Part 1 (Age1 to Age 2)
Part 2 (Age of Mythology to Age 3)
Part 3 (Halo Wars and the closing of Ensemble)
A great set of articles, thanks Steven!
Robot Entertainment not officially involved with Age of Empires Online community
Some disappointing news has been revealed today over on the Age Community forums. BatsyBatsy the Community Manager for Age of Empires Online has stated that Robot Entertainment’s community team will not be utilized for AOEO. There seem to be some legal issues having Robot Entertainment manage the community output directly which is a great shame. Those who may of thought Robot Entertainment were building new community websites for its new projects may well be disappointed to hear that future AOEO community content will not be derived from the studio.
The decision to make new forums for AOEO wasn’t simply, “we want to fragment the community”. This was never the intent but there are legal issues that arose (which I am not at liberty to talk about) that made it necessary for MGS to create new message boards for AOEO. I have every intention on keeping AgeCom updated with AOEO content. AgeCom wont be recognized as an official outlet – as AOEO.com will be – but will be up-to-date with content. I can’t tell you exactly right now how AgeCom is going to be utilized in the future, but AgeCom will not be forgotten about and abandoned to the wasteland.
Robot Entertainment’s community team isn’t being utilized for AOEO – but they do still run AgeCom. While they’re not “officially” the community team we (Cosy and myself) ARE in constant and close contact (if it assuages your fears any – I’ve been friends with the Robot team since before I took this position) and have no intention on changing that. Our (the MGS team) main concern as a community team is the community.
– BatsyBatsy of Microsoft Game Studios.
Additionally, not having Robot as the source of community content also relegates AgeCommunity.com into unknown territory. AgeCommunity.com was established by Ensemble Studios as the hub for all things Age of Empires and has been the website supporting both Age of Empires 3 and Age of Mythology. Despite Ensemble’s intentions as having this as the one stop shop Age of Empires website it will no longer serve as the official AOEO community website. Instead Microsoft will setup their own forums at www.ageofempiresonline.com and will be managed by a community team at Microsoft and not the team at Robot who many members will be accustomed to.
BatsyBatsy of Microsoft Game Studios (MGS) explains that there were legal issues although it is slightly confusing as to what those issues may be. At first thought it would appear that because Robot Entertainment is a third party developer for MGS, Microsoft is required to protect the continuity of the Age of Empires community and by having community operations in house they can ensure the website is managed in a way they feel fit and are not dependent on a third party company for maintaining a community for the highly regarded Age of Empires IP. If Age of Empires Online was developed by Ensemble Studios as an internal MGS studio, the Ensemble team would of been able to continue the AgeCommunity.com legacy as they would be apart of Microsoft and thus automatically fulfilling Microsoft’s communtiy goals.
There are slight mixed messages with the above theory. Robot Entertainment was contracted as a third party developer to support the HaloWars.com community and the community for Age of Empires 3. If Microsoft cannot legally have third parties managing thier community games why was Robot responsible for both these IP’s? Why can they not continue with AOEO? Unfortunately these questions will probably go unanswered.
As a result of these ill-advised decisions at Microsoft Game Studios the Age of Empires Community faces fragmentation as both the “Age of Empires Community” and “Age of Empires Online” community run side by side. In the past Microsoft’s taking over of Ensemble communities has faced backlash from members owing to poor community management. (See the Halo Wars fiasco here and here). However, because the Age Online team at MGS is different to 343 Industries the ageofempiresonline.com website may well recieve better treatment and attention than Halo Wars.
Despite having no “official” involvement with the Age of Empires Community, Robot Entertainment continues to have its own independent discussion boards at RobotEntertainment.com. This will enable fans of the series to reach out to the developers at Robot Entertainment.
Readers may have gathered from this post that I am very much in favour of developer run communities. Looking at internal MGS studios Lionhead and Rare, they both have thriving communities for their games managed by the studios directly. The community websites created at Ensemble Studios were always full of information and excellent management. It is a great shame Robot Entertainment will not be able to continue this legacy with AOEO on an official AOEO website. I am extremely disappointed that Microsoft is treating Robot Entertainment as what would appear to be a “purely the developer of the title” stance.
Should any more information become available or statements received from either MGS or Robot I shall update this blog post.
Update: Robot Entertainment responds to this article
Platform Nation looks back at Ensemble Studios
With all the excitement and news of Age of Empires Online we must not forget about the great minds at Ensemble Studios who created the Age of series in the past. Platformnation.com has an excellent 3-part feature (third part available soon) looking back at Ensemble’s history from Age 1 right up to Halo Wars. If you would like to refresh your memory on all things Ensemble Studios check out the feature here:
http://www.platformnation.com/2010/07/09/remembering-the-fallen-ensemble-studiosage-of-empirespt-1/
It is a great shame this new Age game is not being worked on with the full team at Ensemble Studios. I see no reason why the multi-project studio at Ensemble could not have developed this along with other exciting projects. I have no doubt Robot Entertainment will make Age Online into a fantastic game, but it is shame for it to be the first Age game not bearing the classic Ensemble Studios logo which over time stood for as a logo for gaming quality.
