Introducing C Prompt Games and Heretic Operative
As we close out 2018 we bring news that there is a new kid on the block of studios formed from ex Ensemble staff members. We can now introduce C Prompt Games, a small studio set up by Ian Fischer (Mother) and Rob Fermier (Xemu). Fans will no doubt recognise these names as long time standing members of Ensemble Studios and then more recently at Robot Entertainment. Their new studio C Prompt Games is setting out on an adventure to deliver all new original games.
Robot Entertainment at PAX (Part 2)
Following on from our first part of Robot’s PAX Panel review we now move on from looking at the studios history to present day to looking at some of the interesting prototypes they have been working on in-between OMD2 and OMDU. For the first time we get a glimpse at some of he games that could have been from the creative minds at Robot. Read more
Robot Entertainment at PAX (Part 1)
Some of the bots from Robot Entertainment have been hanging out at PAX Prime this weekend, hosting their very own PAX panel titled “An afternoon of fun with Robot Entertainment”. In our first part of our two part series we cover the first part of the panel which looks at Robot history including their time at Ensemble Studios and the games that lead up to Orcs Must Die! Unchained. For anyone who was in attendance there were plenty of free things being given out including a bag, poster, buttons, t-shirt, band and “Founders PAX” access to the Closed Beta. Read more
Robot Entertainment panel at PAX Prime
Some of the bots from Robot Entertainment are on route to PAX Prime in Seattle later this month. While there is no Robot booth this time around, a number of the bots will be hosting their own PAX Prime panel. The line up includes Patrick Hudson [CEO], Justin Korthof [Community Manager], Lance Hoke [Producer], Ian Fischer [Design Director], Chris Moffitt [Art Director]. Read more
Ex Ensembler’s thoughts on AOE 2 HD and AOM:EE
If you’re a Steam user you have have seen for a while prominent features of Age of Empires 2 HD and Age of Mythology Extended Edition available to play on Steam. Its great to see these classic Ensemble titles back in the game for purchase. Joining Age of Empires 3 which is also available for purchase on Steam there are now three major games in Ensemble’s legacy in the modern day Steam store and audiences both old and new can enjoy these great games. Read more
Orcs Must Die! Unchained announced via IGN
Great news for Orcs Must Die! fans – its your lucky day as Robot have just announced the next OMD game – Orcs Must Die! Unchained, or OMDU for short! IGN has the scoop. OMDU is the biggest game to date in pretty much every way – bigger levels, more playable characters, deeper deck / inventory system, more enemies and of course even more traps, whats more this is all free-to-play! Read more
Ian Fischer’s Gamesauce presentation + blog on AOE-O play testing
Readers may remember that a little while back Ian Fischer did a talk at Gamesauce which is a place for people in the games industry to take some time out and talk to other like minded people in the industry about game development, strategies and analysis of the gaming industry. Robot Entertainment’s Design Director, Ian Fischer attended the conference and gave a presentation titled: “The role of emergence in gaming and the part it plays in the future of the medium.” Certainly an interesting title! A video of the talk has been made available as below. Ian compares many aspects of the early video gaming days to the early days of film and suggests that in the future we should expect games and graphics to become far more advanced and realistic as we move away from linear games. Its an excellent and insightful talk and should be of interest to those in or looking to get into the video games industry.
Ian Fischer at Gamesauce
Over at the Robot Entertainment website Ian has been putting on his blogging hat under the slightly strange alias “Mother”. Ian “Mother” Fischer talks about the play testing involved with the recently announced Age of Empires Online. As we have always known the Ensemble Studios attitude about game development has always been play testing, play testing and more play testing so it is no surprise these values have been taken across to Robot Entertainment.
Age of Empires games have always been built by play testing. At Ensemble before and at Robot now, our basic development philosophy remains unchanged – get a playable version of the game up and running as soon as possible, then play the living hell out of it.
This approach has massive advantages. Everyone on the team knows and contributes to their game. If something is broken, all of the most capable eyes are looking. If an idea isn’t going to work the way you saw in your head, the reaction in play test makes that obvious. And nothing is better for guiding fast, impactful changes – a few weeks back, there were people literally making realtime fixes to Age of Empires Online based on problems players in the alpha were chatting to us while they played.
The blog continues into a very interesting discussion talking about what key values make an Age game and how they fit in with what people want. The blog also looks at where AOE-O fits into the series taking parts of the Age of Kings with parts of more recent titles like Age of Empires 3. Fans will be pleased to read that alot of iconic Age game features will be present in AOE-O including the classic villagers carrying resources and as rumored from the blog the classic “wololo” sound! Ian summarises the development as ““Age of Kings style game play in an Age of Empires setting”.
Read more on the Robot Entertainment website courtesy of “Mother”.
http://www.robotentertainment.com/blog/detail/Hi-Honey-Were-Home
Justin Korthof on new Robot website plus Ian Fischer’s role at Gamesauce
Robot Entertainment’s Community Manager Justin “SixOkay” Korthof has published his first blog on the new Robot website design reflecting on the launch and re-assuring fans there is much more in the pipeline for the website including new features and bug fixes.
Hello again. It’s been a while since we last talked. Now that we’ve got the new website up, that’s going to change. Since we put the new site up about a week and a half ago, you’ve all been kind enough to sign up and take it for a test drive. And we’re glad you did! Thanks to you guys, we’ve already started making updates to the site. We’ve been fixing bugs and improving various little features. And we’re not stopping any time soon.
We’re currently doing a little under-the-hood work, but soon we’re going to begin work on some great profile improvements, as well as adding and improving forum features. Is there anything you’d like to see? If so, be sure to let us know over in the Suggestions Forum.
Justin also discusses Robot’s Lead Designer – Ian Fischer’s role at the Gamesauce conference in July 19th. The conference is a place where developers can inspire other developers with unique and interesting ways about making engaging games. At this conference Ian will be speaking on “the role of emergence in gaming and the part it plays in the future of the medium.” Justin expands to clarify further:
It’s about the future of the gaming industry. In it he compares the first 60 years of games to the first 60 years of films to support the idea that despite the game industry’s immense accomplishments, we’re only just starting to get really serious about making games. If you’re interested in the presentation, I’ll see if we can snag a video of it, or perhaps make a blog post out of it.
Exciting stuff. It is always good to see Ex Ensemble employees giving talks as they are veterans in the industry. You can also catch Bruce Shelley and Paul Bettner giving talks soon too at the GDC. We also look forward to seeing some more developments on the Robot Entertainment website so keep your eyes peeled on RobotEntertainment.com and if you haven’t already sign up on the forums!
Read the full blog from Justin at Robot Entertainment
Ex Ensembler’s Ian Fischer, Rob Fermier and David Rippy look back
Some ex-Ensemble staff have been reminisces about the old days to some gaming websites / magazines. As always interviews and articles from Ex Ensemblites provides interesting insight into the workings of the studio and what made it a unique and special place to work – the studio lifestyle and culture.
First up we have Ian Fischer who takes us back to the original Age of Empires and Age of Kings timezone over at gamesource.org. Ian discusses the origins of the studio and how it started off with the bright idea by Tony Goodman and some of his close friends:-
“Ensemble Studios had its roots in a consulting firm: Ensemble Corporation. One night in 1993, Tony Goodman was talking to Angelo Laundon, one of the programmers at Ensemble Corp. While discussing the buisness, one of them (neither remembers which) asked, “Wouldn’t it be more fun to make games?
and boom that was it..”
The article as written by Ian Fischer is a well worthy read of any Ensemble fan and spans four pages of in depth detail about Ensemble Studios in the early days prior to the Microsoft acquisition. You can read the excellent piece in e-magazine form over at gamesource.
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In another story long timer ES’rs Rob Fermier and David Rippy talk to GameZone discussing how the recession impacted on studios like Ensemble.
Of all the studios that shut down over the last few years, the closure of Ensemble Studios was amongst the least expected. The critically acclaimed Age of Empires and Halo Wars developer had a great track record of quality games that sold well, reviewed strongly and won awards. None of that was enough to prevent its closure – former Ensemble luminary Bruce Shelley admits the company was perhaps too specialized, too expensive and had too many costly, unproduced projects. Fortunately, out of the demise of Ensemble were born several new studios, including Robot Entertainment, Bonfire Studios, Windstorm Studios and NewToy. – GameZone
David Rippy who now serves as president over at Bonfire Studios commented:
“It was really an amazing experience, I had the pleasure of working at Ensemble from day one and watched it grow from a few guys experimenting with a WinG tank demo into a really well-respected game company. Hardly anyone ever left Ensemble, so it truly felt like family. Tony Goodman (our studio head) created an environment and culture where people actually enjoyed going to work every day and even hung out on the weekends.
We had a movie theater, arcade games, pool table, gourmet food … you name it! We certainly worked hard and crunched around major milestones, but we did it because we loved the games we were making. I think most former ES-rs will remember it as a really cool place to work, a great group of people who were completely committed to the company and their craft, and hopefully some of the most rewarding years of their life.”
Rob Fermier, Robot’s Lead Programmer also waded in for comment and continues:
“Ensemble was rare in that most of the people working there had been working together for many years, with a great deal of continuity. Being able to establish such deep working relationships with people was incredibly valuable, and we had strong bonds to each other and to the studio. I’ll most miss that sense of team that we had – a well established development process, a deep understanding in our area of expertise, and strong sense of studio identity. Such things take years to build, and once gone are lost forever.”
Read the full article and additional comment from ES people over at GameZone
Despite many Ensemble staff staying in the Dallas area some will have moved away and it is sad to remember a great studio being split up. Looking towards the future we are blessed to have the excellent talent from Ensemble Studios in four main studios – Robot, Bonfire, Windstorm and NewToy. I am sure the quality of games produced from these studios will echo the values and quality of those games developed as a team at Ensemble.
As the larger studios continue to work on thier first production projects announcements and news are just around the corner. Keep a sharp eye on these studios – great things are coming!
Paul Bettner responds to Ian Fischers open letter via Joystiq
The debate continues between Paul Bettner and Ian Fischer as Joystiq have managed to press a response from Paul in regards to Ian’s recent open letter where he shed light on some flaws in Paul’s speech including falsifying his position as a manager who had some oversight into the way the studio was run and his title a “Creative Director” of which there was no position at Ensemble.
One important point to highlight in the response is that Paul does believe Ensemble was a high quality studio that it was focused on delivering excellent games, and the studio did with each game selling millions of copies:
In my opinion, Ensemble was one of the greatest game developers in the world. I loved Ensemble. I owe so much to the friends I was privileged to work with there for so many years. I am extremely proud of what we accomplished together and I said so in my talk. Our shipped titles and their legacy in millions of sales and numerous awards are an undeniable testament to Ensemble’s industry-leading focus on quality and fun.
Here is the full response:
“Ian and I did work together for over a decade. I value our relationship and I appreciate his letter. At Ensemble there were times where our individual philosophies on game development led us to different perspectives on how things should be run, as is evident in his response. When I read Ian’s open letter, it seemed to me that he was actually supporting many of the points I made in my talk (the usage of crunch, for example), even though we obviously disagree on how and why these factors contributed to Ensemble’s demise.
That said, there is a message that I tried to convey in my rant that has still not gotten enough coverage:
In my opinion, Ensemble was one of the greatest game developers in the world. I loved Ensemble. I owe so much to the friends I was privileged to work with there for so many years. I am extremely proud of what we accomplished together and I said so in my talk. Our shipped titles and their legacy in millions of sales and numerous awards are an undeniable testament to Ensemble’s industry-leading focus on quality and fun.
Ian points out:
‘The truth of the matter is, Ensemble Studios, while certainly fond of numerous inefficient development practices, was no costlier or less efficient than any other developer of our caliber during this period of operation… yes, sometimes after we had steered hard left into the weeds, we needed to work long hours to get the car back on the road.’
This is the fact that is striking to me: Even at one of the highest caliber game development studios in the world, we still utilized these ‘numerous inefficient development practices,’ including the use of regular, recurring unpaid overtime. Yes we were way better about this than some. We scheduled it in advance. We catered meals and had family nights when spouses and children would come to visit their busy loved ones. We viewed crunch as a management failure.
But we still did it. On a regular basis.
I hope that my rant shines a light on the quality of life issues that were present even at one of this industry’s greatest studios. I don’t think we should accept these practices as a necessary evil of game development. I think we can do better. I can do better. This is a call to action: our industry-wide reliance on mandatory unpaid overtime needs to stop.”
I hope that now as independent studios groups like Robot, Bonfire, Windstorm, NewToy and Fuzzycube can operate with much less crunching – or in NewToy’s case, where lead by Paul Better, no crunching at all.
Source: http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/18/ex-ensemble-studios-lead-designer-responds-to-bettner-rant/
