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
Kenny Newell interviews Tony Goodman. Ensemble Studios, Robot Entertainment and PeopleFun founder
Fantastic news for all Ensemble fans. Our expert audio interviewer Kenny Newell has managed to bag an absolutely superb interview with Tony Goodman, founder of Ensemble Studios. Tony was kind enough to invite Kenny into his house to talk about Ensemble and his newest venture, PeopleFun over dinner. The hour long interview takes fans right through Tony’s video gaming career starting right at the beginning when Tony first formed Ensemble Studios with close friends and colleagues from Ensemble Corp. This interview is an absolute must listen for all Ensemble fans where for perhaps indeed the first time you can listen to Tony first hand explain how the Ensemble journey began and his motivations. There is great insight into life at Ensemble and how the Age games came together. The Ensemble Studios acquisition by Microsoft is also discussed at length. Read more
Kenny Newell goes on location to interview Justin Korthof at Robot Entertainment HQ!
Avid Age of Empires Online players and Robot forum-goers will no doubt recognise Kenny Newell often under the guise of “RadioKenny”. Usually Kenny is the man behind adding a touch of humour to the community with some golden humour classics such as:
Click to enlarge Read more
Kenny Newell's Interview with Robot Entertainment - December 2011 [ 25:07 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadGraeme 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
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!
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!
Ensemble’s Halo MMO cancelled due to Microsoft wanting to pursue “Wii” like experiences
Dusty Monk has been continued his talks with IncGamers this time expanding more on the cancelled Halo MMO codenamed “Titan” and believed to be titled Halo Universe. Confirming much of what we have read before that the change of management at Microsoft did not believe investment in the project was strategic and wanted to re-deploy resources in other games. The Halo MMO was upwards of a $90 million dollar project and there was even talk of new offices being built to support the studios MMO. However sadly the project didnt see the light of day other than some very early screenshots and concept art.
“There was a bit of a changing of the guard at Microsoft at this time, Microsoft, from its gaming division, was really changing directions. They were looking really hard at the Nintendo Wii and they were really excited by the numbers that the Wii was turning. This was about the time that Microsoft decided that its Xbox platform and XBLA really needed to go more in the direction of appealing to a more casual, broader audience.”
According to Dusty the MMO was going to compete directly with World of Warcraft by Blizzard Entertainment. Ensemble had taken on Blizzard in the Real Time Strategy genre with Age of Empires competing against Star Craft. The next step was to compete in the MMO space.
“It was going to be the Halo MMO, and it was absolutely going to compete against WoW. You have to remember that Ensemble came from a standpoint of being really good at competing against Blizzard Entertainment. We had a pretty good history of knowing the types of stuff that Blizzard put into their games to make them really successful, and the kinds of things we’d need to put into an MMO to compete against Blizzard
Just to give you a couple of examples, we were using a heroic stylised artform. This heroic stylised artform is exactly the artform that you see being used in Star Wars: The Old Republic right now. It’s timeless. It doesn’t age itself like a game that’s built with a strictly realistic artform does.
We were developing a cover system. This cover system is in Star Wars: The Old Republic. We had the idea of quests – and like I said, this was between 2004 and 2007, before Warhamer Online had been released – but we had this idea of quests where you could participate and pull them together without having to be on the same team. This would be a public quest that everyone in a particular area could work on. That idea went into Warhammer Online.”
Certainly sounds like a very exciting and thought out project. The game had been in development between 2004 and 2007 so a huge amount of work would have been put in by the studio. Once the team was informed the project was to be cancelled Ensemble lost a few key staff who later went onto join other studios to work on MMO’s. One of those was the now famous Gregg Street who joined Blizzard Entertainment.
“We had all this incredible talent, we had the right people, the right passion, we had a phenomenally successful IP – the Halo IP.”
The talent at Ensemble Studios would of been perfect for the MMO project. Looking at how Ensemble built up successful RTS games I have no doubt the MMO would of been incredibly successful as well.
“Even though a lot of people talk about how you just can’t build a WoW killer, I absolutely believe that we could have built an MMO, if Microsoft had maintained their commitment, that if it hadn’t been a WoW killer it certainly would’ve competed.”
All is not lost though. If you are after an MMO keep your eye on Windstorm Studios, Dusty Monk’s startup company out of Ensemble Studios. They are working on a single player RPG at the moment and if successful will launch into a full blown MMO. I look forward to seeing what the great minds at Windstorm come up with. Be on the look out for updates on the project later this year.
Meanwhile stay tuned also for the full interview with Dusty Monk on incGamers where there will be more talk about Windstorm Studios.
To read more about this article head over to IncGamers:
http://www.incgamers.com/News/21928/cancelled-halo-mmo-details
Stephen Rippy “What Ive learnt at Bonfire”
Hot on the heels of Robot Entertainment’s one year anniversary comes Bonfire’s own anniversary and is blogged about by musical genius Stephen Rippy.
This evening, Bonfire Studios will have a small party celebrating the end of our first year as a company and the beginning of our second. In honor of that sort-of startling milestone, I wanted to take a minute to look back at the past twelve months and maybe share a couple of things I’ve picked up along the way.
Stephen talks about the transition from Ensemble Studios to Bonfire Studios. Turns out they didn’t move very far, just down a few floors in the same high rise building:
The end of Ensemble Studios as an entity also meant the shuttering of the space we’d occupied for the previous ten years. We were nearing the end of our jobs and our lease, and had nowhere to go but down. So down we went, literally – ten floors lower in the same building. And we did it ourselves. Over a single feverish weekend, fueled by junk food, beer, and months’ worth of accumulated angst, we grabbed our inherited computers, desks, and full-sized arcade machines and hauled them down, one armload at a time. There were cuts, bruises, and people walking around with refrigerators strapped to their backs, but at the end of it all, we had something that was our own: a new home.
The team at Bonfire have been working incredibly hard over the past year and while there is nothing to show just yet you can be sure these hard working developers will come up with a great game, perhaps more will be revealed at E3 this year.
For all of that, though, we’re confident and excited about the future – and we hope you’ll come along with us! To everyone here, congratulations on our first anniversary. See you back here this time next year.
Keep an eye on and read the full blog over at the Bonfire Studios website!
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/
