Age of Ensemble, Part 3: The Closing Chapters
12/18/2008 7:34 PM | 9 Comments | Page 4 of 5
"With
Halo Wars, we have Todd McFarlane coming to visit, and everybody has his figures. In that sense, working on Halo has been very cool. I would rather work on our own IP, but I'm very proud of the game we've made."
There have already been complaints from the hardcore fans about unit design. "People saw the Cyclops in his mech suit and said that we were already pulling a Jar Jar Binks on the IP. We stay as true as we can, but a strategy game needs to have lots of units and the UNSC needs a melee unit.
Ensemble's big challenge was finding variety for the units.
"When I took over as lead designer, we had five guys on two legs who shot guns for the UNSC -- five different units that were pretty much the same. It was too hard. So we kept a couple, turned one into an upgrade, etc. Three you can remember. Five is too many."
Pottinger thinks that, in many ways,
Halo Wars is a blessing for the team since they have had to streamline the design. "We've had to make tough choices and a better, tighter game."
The better, tighter game will be their last one -- at least in this incarnation.
Moving on and looking back
Since most of those consulted for this article are still employees of Microsoft, none would speak on the record about the sudden announcement that Ensemble Studios would shut down once
Halo Wars was completed. There was a lot of disappointment, and a little bitterness, but no one is finished making games.
"I hope I get to make one more great game," says Bruce Shelley. "I worked on
Civilization and
Age of Empires. One more like that would be nice." Plans are already in place for a successor studio -- smaller and more like the earlier, more intimate Ensemble. But Age of Empires is a Microsoft property, and it's uncertain what, if any role, the new studio could play in its future.
Still, "Age of Empires is our legacy," says Tony Goodman. "People will know that, and Ensemble Studios will be forgotten. Only so many people know what Ensemble is, anyway, right?"
Shelley is proud of what Ensemble has done, and is unapologetic for the style of game that it made. "There was a guy making an RTS years ago -- I won't go into names -- and he said that he would have none of that stupid wood chopping. I just said, 'Fine, we'll do the wood chopping. Our fans seem to love it.'"
Shelley was philosophical about the role played by peons in developing a sense of flow (citing psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi), and how it fit into his theory of the inverted pyramid of decision-making in game design. "Pacing alone can make a decision interesting -- deciding what to do first while the clock is ticking."
"We're old-school gamers," says Goodman. "Dungeons & Dragons, Axis & Allies. Age of Empires, I think, is for people like that. And I think we made a difference when we made it."
Greg Street, now a Blizzard employee, thinks that Microsoft has put an end to something very special, and has words of caution for whomever takes up the Age mantle. "This is an industry where talent counts for a whole lot more than franchise brand identity. Bad sequels sell okay, but they definitely do damage to a good franchise and we all know stories of franchises that were driven into the ground."
