In 1995 Ensemble Studios formed as an independent studio and kicked out a little game franchise known as Age of Empires. The title has received many accolades from the first in the franchise extended out to all the Age of Empires releases and spin-offs, all-in-all selling millions of copies.
Ensemble Studios had a mission “to create great games and a great place to work,” says Bruce Shelley from Ensemble Studios. Bruce Shelley also helped design Sid Meier’s Civilization and Railroad Tycoon with MicroProse prior to his work at Ensemble Studios. Now, however, he’s a bit upset at the closing of Ensemble Studios because they were profitable, created top-quality titles and had a great working environment.
Ensemble Studios, from his perspective at least, was a place you’d go to work and be happy with what you’re doing. When you’re working along nicely and become blind-sided by the news, it’s not surprising he didn’t take it lightly.
“Everyone at our studio was shocked, and I think remains very disappointed that this is going to happen. I believe we thought we were immune to shut-down talk because our published games have done so well and have been so profitable. Plus we felt we had built a really stable (low-turnover), talented, hard-working, and creative team, which is not easy to do. We thought we were among the best studios in the world, and that may be true, but we don’t fit in the future plans of MGS as an internal studio so we’re out.” (ensemblestudios.com)
What’s the future plans for Ensemble Studios? As we’ve stated before, they plan to live on in spirit, within the bounds of a new name and a new game plan. “I believe the spirit and mission of ES will be carried forward in this new company if enough of the key leaders agree to take part, which I expect to happen. There has been no announcement about what the new studio will be working on when it gets going,” says Shelley.
This is a horrible way to have to launch a hot new intellectual property. Usually creating a new title with a building fanbase would lead to excitement, parties and high hopes for the future of the franchise. Instead, people will be dusting off their resume in hopes to continue a life of game development.
Hopefully the leaders will indeed form a brand new company and build brand new hot products with their entire staff intact. Then, take their titles to a different publisher (besides Microsoft) and make some money and fans.
Hearing about Drones delivering packages I have to agree that will be abused and people will attempt to steal and break them. I’m sure the paranoid people will think they are being used to track everyone.
On the continuing discussion of boss battles I agree with Paul that just because there are bad implementations of it doesn’t make it a bad concept idea. I think Jada Empire was a very narrative game and had just fine boss battles. I do agree there are games that don’t need them or have them in a way that doesn’t make sense.
I was watching a PS4 game about Zombies, the hero went through hordes of zombies with ease until he came up against some human bikers. I watched as he drove a car through several of the bikers causing explosions and the bikers just continued somehow to survive. Then after an some invisible timer ran out a Boss Biker suddenly appeared.
The Boss Biker rode a huge bike that spewed fire forth and had grinding blades in front of it. Otherwise the bike was unarmored and the hero free to pump several dozen rounds of blood splattering shots into the guy. Slowly lowering the the large life meter.
A boss battle like that is a slag and not fun. I do have to say also my favorite part of Fable 2 was indeed being able to kill the final guy and interrupting his evil overlord speech.
Quest For Glory series was good at having multiply paths to victory depending on what character build you went with.
QOTW: GTA also had a companion app, the IFruit. It was nothing more then an a glorfied Tamagotchi game only your feeding your dog so he can have better snooping skills. I didn’t find it necessary to do this app thankfully.
Hey guys! I had to take a break from posting comments with all that new-gen stuff going around…
It’s great to have Paul back. His sarcasm and no-bullshit approach to the news items and his fellow podcasters add a lot to the show 😉
Let me add my 2 cents to the boss battle discussion. In the past I usually didn’t have a problem with them but the more I play the more I dread the inevitable final boss battle in some of the games. I hated the final battle in Killzone: Mercenary. Ultimately, I wasn’t able to complete all the contracts on the highest difficulty settings and I simply gave up.
On the other hand, in games such as Resogun or Super Stardust, the boss fights add a lot to the titles. It’s like Paul said – there’s nothing wrong with the boss battles intrinsically but sometimes the implementation blows.
As far as the QOTW goes, my ‘smartphone’ is not so smart anymore and most of the companion apps don’t work on it. My only 2nd screen experience so far has been the PS Vita Remote Play with the PS4 and I really enjoy it, although it’s not really 2nd screen. It also has this functionality but there’s nothing to use it with at this point. The Vita is similar to the WiiU in that your 2nd screen is also a controller so it should work as a gaming companion and I can see myself using it in the future.
I know that Knack has a companion app that is a Bejeweled-style game. The one thing I don’t really get is why they don’t release those same apps on the Vita.
By the way, since Dan is enjoying Tearaway so much, maybe he’ll also enjoy my blog post on it – http://playstationpalo.wordpress.com/2013/11/29/platinum-tracker-tearaway-29 😉 Shameless plug FTW !