This week’s Gaming Podcast gets down and dirty, with plenty of AAAA goodness. The Darkness II contest is still going on this week, and winners will be announced next week.
In the meantime:
All that, plus Reader Feedback.
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.
This week is a little special as Jonah, Jordan and Paul discuss some of the things that were common in the golden age of 1990’s consoles that are no longer around.
In addition, the news includes:
The Question of the Week: “What gaming activities do you no longer do?”
This week’s episode features a Gaming Flashback of Bastion, Supergiant Games’ first title, and a proto-version of 2020’s Hades. The discussion includes around their other two games as well, Transistor and Pyre. They also discuss how far Ubisoft is falling, and Jonah tries to convince the others how cool a metaverse would be for games.
The news of the week includes:
Let us know what you think at the Facebook page here.
Paul is back!
@Analyst predicts 66M iPad sales in 2012
The nasty thing about extrapolating numbers to make predictions can fail. I mean Sony Vita sold ok initially, then to simply drop rock bottom immediately after.
Oh man, I sure loved Paul’s comment with Harry Potter 🙂
Ah, you gotta love the planned obsolescence. As for PC games, you get better graphics for the extra performance requests.
@Diablo III gets May 15 release date
It makes no sense to delay the launch for Russia. It will not increase sales in Russia or anywhere else. I say that 3-4 days after Diablo 3 gets released in US, pirated copies will show up on torrents sites.
@Next gen console launch titles will probably use Unreal Engine 3
Well, the rendering can be expanded to cope with DX11 hardware. As far as I know, it can already cope with it (Aliens vs. Predator 2010).
As for it being the only game engine, it implies that only Epic is aware of the API for the new consoles. Careful there with the statements, Epic …
@ looking for executive producer to work on an “AAAA” Xbox title
I think they simply need a fresh idea … the team that produced Halo would do the job just fine … oh wait! They dismissed them a while ago. Smart move!
Lol, Paul, that was a great interpretation. Hmm … maybe I’ll start roleplaying my comments 😛
Family show, right… You can bleep out as many swear words as you like, this will never be a family show.
Well, there weren’t any interesting news stories this week, so I’m not going to comment on them.
Paul, you should read Reader Feedback comically more often! And I do agree that the Flying Beetle in Skyward Sword is a great item because you can use it to scout pretty much everywhere. I also think that Koloktos (the one with the six hands and huge scimitars) is the best boss in the game.
@Episode 255 comment: The theater was sort of packed, and my roommate sat in front of me with the other half of our party. He sort of deserved the head kick, though, so it’s all good.
@iPad Sales: I had an iPad 1 at my last job and liked having it around to browse the Web and look at other content on the couch. But since I had to give it back (the company folded), I haven’t missed it. Only the money I spent for The Daily (peeyoo).
@Unreal: I get the Game Developer trade publication, and Unreal always has an advertorial touting its wares. If it looks good and is easy to develop with, why not?
Thanks for another damn good fucking family show, fo shizzle.
hmm i dont know if my friends dragged me to the movies to see something like alvin and the chipmunks i might have another reason to kick there ass in the theater .
oh forgot to mention last week either version is fine.
also i never got the reasoning behind the serah palin movie. she lost the race but the celebrate her as a great victor? i guess you just do things diffrently in america
oh i forgot to mention that the mgs2 ending was scary because it became alot like eternal darkness on the gamecube but it came so out of left field in what was a normal game up until that point.
66M iPad Sales in 2012? – I wrote something maybe too evil for this show regarding this news piece, so I’ll just say this. I don’t like Apple and I like Paul just a little bit more now that he has shown his hate for Apple as well. I like ya Paul, stay classy.
AAAA Title by Microsoft – Why? Why would Microsoft claim to have a AAAA title? Doesn’t that just completely destroy the point of the game rating system. Now KOEI is going to announce they have a AAAAAAAAAAA title: Dynasty Warriors 231. I’d like to believe all developers/publishers think highly of there games, but it seems sorta cocky to go off of the scale because you believe this game is better than any other title ever put out, and does not deserve the lowly “AAA” spot. But that’s just what it seems like to me.
As always guys keep up the good work. Hope you all are doing well, can’t wait for the next episode.
(to Paul to read, and please in british accent, if possible, of course)
as an answer to the previous podcast, one shall improve his english skillz, i mean, proficiency!
@66 million iPads sales in 2012
those poor bastards, wasting their money in an overcharged piece of eletronic equipament that shall not bring any major improvement over the previous iPad
@Diablo III 15th of may
One shall not leave the presence of one’s personal computer while one’s equipament still works (not fry out into oblivion)
@AAAA microsoft title
thou shall be amusing to see such game when announced right after Call of Duty, n00b warfare 4 (let’s hope CoD just die now, before that happens).
Mr. Nowak, is this better (insert trollface)
one hopes the TD gaming podcast trio (hopefully) understands this message as a form of entertainment, or if you gentlemen prefer, a joke
always wishing the best!!!
*@beggining: “*for* Paul to read…”
and i mean hopefully a trio, not hopefully understand