The guys discuss Baldur’s Gate 3 and Dead by Daylight, as well as other topics.
This week’s news items include:
Let us know what you think.
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.
As Starfield readies its launch, Baldur’s Gate 3 gets a ton of updates.
The news includes:
All this and Listener Feedback.
This week’s podcast was delayed when the original recording didn’t take and had to go with Dan Quick’s backup. Otherwise, the Gaming Flashback this week is the supremely weird Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu.
The other news items include:
The Question of the Week is, “What was the game with the worst title you’ve ever played?”
Hi guys.
Thanks a lot for your work with this episode!
It’s always fun listening to you guys talking about the different games and all the stuff around it 🙂
I did not play that much pc or video games lately, because I was a lot in the road for concerts. I played a lot of Pokémon Go because I am waking around a lot (about 15 kilometers a day), just to be not in my apartment and to set my mind free (I hope that’s the correct translation).
I want to play BG3 as well but first I want to finish some other games (God of war (not the last one … the one before that!!!)and True Colors)… I hope time will come when I sit down and relax … maybe if I move to a new apartment.
This week there will be games con here in cologne. Does anyone of you plan to visit? Or did visit, depending when you read this 🙂 ).
Greetings from Germany,
Ralf!