posted 09-19-08 06:12 PM
CT (US)
23 / 236
1) What new developing company will you ES guys make?
A – not all of us will be going to the new company. I think it only has about 30 guys out of almost 120. For example, I am not going to the new company. This is pretty much the end of Ensemble Studios – we are going to be spread far and wide around the country.
2) Will you get a new publisher besides Microsoft?
A – I believe the new company does have a contract with Microsoft, but I am not really privy to their business plan.
3) In retrospect, what part of working at ES did you enjoy the most?
A – my co-workers
4_ Of the people who worked at ES, who won most of the games during playtesting?
A – the playtest team. They are crack guys after all.
5) What ES game do/did you enjoy playing the most?
A – actually I liked Age 3 the best.
6) What are some of your favourite games?
A – traditional - contract bridge; board – Agricola; roleplaying – call of cthulhu; computer – world of warcraft
7) What kind of music do you listen to?
A – an eclectic mix. People like Warren Zevon and Tom Waites.
8) What inspired you to do what you do for a living?
A – I backed into it by accident. It was never part of the plan.
9) Do you still play Age of Kings/The Conquerors? If so, how often?
A – not really. After all I finished working on it almost a decade ago. I’m thrilled that players still enjoy it though.
10) Which civilization is your favourite? (As a player, not a game designer )
A – I can’t separate the “player” from the “designer” in me. I like the Aztecs and Mayans best because their units look cool.
11) What's your favourite unit in AoK?
A – the king
12) What part of AoK did you enjoy designing the most?
A – the most fun part for me was being lead designer on The Conquerors, and making up the new civs.
13) Which building looked the best in-game?
A – I always got a kick out of the Hun wonder – that big ol’ ruin.
14) Would you consider playing some games of AoK with members of AoKH?
A – You guys would spank me hard on my best day, I fear.
15) What is your stance regarding the e patch?
A – I think Microsoft should gladly invest several million dollars into it. Money well spent.
16) Has your perception of the PC gaming industry changed in these last 8 years? Do you have any predictions on what the gaming industry will be like in 10 more years?
A – I still hold to my beliefs that (a) PC gaming will eventually be completely replaced by consoles. Once console games look as good as PC and are as easy to play online, the writing’s on the wall.
17) Do you believe that RTS games will move over to consoles?
A – let me know if you agree with me once you’v eplayed Halo Wars.
18) Regarding the fall of the MS Gaming Zone; prior to the recommendation of GameSpy Arcade, did ES consider creating an in-house multiplayer replacement for AoE/AoK?
A- wow that is a long time ago. I think we did consider it briefly.
19) Will post-game multiplayer support continue for ESO and ESO2?
A – I’m sure Microsoft will set something up.
20) Communities like Age of Kings Heaven, which is eight years old now, have continued to exist due to player modding and scenario design; we continue to get new players every day. What's your take on these kinds of communities?
A – I am honored and proud that ANY of my games would ever be featured in such a community. I think it’s terrific.
21) Does it ever frustrate you, as a game designer, when players don't move on to your next title?
A – well obviously I want all my games to sell a billion copies, but in fact I am secretly flattered when players keep playing an old game instead of dropping it when the next shiny thing comes over the horizon.
22) Looking back at the development of AoK, is there anything you wished you guys would've done differently (maybe things you weren't allowed to do by MS, or didn't have the time/funding for)?
A – I wish we had worked harder on making deathmatch fun and fair.
23) What is the meaning of life?
A – Mankind is that we might have joy.
24) Has ES ever considered bundling custom AoK content such as the stuff hosted here at the blacksmith in a AoK special edition?
A – I don’t think so. In common with most game studios we only looked to the future.
25) What do you see for the future of the Age series?
A – I’m sure Microsoft will want to keep the series going.
26) How'd you come up with the Rocket jump on Mt. Erebus?
A – actually, John Carmack suggested it to me.
27) if it were up to you, would you rather have your fans support your old games with the vigor they've so far displayed, or move on to your newer titles?
A – players are welcome to keep playing the old games as long as they mail me the money they would have spent on the new ones.
28) With Ensemble closing down, is there any possibility (however slim) of some or all of the source-code for your older games being released, so that the folks like us who still love and play them can continue to improve them?
A – the source-code is owned by Microsoft Corporation. Ask them.
29) What period of history do your personally find most interesting?
A – I probably own more books about WW2 than any other period of time. Does that mean I like it best?
30) Do you ever feel like you missed an opportunity with including/excluding certain civilisations (hence expansion packs) but couldn't include the civilisations you wanted to include/exclude?
A – I stand by the civilization choices I made in the expansion packs, and the choices I helped influence in the main games. But I wish we could have had more civs. Sadly, the pressures of art and playtest time mean that each new civ we add was a massive load on the studio, so at some point we have to stop.
31) How have ES game testers evolved as the games have evolved? Are they more professional players now in light of cherry-picking select parts of the game playing community or do professional gamers (example Korean gamers) continue to dominate during early games?
A) I think our professional playing team can stand up to most of the pros out there.
32) Why does the A.I. always delete partly built buildings if the builder is attacked (losing up to 649 stone for no reason) and why does the A.I. always send all its villagers to try to take down an enemy tower (which unneccesarily disrupts the economy)? In Rise of Rome the AI didn't make those mistakes!
A – sorry. The first was an attempt to keep the AI from just sending villagers one at a time to an unfinished foundation while you picked them off. The second was an attempt to keep a nearby tower from disrupting villager production, because the AI was not able to react to a tower by simply shifting its desired woodcutting area. Both were instituted by me to try to work around the AI’s limitations.
33) Will Ensemble Studios ever tell us the secret of increasing the number of civs in the game, enabling us to add our own ones (like Bosnians, Macedons, Atlanteans, Vietnamese etc.) without having to discard (read: edit) existing ones?
A- it was not very easy to increase the number of civs – it’s all hard-coded. There isn’t just like a number you type in somewhere that boosts the civ total.
34) Will there ever be any more updates, like patches, etc. to Age 1?
A – it seems highly unlikely that anyone will patch an 11 year old game.
35) Future plans? A new company? Same genre?
A – I am open to any opportunities that present themselves, in common with everyone else at ES that I’ve spoken with on the subject.
36) Did you - the team - ever consider expanding AoK even further, like a second expansion broadening into say Indian history, the Hanseatic league etc?
A – yes, we talked about it hard and heavy. I proposed doing a renaissance-era expansion, adding stuff like musket-and-pike and some African empires.
37) Looking at the in game campaigns, AoE3 covers very little of European history while the earlier games covered bigger parts of the world. Still there were many big conflicts in Europe during the time period, like the 30 years war, Great Northern War, War of the Spanish Succesion etc. Were there ever any plans on portraying Europe in the game as well?
A – while lots of cool stuff happened in Europe, it seemed not to fit the basic theme of Age 3. It makes no sense for you to start with a few villagers and a town center in, say Germany. And then we’d have to leave out stuff like the natives and (probably) the trading posts and it’s not clear what we’d add to replace them.
38) How come the editor, amongst other things, is built up entirely differently in AoE3 compared to AoK?
A – 3d =/= 2d
39) Just wanted to let you know how much we appreciated being able to interact with the game developers in a meaningful(and of course often not-so-meaningful) way.
A – well thank you sir.
40) And for a question - what in particular have you been working on for ES lately?
A – I, with everyone else still at ES, are on Halo Wars.
41) Was this the "grand plan" for the age of empires serious?
A – yep. Not saying we might not have changed the plan years down the line, of course.
42) Why do bird units in the age games explode upon death?
A – because it amused us.
43) Have you ever designed a scenario?
A – With reference to the Age series: Yes, in the sense that I planned them out, laid out sketch maps, figured victory conditions etc. No, in the sense that I did not actually construct them first to last using the scenario editor.
44) What's going to happen to Age of Mythology on DS?
A – dunno. That was a totally separate deal from ES and I assume that Microsoft Corporation has the same motivation as before to pursue it.
45) will there be any ES-style RTS in the future?
A – I imagine the new company will still do ES type RTS work. Plus as the rest of ES’s employees get seeded around the game industry we may influence how other companies do things.
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I'm a big fan of your work. Got plenty of questions, but I'll start with the main ones that have been beating at my brain:
