Thx for the link but nothing is set in stone yet when it comes to steam. After DoW3 fail, I doubt SEGA Europe will allow Relic to be used as "collateral damage" in a platform war.
The good news is that Relic gets to work on a large AoE4 budget. This game will definitely bring in some new talent to Relic. They have a pretty large talent team now compared to 2013.
Creative Assembly is gearing up as well and released a "recruitment video" to acquire new talent. https://www.creative-assembly.com/careers
Why Xbox Boss Wants To Co-Exist With Sony | E3 2017 GameSpot Show
Microsoft executives are not in full agreement on these platform wars so they don't really have a coherent strategy right now. On Xbox, Phil Spencer is working on pro-consumer deals with Sony and essentially raised the white flag.
Phil Spencer the peace maker? Until MS fire him, I'm willing to give them the benefit of doubt.
If you really want to know about the internal conflicts going on in MS gaming group. Look into what Ed Fries has said as former top Microsoft executive. There are both good (pro-consumer) and bad gaming leaders in MS. But it's not just MS, there has been a big war going on behind the scenes of every major gaming publishers. Using reliable sources I have talked about this "war" or "internal conflicts" in other posts. I have covered Nexon (big Asian FTP publisher), Valve, SEGA and the internal conflicts going on in EA.
Informed consumers, in general, make smart choices which then "speak" truth to power and help change the status quo. That's what I believe; ending all the secrecy and moving forward with transparent business models. There is nothing wrong with making money, but deceiving consumers intentional is just wrong.
Players hate bait and switch. Players hate when they’re lied to, when they’re deceived, when the product they’ve paid for is gone and is replaced with something else.
That’s why free-to-play originally got a lot of hate — because the term itself is deceiving. Free-to-play games aren’t 100% free as in a beer, they’re only free to some extent.
Nexon: We need to focus on heart first and money second http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-10-06-nexon-we-need-to-focus-on-heart-first-and-money-second "I don't want to criticise the industry too much, but I think all of us who are executives, who are responsible for spending money and investing capital in the games industry have done a disservice to the industry by focusing on money first and hearts second," he told GamesIndustry.biz
And so I was just very into videogames, always have been, and I kind of got sick of working on Office after doing that for two years, and took over a small group that was just gaming stuff at Microsoft and started to grow it. There were about 50 people when I started the games group, and there were about 1200 when I left, and we grew a big PC gaming business-released games like Age of Empires, and Microsoft Flight Simulator, and a bunch of other stuff, and Xbox came along, worked a bunch on Xbox, getting Halo and a bunch of other titles.
Lastly, I have a dedicated passion for improving my skills in game design. In my free time I enjoy making game mechanics and prototypes using the Unity game engine and read books on game design to further improve my knowledge and skills. In the near future I hope to use my experience, knowledge and abilities to transition into a game design and/or production type role.
Working under Microsoft, they probably can't spare the staff if that was to happen. Though, the timing of it is kinda strange. 1-2 days immediately after the AOE4 announcement. You'd think for PR sake they would have bailed on the FBP some time ago, especially before the announcement.
+1
Thx for fair and balanced feedback. Relic/MS should hire you for AoE4 or DE's. Modders/fans with Forgotten Empire are involved in AoE definitive edition's.
Despite being in game-development, most of us have spent a sizeable portion of our lives on the other side – in the gamer’s seat. This gives us invaluable insight and, along with our collective work experience, assures the quality of our work. As gamers, we value immersion and tend to go ‘all in,’ even to the point of being uber-competitive. For instance, with the renowned Age of Empires series, we had been deeply involved in the competitive scene: running tournaments and elevating the game’s e-sport status.
MS also recently made partnership with the modders behind PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS. "Evolved from a mod into a fully-fledged, incredibly successful game."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-08-25-the-thorny-issue-of-playerunknowns-battlegrounds-exclusivity
"By partnering with Microsoft, our team believes that we will be able to accelerate console development, while maintaining quality across all platforms, as well as giving us access to vast sales, marketing and publishing resources that will help us reach new fans to welcome to the PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds universe," wrote Kim.
The DoW3 game director (Philippe Boulle) just resigned or got fired. To replace him, they are hiring a new Game Director with RTS experience.
DoW3 leadership had internal problems and before Philip leaving you also had the second executive producer leaving abruptly before launch. This will be a reminder to other Relic leaders that they are not safe from laid off if they don't perform. Complacency makes leaders weak but as said; George S. Patton Jr. — 'Pressure makes diamonds'.
To quote myself;
DoW3 is dead financial but I'm sure they have a backup plan or there would be big laid off happening soon. They just hired a second executive producer for this and had this job description open for almost a year since the other executive left 1 year before DoW launch (Stephen MacDonald). So practically DoW3 was without an executive producer for almost a year. The other executive producer (Greg Wilson/former COH2) was working on AoE4.
I’m incredibly proud to be working as the Executive Producer on Age of Empires IV.
As a studio, we are so excited to bring the next installment of this iconic franchise back to the forefront of gaming and into the hands of its beloved community.
Check out the announcement trailer from Gamescom below.
So was Stephen fired or did he leave voluntary? Stephen left abruptly when Relic had just updated their website with new studio leadership profile. It was confirmed he was to lead a team of 70+ devs. Looks like an internal conflict to me.
The new executive producer/studio leadership is David Littman who just started working at Relic. Job title; "Production Leader Creating AAA Games at Relic Entertainment"
We are also hiring for another unannounced project so I encourage you to keep your eyes peeled on our careers page (www.relic.com/careers) to join the fun!
Nadine Blackie, Talent Acquisition Lead | Relic Entertainment
But…we’re humans who have the internet. We know there are lots of you who don’t feel the same way. That matters. We make these games for you, and we need you in order to keep making games.
We should not forget Relic still has two RTS development teams (DoW3 and AoE4/COH). Hopefully, they will get a budget to start working on COH3. Microsoft is not Blizzard but they have a shit ton of money to invest and with the right talent can beat anyone. Phil Spencer is a smart guy (when the higher ups in MS allow it).
Big corporations make liars out of everyone. But Phil Spencer is fairly honest with the ups and downs. In recent months Phil has been working to make a very important pro-consumer deal with Sony: Why Xbox Boss Wants To Co-Exist With Sony | E3 2017 GameSpot Show
One of the reasons Ensemble Studios (behind Halo Wars 1 and AoE) was shut down, MS moved their primary focus to the Xbox. However times have changed and MS want to get back into PC gaming, so AoE is one of the core franchise moving forward. Beyond RTS, Ensemble wanting to make an MMO for a long time. First, it was Halo MMO and later Age of Empire Online created by Robot Entertainment (former ensemble devs). Age of Empires Online was originally called Age of Empires IV.
Gas Powered Games (behind Supreme Commander) later took over development from Robot Entertainment.
Interesting fact; The Executive Producer behind Age of Empires Online was hired by Relic in 2013 and worked there for 8 months.
Executive Producer
Company Name Relic Entertainment
Employment period Jun. 2013 - Jan. 2014 Length of employment 8 months.
Location Vancouver, Canada Unannounced project at Relic.
So Relic working with MS/AoE was no "accident". Relic also just hired a new Narrative director (Bonnie Jean Mah) for AoE4 from MS owned Coalition Studio. Former Relic Writer and narrative designer on WARHAMMER 40,000: SPACE MARINE, the AAA third-person action title for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC that launched in September 2011. https://www.linkedin.com/in/bonnie-jean-m-b091409/ https://twitter.com/bonniejeanmah?lang=da
I'm a writer, narrative designer and producer working on AAA titles in the game industry. In my current position at SEGA's Relic Entertainment, I'm the Narrative Lead on an unannounced project [AoE4 confirmed on Bonnie twitter page]. Previously, at Microsoft's Coalition Studio, I was involved with story development and production on the GEARS OF WAR franchise.
With experience developing narrative in third-person AAA action and massively multiplayer online games, I bring a background in film and television as a writer, director and producer to my work in game development.
If you'd like to get in touch or learn more about my current and past work, please send a note to: bjmah@rocketmail.com
Specialties: .
> Writing for games. Narrative Design.
> Third-person POV game storytelling, especially for action titles.
> Working with actors -- voice acting, performance capture (mocap) and live action. Casting. Directing voice and live action.
> Screenwriting.
> Story development for both games and TV/film: designing narrative structure; world building; character development. Different approaches for different genres.
> Canon management of major games universe IP.
> Writing story treatments, pitches and proposals.
> Producing for both games and film/TV development.
> MMO quest design and writing.
New Art director hired for AoE4: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachschlappi/ http://www.zachschlappi.com/portfolio-1/
Worked on previous AAA titles such as; Just Cause, Far Cry, Medal of Honor. Would Relic hire both a new art director and narrative director with modern warfare experience if they were not interested in AoE4 WW1 etc?.
"We had all this incredible talent, we had the right people, the right passion, we had a phenomenally successful IP - the Halo IP", says Dusty Monk, formerly of Ensemble.
"[But Microsoft] were looking really hard at the Nintendo Wii and they were really excited by the numbers that the Wii was turning. So part of this changing of the guard at Microsoft came along with the changing of the attitude to this very expensive, very long and very protacted $90 million USD project we were working on. To cut a long story short, Titan was closed down."
5M youtube views for the AoE4 trailer in one week are pretty amazing for an RTS game. It's more a teaser that shows AoE1>AoE3 time periods then a black screen with Ao4 (could be WW1 for sure). They are not just building a team for AoE4 but future COH games. Either that or they just want to pay the bills until COH3.
"As we go forward, if we wanted to do Company of Heroes 3 in 2190 we could," Duffy continued, "because we know what we want to do to make it feel like a Company of Heroes game."
Later, Duffy added: "We wanted to take the element of WWII out of the creative vision and focus for the game moving forward. It is setting-agnostic. Company of Heroes doesn't have to be a World War II game. You can set it in modern times in Fallujah, you could set it in the past."
Sadly no. I wont get money. In theory (Im not sure if I can say it but...), the game will be free with a direct download and print instrunctions from the oficial website and ingame news. "Soon".
Anyway, the best part are the epic high resolution portraits, skill icons, assets, etc. Are awersome xD
Hello my friends! Sorry for the posting delay but I have good news. First thanks all for the suport and good messages. Second thanks to Kyle for the help. Finally Relic contacted with me and yes, the game will be a reality (for now a prototype. One for me, other for dev team). If everything is ok, we will release the final game for free in digital version.
Any news on this? Relic transparency or usual NDA BS?
Some great potential here. Was the project cancelled or did Relic/SEGA go forward with this? I hope this work don't go to waste. If Relic is working on this, I hope Kyle can tell something about this (soon).
Moving forward, we would like to be as transparent as possible when it comes to what you can expect regarding COH2’s ongoing support and future updates. To do this, we have established three pillars which all future updates will correspond to. More importantly, we want to partner closely with content creators in our community to address those pillars. In other words: if you are as passionate about COH2 as we are and have been experimenting with ideas and tools, reach out to us on our official forums. Now is your chance to really help shape the future of the game!
This board game is top tier in terms of community content. Relic can't expect content creators to put a lot of time and passion into COH2 if they continue with all the secrecy.
Posted April 9
Hi, Im Álvaro from Spain. Congratulations for the great sucess with the game.
After play during hours I saw that the spanish translation is really poor. I was proofreader and spanish translator in many games like Plague Inc. or Company of Heroes 2. I would love to cooperate with the team to make this game better. Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world so I think is very important have a perfect spanish translation with an excellent quality. I am native and after each new update, I could translate and check everything to put it into spanish without mistakes. Right now the spanish version of the game is mixed with english parts and weird words.
Kind regards and I hope we can fix this and cooperate together to make this game perfect.
We are looking for a professional digital illustrator to illustrate a kickstarter project that will be presented imminently. We look for illustrators with a realistic and somewhat obscure technique (see for reference the illustrations of Magic: The Gathering or art of Blizzard). We need to illustrate the idea of a video game. Probably one or two color illustrations which one of them would be the cover of the same and the other a representation "ingame" of how the finished project would look. The contract assigns the rights to the illustrations in their entirety. The payment will be negotiated in private.
You can contact me here: alvarorode@gmail.com or directly in this subject. I will answer doubts if they appear.
I made the disease portraits too.
This is a fanmade Vampire Plague Theme for Plague Inc: Evolved. I tried compose a song with a "epic movie orchestra style", deep and dramatic, and with FX sounds like screams. Enjoy and comments are apreciated . If you think that this song is not a good theme for Plague Inc: Evolved, you should play with this music as background. Highly recomended.
More Plague Inc Fanmade Themes in my channel. https://www.youtube.com/cha…/UCTnua8JI1ncgpBBgXVEDC0A/videos
Composer: Álvaro Ródenas Fernández (Abetus)
I was hoping for that, but the reveal trailer ends with images of colonial times.
Read between the lines, so you can begin to see whats really going on. AoE4 will either make or break the COH team. So time to cross your fingers.
IMHO, modern warfare could be in an expansion. At face value, Creative Assembly would have been a better fit to create AoE4 but MS/SEGA decided they wanted the COH team, why?. At face value this does not make much sense, so you have to dig deeper.
Arch Warhammer explanation/predictions:
Please keep in mind this will be the team (or big part of) that is going to make COH3. Look at those involved at www.linkedin.com. Many of the COH2 leaders/managers have recently updated their profiles.
Yes, it's pretty strange to see the COH team working on AoE4. Could be to just "pay the bills" until COH3 or it could be something else.
Unfortunately, this could mean COH3 will be delayed by a few years. When COH2 started to fail financial, I suspect Relic wanted to start working on COH3. I guess SEGA at that time was not ready to invest a lot of money into that. If AoE4 mean COH3 will end up with a pretty large budget I can wait.
In recent 10 years COH anniversary Relic stream, Quinn Duffy could barely get himself to talk about making money from COH2. It was almost comical for me to watch. I wish Quinn Duffy would grow some balls and just tell us the truth about COH2 rather going willy–nilly.
Duffy said they needed to "make money" so they could continue making "great games" (COH3).
Quinn Duffy is the historical guy in Relic, he does not want to work on "space marines".
The COH/AoE team need to tell SEGA the truth what went wrong with COH2 financially. There is no failures, only feedback. You know?, hiding from your own shadow does not make it go away.
Personal, I have zero grudges against Relic, I just want them to learn from the feedback.
IMO, if Relic looks at all the P2W sentiments/negative feedback from DLC commanders I think you'll have a big clue. Unbalanced commanders was a train wreck from day one and Warspoils only delayed the inevitable conclusion to a failed DLC commander system. I bet they were planning to continue with the same DLC bonanza/Bait-and-switch in DoW3 without telling us just like COH2. I guess gamers are not stupid after all, huh?. https://galyonk.in/why-paid-games-are-adding-micro-payments-526f358426c6
Players hate bait and switch. Players hate when they’re lied to, when they’re deceived, when the product they’ve paid for is gone and is replaced with something else.
That’s why free-to-play originally got a lot of hate — because the term itself is deceiving. Free-to-play games aren’t 100% free as in a beer, they’re only free to some extent. We just got used to it by now.
DoW3 is dead but I'm sure they have a backup plan or there would be big laid off happening soon. They just hired a second executive producer for this and had this job description open for almost a year since the other executive abruptly left 1 year before DoW launch (Stephen MacDonald).
So practically DoW3 was without an executive producer for almost a year. The other executive producer (Greg Wilson/former COH2) was working on AoE4.
I’m incredibly proud to be working as the Executive Producer on Age of Empires IV.
As a studio, we are so excited to bring the next installment of this iconic franchise back to the forefront of gaming and into the hands of its beloved community.
Check out the announcement trailer from Gamescom below.
So was Stephen fired or did he leave voluntary? Stephen abruptly left when Relic had just updated their website with new studio leadership profile. It was confirmed he was to lead a team of 70+ devs. Looks like an internal conflict to me.
The new executive producer/studio leadership is David Littman who just started working at Relic.
Job title; "Production Leader Creating AAA Games at Relic Entertainment"
I have been lucky enough to be part of the video game industry for 16 years and since 2007 I have been leading and running AAA teams and franchises at EA and Telltale Games.
The games and entertainment experiences I have led have been enjoyed by over 15 million people around the world and have earned these companies 3/4 of a billion dollars.
While this is a great outcome, my day to day passion comes from building great teams, working with amazing people, removing roadblocks, and enabling a great culture.
We are also hiring for another unannounced project so I encourage you to keep your eyes peeled on our careers page (www.relic.com/careers) to join the fun!
Nadine Blackie, Talent Acquisition Lead | Relic Entertainment
"As we go forward, if we wanted to do Company of Heroes 3 in 2190 we could," Duffy continued, "because we know what we want to do to make it feel like a Company of Heroes game."
Later, Duffy added: "We wanted to take the element of WWII out of the creative vision and focus for the game moving forward. It is setting-agnostic. Company of Heroes doesn't have to be a World War II game. You can set it in modern times in Fallujah, you could set it in the past."
From the Age of Empires III artbook;
Ensemble Studios pic above seems authentic. It's from the Age of Empires III artbook. Allegedly full page ads were also used in gaming magazines.
You can see it briefly in this video (0:07)
Phil Spencer said in recent interviews that he wants to bring AoE to a more "modern audience". Whatever that means who knows.
Age of Empires 2017 gamescom stream:
Duffy appear 16:07 and AoE4 announcement is at the end
Ideally, with Relic's continuous growth they should have the ability to work on more than one big game at a time. IMO, from 2013-2015 it was DoW3/CoH2, 2015-2017 DoW3/AoE4 (after british expansion) and hopefully, soon it will be AoE4/CoH3.
Also, it looks like Microsoft devs will cooperate to make AoE4. MS has been looking for new RTS devs since 2015 (around same time Relic gave up on COH2 5 years plan).
Even the COH2 brand manager is now officially working on AoE4. https://twitter.com/alexdlmr?lang=da Imagine this possible announcement; former Ensemble devs work with Relic to make AoE4.
This isn’t some big official announcement, but a sneak reveal that came out of a Microsoft job posting for a senior software engineer. The position is for someone looking to “create the next-generation of awesome games for Windows and Xbox!,” as part of the Decisive Games team. The new developer is based in Redmond, WA in the USA and will be “building a studio that will bring the next instalment in a beloved strategy game franchise to the next generation of gamers around the world.”
That could very well mean Age of Empires four.
After DoW3 failures, SEGA is looking for something that can give them more brand recognition with their 2020 plan. But I don't think COH3 alone is enough to keep Relic running and growing with new talent.
Recruiting new RTS talent are not exactly easy these days. Who else than Relic are still making AAA RTS games? It's a short list. The majority of good AAA RTS studios have either gone defunct or moved on to greener pasture. Blizzard with Warcraft/SC is practically the only "potential" good AAA RTS studio left and I don't think Blizzard devs have high interest in joining Relic.
"As we go forward, if we wanted to do Company of Heroes 3 in 2190 we could," Duffy continued, "because we know what we want to do to make it feel like a Company of Heroes game."
Later, Duffy added: "We wanted to take the element of WWII out of the creative vision and focus for the game moving forward. It is setting-agnostic. Company of Heroes doesn't have to be a World War II game. You can set it in modern times in Fallujah, you could set it in the past."
To further elaborate on my predictions:
Historical SEGA and Relic both have good business relations with Microsoft. Don't forget that the founder of Relic (Alex Garden) also was a big name in Microsoft gaming development going way back to Homeworld 2 and Impossible Creatures. I'm old school HW fan and former top10 player in that game.
The current Relic boss/GM (Justin Dowdeswell) previously ran MS owned studio called "Bigpark".
So don't underestimate the significance of this new Relic/MS partnership. Creative Assembly have a partnership with both MS and Wargaming. I predicted for a long time these new Relic partnerships was coming but I would have personally preferred Nexon over MS. Several good former Relic and THQ people have worked at Nexon. Klei Entertainment (run by former Relic devs) exist because of Alex Garden/Nexon NA.
Klei began, like so many independent game studios, in a basement.
After college, Cheng parlayed an internship at Relic Entertainment in Vancouver into a full-time job. He enjoyed his time there and learned a lot, particularly from the company's young co-founder Alex Garden.
*SNIP*
Alex Garden and Jamie Cheng are a lot alike. Garden was hired by Distinction Software at 15. In 1997, the 21-year-old founded Relic Entertainment — the creators of the Homeworld, Warhammer 40,000 and Company of Heroes series — a company the young entrepreneur kept out of debt and employee-owned until its acquisition by THQ in 2004. Garden left shortly thereafter.
In November 2006, South Korean video game publisher Nexon hired Garden to lead its North American game development studio. With an empty production slate, the new boss needed new games. On his list of developers to call: Jamie Cheng, whom he'd hired years ago at Relic. https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/5/29/4362838/the-birth-and-re-birth-of-klei
Alex worked for Microsoft from 2011-2014 and Nexon 2006-2009.
I covered some of this in detail with reliable sources here; SEGA restructuring?
This is old news, but now Sega is getting involved again with Microsoft IPs (Halo "poster child" for Spencer's Windows 10/Xbox) and potential new partnerships are something that can have far reaching consequences for several development studios. Sega got a massive library of IPs through a vast array of genres that MS might want to buy.
In recent 10 years COH anniversary Relic stream, it also was re-confirmed by Quinn Duffy that Microsoft did indeed save Relic with Impossible Creatures published by MS. Relic used money from that game to build their RTS engine. No MS help, No Relic. It's as simple as that. So hate MS all you want, but Relic exists today because of Impossible Creatures.
But I already knew that from HW fans such as ÜberJumper. MS is not perfect but they do have some good people like Phil Spencer and Ed Fries.
As one of the oldest studios in Vancouver, Relic has a rich history with many talented devs that today have created their own independent studios. Most noticeable (Vancouver), Blackbird Interactive (former HW devs), Klei Entertainment (former DoW devs), Smoking Gun Interactive (former COH devs) and Hinterland (former Spacemarine/console devs).
I'm a guy that happened to live in Vancouver and liked video games. I saw the Homeworld trailer on the HL disk IIRC... thinking "That's dumb, who'd want to play Starcraft in 3d..."
Penny-arcade was raving about it, so when I saw news the demo was out in August of 1999 I downloaded it on a whim (a whole 65 MB or so).
I fell in love almost immediately. It felt like Battlestar Galactica, Starwars, Starblazers... all rolled into one. I was hooked.
I had trouble alt-tabbing out of the game... so I was trying to troubleshoot it. Went looking for forums... found Relic's website... they were in Vancouver! Hey I know that guy!
Couldn't find a post about my problem, so figured out the issue and posted it. Then stuck around to help other Homeworlders, then Impossible creature players, then HW2, dawn of war, company of heroes... 50 or 60 thousand posts later I was one of the most well known members of the "Relic Community". I also helped run relicnews.com, which for a few years was the unofficial official forums (Bart Mazus, another local guy owned Relicnews.com and was doing website work for Relic). Went to a couple of E3's, wrote a few articles and a few hundred news posts, etc etc.
So yeah, they had me as their number one fan for a while, I worked on HW2 as a contractor (I tell that story in another post), and in 2010, Rob Cunningham invited me over to show me the pitch video for what was Hardware (now Homeworldhipbreakers) so I helped out at Blackbird Interactive, but sadly haven't been bringing them donuts for more than a few months after my day job in Healthcare IT got exciting.
So yeah, some lucky guy that got to watch and help an awesome game community grow and made some awesome friends along the way.
Obtuse: I noticed the note in your yearbook entry, "Contract @ Relic Summer ‘03", how did that come about and what did you do there?
ÜberJumper: Well... I don't know how much you know about the History of Relic and Sierra, so I'll go back a bit. Homeworld was a successful product, didn't cost Sierra much to make, but Relic had to offer up their next 3 titles to Sierra before anyone else could bid on them. Relic started work on Impossible Creatures (which Sierra passed on, and Microsoft published), and there was another title that Sierra passed on as well (I think) then finally Homeworld 2. Relic had been working on Homeworld 2 since almost the end of Homeworld. I was there for a visit in July of 2000 IIRC with a couple of community folks (RipperT and Carradine). We sat in on a dev meeting, saw the game in action, played with it a bit, had lunch with them, it was all good. The Next E3 rolls around, and before that started, Sierra launched the now infamous Homeworld2.com site which had a timer on it counting down to the game's launch, so, I book a flight to LA for E3.
Meanwhile, Relic and Sierra are having some issues over money (which is what a lot of developers go through I hear), and the E3 display of Homeworld 2, and the launch of the website are cancelled. Anyway, while I was there, I got a chance to see Homeworld 2 (in it's then current form) and I was gob-smacked. Flash forward a couple of months to August and news breaks that Sierra had cancelled Homeworld 2. So the game, at that point, is Dead. I hang out for a while longer in the community, and when I think it's clear that Homeworld's not going anywhere, I "left" the community. Alex Garden heard that, and called me up and offered to take me to lunch. He convinced me to stay with the community, that it wasn't dead yet, so I hung out for a while longer. May of 2002 rolls around, and Relic's started work up again on Homeworld 2. They're hiring folks to fill positions that they'd had to let go as HW2 had been stopped (this is when Mecha, long time community member, moved over from England to work on HW2) so anyway, they're working away and basically starting from scratch, but Sierra's not the same Sierra that helped Relic birth Homeworld. They didn't put as much effort into it as they could have. Turn-around time on bug tracking and what not was essentially not happening, so they needed to bring people in to test.
Pike and I were both contracted to do "first pass QA" (credited as additional design support in the credits) on the game. I was working a full time job, getting to Relic at 4pm, working till 10-11pm, then heading home. That was for all of July. The game went gold first week of August and it still needed way more QA on it but it ended Relic's contractual obligations to Sierra and let THQ buy them up. I actually had a chance to see some of the DoW stuff while I was working there, was pretty cool, the early DoW stuff that is.
Hmmm keep in mind the page is quite old and still has Ensemble studios which has gone defunct. But then again the design could still keep in chronological order especially since the announcement trailer went through all the periods in order.
Phil Spencer (head of Microsoft Studios + Xbox) recently said he was a fan of Ensembles vision for AoE.
Could just be PR speach but then again you have Quinn Duffy working as AoE4 Game Director (COH2 game director). So yeah, who knows. I highly doubt Relic/SEGA will give up on COH3, so I don't worry about that.
I'll wrap up with a nice one. Tell me a little bit behind the process behind how Microsoft decided to bring Age of Empires back. Had it been kicking around for a long time?
I want to give Shannon Loftis a ton of credit. Shannon's been in Microsoft Studios for a long time, and is somebody I've worked with and have a ton of respect for.
There's some franchises... it's interesting, as we're investing more in our first party, and we've looking at new IP in some of our existing franchises and things that do really well, Age is just one of those things that year after year on Steam, we see it continue to sell, even though the infrastructure that's underneath the game is creaking a little bit. The community's been there supporting it.
She said, you know, this is something we should bring onto our modern platform. Make it visually more up to speed. You're obviously not going to take that game and completely make it a 4K game and everything, but make it look something closer to modern. Support some of the Live features that we have. And then let's think about where this franchise can actually go.
We own it, so maybe it seems like we're talking about ourselves a little bit, but I think it's one of the important franchises in gaming, and I think it deserves a future.
It's the 20th anniversary. So this could be the start of the renaissance? That's how you feel about it?
I do. And I think the interesting thing is the community's been out there kind of supporting this game without us. And shame on us, right?
They crashed the website today.
[Laughs] I'm really excited. They crashed our website? I actually didn't see that.
Straight off the reveal. They had it back up quickly.
Good! Good. I was involved... I started working with Ensemble on Age 3, I think was the first one I as a studio manager was working with them on. That was a studio that had some real vision in what they wanted to do with this mix of history and RTS coming together. I think it's one of those franchises that deserves a great future.
Denmark
Congratulations to soon-to-graduate VFS Game Design student Carolina Mastretta (pictured here between, on the left, Mike Swanson, Executive Producer at Relic and, on the right, Kelly Gies, Senior Recruiter at Relic Entertainment)! Carolina was selected for the Brian Wood Memorial Internship with Relic Games!
. If you think that this song is not a good theme for Plague Inc: Evolved, you should play with this music as background. Highly recomended.
hipbreakers) so I helped out at Blackbird Interactive, but sadly haven't been bringing them donuts for more than a few months after my day job in Healthcare IT got exciting.
SturmTigerCobra
DonnieChan
Inane EliteVideoGameMasturbater
SturmTigerCobra
Relic Entertainment
