Brian Reynolds on the Asian Dynasties-India: IGN has posted an interview with Brian Reynolds, studio head at Big Huge Games, discussing the Y pack for Age of Empires III. I had the Indian civilization in mind a while ago when I mentioned that I thought one would be a surprise to most of you. I am happy to see India make an appearance in one of our Age games. It has been considered before and was a reasonable candidate for inclusion in both the original Age of Empires and Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings. One reason we left them out in the past is that their architecture is so unique. We didn’t want to invest the resources to create a building set for just the Indians and they would have looked strange using buildings created for the Middle East or China/Japan/Korea. Our reading of history didn’t show them in conflict with neighbors in any way similar to how the Europeans have gone after each other for millennia, or the countries in the Middle East, or east Asia. So there wasn’t a natural enemy to present with them, although you could make a case for India being an empire in its own right, being made up of many smaller kingdoms. Big Huge was willing to invest in Indian buildings and they look very cool to me, so the Indians are in and so are their elephants.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/799/799064p1.html

Asian Dynasties Code Complete Milestone Next: Code complete sounds close to finished but actually there is a lot of work yet to do once this milestone is passed. This means all the major features are in and working, but a lot of testing, balancing, and polish is yet to go. I had a glitch in my testing where some economic buildings were failing to work, but it turns out I had just copied over a new build rather than erase and copy over fresh. When I got the build properly, everything worked as it should.

Age III on PBS NOVA: A documentary program shown recently on this program used the Age of Empires III scenario editor to portray some historical events. The program was titled The Great Inca Rebellion and discussed battles around Lima, Peru, in which the Inca tried to expel Spanish conquistadores that had occupied the city. A Baltimore graphics studio used our software, aided by the skills of our own designers Karen McMullan and Vance Hampton, to recreate some scenes for the program. Ensemble Studios was not mentioned in the credits and should have been.
I found the show interesting, as I do most NOVA documentaries. I was surprised at how many times Age of Empires III graphics were employed. I thought they fit in very well, except they did slow down a little with FPS (frames per second refresh rate) when they had a thousand units on screen.
The show considered the question of how a relatively small band of conquistadores could possibly conquer and then hold a huge empire. The proposed answer is that the Spanish had powerful Indian allies who wanted to overthrow their Inca rulers, much as Cortez was able to recruit Indian allies wishing to overthrow the Aztecs. In addition, the program presented forensic evidence of the earliest known gunshot victim in the Americas. PBS often makes these programs available for viewing online and if they do that for this one I will try to let you know. Learn more about the program here.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/inca/

Mexico’s President Plays Age of Empires: Kotaku reports that President Felipe Calderon is a gamer and that his favorite is Age of Empires. Based on my experience from talking to gamers in Mexico City, I would guess his favorite civilization is the Aztecs . Oscar Santos from our community team tells me that the comments by the President were significant mainly because he supports the idea that gamers should be free to play what they wish. This is in contrast to the governor of the State of Chihuahua who blocked the sale of a Ghost Recon game that portrayed Mexicans from a border city as insurgents and terrorists.

 http://kotaku.com/gaming/age-of-empires/mexicos-gaming-presidente-272241.php

Thanks IT: We lost power in our entire building one day and we were told that it would be restored sometime that evening. Dwayne Gravitt of our IT department went back to our offices at 10:30 PM, climbed 15 flights of stairs, and waited in the dark until power was restored. At that point he made sure that our servers and all other critical resources were functioning properly before heading home in the early hours of the next day. We are working toward some important milestones for Halo Wars and having everything ready to go that next morning was a good thing.

Age of Empires Board Game Published: The long awaited board game, based on Age of Empires III, has been published and is in game stores now. The early reviews on boardgamegeek.com are very encouraging and the game is currently rated very high. We will have to see how the rating holds up as more people play it and voice their opinions. Ensemble Studios ordered a copy for everyone who works here, so I expect some feedback from our own people soon. Check out reviews and other information about the game here.

 http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/22545

Video Games Addiction Revisited: A policy group within the American Medical Association (AMA) recently proposed that video game addiction be listed as a disorder in a mental health manual to be published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 20012. But addiction experts within the AMA strongly opposed the idea. The Entertainment Software Association aligned itself with the APA position that “this so-called video game addiction is not a mental disorder,” although the APA said it would consider the proposal if the science warrants it. Of special concern are the online role-playing games that are particularly immersive and compelling. Until some definitive evidence backs up the AMA concerns I continue to believe that games themselves are not the problem, but too much playing may be evidence of other issues the individual needs to deal with.
At Ensemble Studios we recruit passionate gamers when we can, but we also want reasonably well-rounded people who can fit it. We have a large WoW interest group for sure, and many Xbox Live accounts, but also groups that together go skiing, hunting, and bar-hopping. There is a morning basketball group, a flag-football group, and golf outings are popular. I believe we include people who played inter-collegiate lacrosse, basketball, and football. We have comic book fans, film buffs, and musicians. One of our guys is an accomplished woodworker and makes his own furniture. Most of our people are married and many are raising families.

You need balance in your life like a game needs to be balanced.

Bruce Shelley