Halo Wars Web Site Live: Our community team, lead by Oscar Santos, got our site up recently and it is just in time to provide links to the incoming E3 coverage. We like the site a lot and will be using it to keep you informed of progress on this big title.
http://www.halowars.com/
Halo Wars at E3: This once huge industry trade show may be a shadow of its former self but it is still a key opportunity to get new games in front of the world game press. Our team worked hard preparing a special demo for the event. After a wow preview for the entire studio last week, it was carried to Santa Monica by Producer Chris Rippy and Lead Designer Graeme Devine. Their brief reports so far suggest they put in long hours showing the game to a steady stream of media reps. Our community team is trying to list the many links to comments on the game published so far (see the link above).
Graeme and Chris sent us several messages over the course of the show. After the opening night Microsoft Game Studios press briefing, Chris and Graeme rushed back to the hotel suite to be available for demos. Microsoft’s PR team brought up Electronic Gaming Monthly first and a steady stream followed until about 1 AM local time. They went on to do more demos from 1-6 Wednesday, Thursday 9-6, and Friday 9-2 (Chris told us that he believed that over 300 journalists stopped by, mostly in groups). That is a lot of meetings, but Graeme and Chris both reported the demo was being very, very well received. We hope that shows up in the coverage. Graeme’s big complaint was that the nearest Starbucks was a mile away.
Here is a photo Graeme sent us of the demo set up. The extra dev kits were a precaution but were never needed.
Asian Dynasties News: There is lots of news about our Y pack of late, including an interview with Brian Reynolds of Big Huge Games (developers of Asian Dynasties), the box art, a trailer for the game, and some reports on E3 from Producer Brian Lemon. You can out check all of this at our Age of Empires community site. We continue to be very positive about this expansion to Age of Empires III. It is coming together well and is a real Age of Empires game.
http://www.agecommunity.com/
Halo Wars Controls: A big concern when moving the real-time strategy genre to the X360 is how the controller will replace all the input available on the PC from the mouse and keyboard. We have designed Halo Wars from the ground up to be a console game and work effectively with a controller. At E3 Chris and Graeme demonstrated the new control system as a key feature. We were pleased to read that Gamestop and others were picking up on the basic control system.
Harsh on Paul Barnett: A few blogs ago I called attention to some of Paul’s web videos related to working in the game industry, but I completely missed that they were made with tongue firmly in cheek (“flippant, irreverent, anecdotal, British styled humor”). Paul has put me straight and I promised to correct my error. Paul was concerned that his mum might think he was an idiot. I made the mistake of taking the videos out of context from his pod casts and video diaries, that you can check out here.
www.warhammeronline.com
The Warchiefs Mac Version: Graham Somers pointed out that the version of the X pack is now available. All of the Age of Empires games have been converted to the Mac so far and I believe they are some of the more popular games on that platform.
http://www.destineerstudios.com/macsoftgames/index.html
Age of Empires III User Education Award: The Quick Reference and Manual has received an Excellence Award from the Society for Technical Communication’s International Publications Communication Competition. We understand that only four software guides in the world received awards this year (three Excellence and one Distinguished). Our publishing team puts a lot of effort into making these aids easy to use yet informative and it’s nice to see them get recognition. Congrats to Brent Metcalfe, Jack Turk, and their colleagues in publishing, plus our people who provided much of the content and reviewed the materials many times.
Inline for IPhones: You would expect to find some hardware fans among 100+ game developers and we have our quota at Ensemble Studios. Programmer Paul Bettner and Studio Head Tony Goodman were both in line all day at a Dallas Apple store to get their IPhones, and offered by email back to our offices the second one they were allowed to buy. Both were taken J.
Games Outside of Work: Getting a lot of comment lately is the new Xbox Live Arcade game Pacman Championship Edition. In Dave Pottinger’s opinion, it’s pretty close to a perfect single player XBLA game. He finds it “just flat-out superior to the original game” and a terrific example of how to make a sequel totally different without complicating it too much.
Pro Gaming Presses Start Button: A professional gaming league, The Championship Gaming Series, recently started its season. There are six teams of ten players each and they will compete twice a week on DirectTV channel 101. Players are guaranteed $30k for the season but they are eligible for substantial bonuses.
I first became aware of professional gaming in South Korea where there have been Starcraft leagues and televised matches with commentary for many years. I have my doubts that this will be a big success in North America or Europe, mainly because young people there have so many entertainment options that I doubt that a sufficient audience can be built to support the enterprise. It is cool that people are trying this, however. If it is the next big thing it could put even more emphasis on competitive multi-player for future games.
Game Developers Aren’t Immortal: I guess that most of the people at Ensemble Studios would chart plus or minus 5 years of 30 years old. With that demographic you rarely think of retirement, much less mortality. But Shane Kim, head of Microsoft Game Studios, last week informed us that Lee Burns, an artist at our sister studio Rare in Britain, had just passed away after a courageous fight with illness. We work at play to a certain extent, but this news should be a reminder that our opportunities and longevity are not unlimited.
Bruce Shelley