The Asian Dynasties Trial Version: We had over 26,000 downloads of the trial version from our community site in its first four days. There are maybe a dozen different sites where you can get it. Check out our site forums for opinions of the trial version as people try it out. The game itself has gone gold and is working through the duplication and packaging process.
The WarChiefs at World Cyber Games: Our expansion pack to Age of Empires III was one of the competitive events at this year’s WCG and our own Greg Street was there. He had not been at one of these major competitions in a while and was very impressed with the changes he saw:
• Korean, Italian, and Mexican teams in matching team jackets and warm-up suits.
• Big matches being played on a huge stage with the competitors in soundproof booths draped with their country’s flag.
• Three 70 foot video screens were available for the audience supported by play-by-play commentary in various languages.
• Lots of cheering and national flag waving for exciting game events.
• When someone typed “gg” (good game) and quit, fireworks went off.
• Excellent facilities at Qwest Field.
Congrats to iamgrunt from Korea (South), who defeated the US representative, parfait, in the best of three final of The Warchiefs competition. Iamgrunt is a past WCG champion in other Age game competitions. Greg says our game was played off the main floor and accessible only to competitors. But he noted that Microsoft had a significant presence as a sponsor, including a half dozen Forza cars on display and The Asian Dynasties available for playing by visitors. Overall, Greg thought the entire event was very polished and professional.
Next year the WCG moves to Germany. Go here to see all the events and photos from 2007.
http://www.worldcybergames.com/6th/main.asp
The Warchiefs Championship Replay: Our friends at Heavengames.com have posted a replay of the first game from the WCG final. One of our moderators, Milo, a highly ranked player in his own right, was on hand to watch the game being played and stepped in to give better commentary than originally being offered.
Both finalists were playing as Dutch, but employed different strategies. Parfait went to the Fortress Age and began making cannons and Ruyters, while iamgrunt made mostly skirmishers and did raiding in the Colonial Age. I hear the game was somewhat slow reaching a conclusion, as both players jockeyed for advantage while being careful not to risk destruction of their main army. One of our guys who watched the replay to completion was not sure what compelled parfait to resign. Maybe you can figure it out.
http://aoe3.heavengames.com/cgibin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=1,34545,0,10
Greg Street on Age of Empires III: Greg was the Lead Designer on Age of Empires III and he was invited to speak at a conference in Seattle tied to the WCG. He gave some background on Ensemble Studios, the history of the Age of Empires franchise, and our development philosophy, but the bulk of his remarks centered on the design of Age of Empires III, and the many changes it went through during development.
Pre-Design: Greg noted several of the challenges he and the team faced up front.
• The press had recently said that real-time strategy (RTS) was dead as a genre with no significant innovation in sight.
• Our team was somewhat burned out on historical RTS, even though Age of Mythology had been a departure.
• Was the Age of Discovery interesting enough as a topic?
• How do we handle Native Americans and slavery?
• How do we hit Studio Head Tony Goodman’s sweet spot: a combination of familiar old Age play with innovation to make the game fresh, but not too much of either?
Proposed Design Solutions: Greg and his design team came up with several ideas for these and other challenges in the design proposal.
• Make a really revolutionary RTS (this did not work out; too unlike Age).
• Emphasize what is cool in the time period (cannons, pirates).
• Native Americans as allies, not obstacles.
• Ignore the atrocities (we’re making entertainment, not teaching).
Big Design Features: As the design plan came together the team settled on six main features, only three of which made it to the finish.
• Out: victory points (studio split about 50-50 in favor or against)
• In: Home City
• In: Native Americans to augment your civilization as allies
• Out: Formation based combat (too difficult to polish in time left)
• Out: Grand conquest meta-game (low priority)
• In: Best-looking game ever (self challenge set by programming and art teams)
Greg mentioned examples of other innovations that did not stand up once they got into our design by playing process. These included changing the first 15 minutes of play, which had been comparable in all previous Age games. Changing this moved the game too far from being an Age game. Having players start on a ship and then land/explore/start was too risky and made losing early too easy. Allowing fighting early also meant losing early was too large a possibility. Building cities on a grid may have resulted in prettier cities, but was confusing, hard to implement, and less personal/fun for players. Innovations that did stick included allowing the training of soldiers in batches (appealed to hard core but casual gamers could ignore it), no drop sites for resources (less micromanagement), passable forests, story based campaign (more interesting), and personalities for the computer players (artificial intelligences).
Critical Reaction: After Age of Empires III got into the hands of reviewers and millions of gamers we got feedback on the decisions that we had made. Things we learned included these.
• The user interface was too big and blocked too much of the playable screen (optional minimal screen was quickly implemented).
• The Home Cities were fun (took us over a dozen iterations).
• More game modes and options would have been better.
• We really wanted a new combat look and feel.
• The story based campaigns were a good idea.
• Despite a changing PC game market, quality RTS games still sell well and have a long shelf life when supported with expansion packs, patches, and additional content.
Bruce Shelley