Rick Goodman On Building Empires

Thanks to Empires Heaven for their interview with Stainless Steel Studios' head Rick Goodman regarding the PC RTS title Empires: Dawn Of The Modern World. He discusses why the game will become a trilogy by using expansion packs ("One of the compromises I think you make in Civilization 3 is, to cover that [large of a] period of time, you can't cover any one period very in-depth"), and the circumstances that led to his split with Age Of Empires creators Ensemble Studios, which he co-founded ("Ensemble wanted to do their next game in a year, and I told them that I wasn't the kind of guy that could do a game in a year and I should probably go off and take whatever time I needed and let them take the time they needed.") He concludes by discussing the difficulties of development: "One thing you learn [in the industry] that most gamers don't understand: that game development is a series of compromises."

Good for him!

[Dolemite_the_Wiz]

It's about time that SOMEONE is willing to put their foot down and work for a company that wants to put out a quality title instead of another gaming quantity factory.

I'm looking forward to this game.

Dolemite
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Re:Crossing genres and the future

[AuMatar]

I don't think it would work, for multiple reasons.

1)Writing a game is hard. Its hard to write a good FPS. Its hard to write a good RTS. To do that, you'd have to write BOTH of them well. Not easy.

2)The fan following of genress don't overlap. I'm an RTS fan. I despise FPS games. I don't find them fun, and I prefer a challenge of out-thinking opponents to twitch combat (truthfully, I find twitch combat monotonous and dull). There's FPS people who would hate the economy building of RTSes. The number of people who would like a hybrid, even if done well, is small.

3)Different games for different moods. Even those who like both FPS and RTS usually play one or the other depending on their mood. They don't want to break out of their RTS to FPS.

4)Dumbing down. Part of this is due to #1, but games that attempt to do both end up doing 1 (or both) poorly. A dumbed down RTS or dumbed down FPS. This annoys fans of both genres.

5)Multiplayer. Most games of this sort are multiplayered with roles. This means some (many) people don't get to play the role they want. That isn't fun. And dealing with other players is a headache- trust me as someone who has experience in PvP MMOs. Communication and teamwork are damn hard to get right. Besides sometimes you just want to play solo- not much of an option in those games.

Absolutely true

[EvlG]

"One thing you learn [in the industry] that most gamers don't understand: that game development is a series of compromises."

No game ever shipped without compromises being made. Otherwise, the game would still be in production. The key is identifying the smart compromises to make, and executing on them well.