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."

Comments

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:Good for him!

[sandalwood]

Empires? It's already out.

Crossing genres and the future

[KrinnDNZ]

Goodman mentions that

"it's very hard to appeal to everybody. Part of the way we did this was we divided the game into an Empire Builder and an Action mode to try to target those audiences more carefully than perhaps other games have done in the past. And I think that was a wise thing to do."

as he speaks of balancing the game between novices and expert players. However, this brings up a question that he dodges later in the interview(the third page, specifically), about where RTS games (and by extension, games in general) are going in the future.

He doesn't talk much about the decision to divide the game into two different styles, which is a shame. What about the future of games that, in the process of play, change from one style to another ? Let's take a current example - the Army game. It has an FPS part, and what they're calling an RPG part. Would a game where you did both of those things, then shifted more towards the RTS paradigm as your character ascended in rank, be marketplace-viable? What would you tell a developer who wanted to make a game along the lines of Elixir's Republic: The Revolution - only that it was an adventure game until you became a political big wheel, at which point it turned into a nation-building strategy game somewhat like Civ/Capitalism, with an intrusion of FPS in the Rainbow 6 style when ninjas attempt to kidnap the president ? Are these games inherently a bad idea, or has their time not yet come ? Final Fantasy-style minigames certainly wouldn't cut it - but I think that that shows that there have already been some tenative pokes at this.

Personally, I think that a game that's capable of moving between genres in response to the player's actions is a spectacularly good idea, but is it? And for that matter, if it is, what about implementation?

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.

Mmmm... Empire Earth... Stainless Steel Studios...

[devphil]

EE is without a doubt one of the most fun RTS games I've ever played. Start off in the prehistoric era and finish up in postmodern nanotechnological warfare. The fact that the maps can be truly gigantic makes for some neat changes in strategy (even modern aircraft need refueling, etc).

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.

Re:Mmmm... Empire Earth... Stainless Steel Studios

[Sparr0]

I love Empire Earth, but imho Rise of Nations has completely supplanted it as the best RTS. It has everything EE has and more, simplified where it should be and deeper where its useful and important.