THQ’s adaptation of the classic Ensemble RTS Age of Mythology to the DS is a bit of a surprise for me. AoM is one of my favorite games for a number of reasons, mostly related to the silly spectacle of the thing. It also manages a number of interesting choices in faction design without getting […]

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Now that the series is complete and I have some distance from it, I can probably reflect a little more about the Ensemble three parter.
I’m most happy with how open everyone was, especially with their criticisms of their own work. The series would simply not have been as interesting as it was if Shelley, Goodman, […]

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The final part of my Ensemble history is now up.
By the way, if you enjoy this sort of story, please let CG know by commenting in the comment box there. Yeah, it means another registration for another site, but I’ve become a real zealot for what the site is trying to do, especially since it […]

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Part 2 is now up.

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The first part of my history of Ensemble Studios is up at Crispy Gamer.
Yes, the first part. The article was so long that my beleaguered editors had to chop it into three pieces. And it could have been much longer. I have hours of audio, long emails, extra comments from colleagues and peers…all kinds of […]

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Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. I spoke to Mr. Shelley a few weeks ago, and he was very generous with his time when I was writing my series on ancient games.
Of the twelve inductees, six have reputations in the strategy game arena - Meier, Wright, Molyneux, Bunten, Morhaime and now Shelley. The genre has […]

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Dan Hsu has an interview with Dave Pottinger and Graeme Devine at Crispy Gamer. It has the now standard “yeah it sucked but we’re going forward” non-comment on the closing of Ensemble, but, most importantly, lots of juicy bits about the upcoming console RTS Halo Wars.
Devine adds this bit of development chronology that I’m not […]

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Shacknews has uploaded part one of two part interview with Ensemble Studios about Halo Wars. Today’s portion is Dave Pottinger talking about where things are at.
The headline opens with Age of Empires Dev Ensemble Speaks Out on Studio Closure which is true only in the most narrow and literal way. Pottinger says nothing that wasn’t […]

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I’d love to get a direct quote from any of the very talented designers at Ensemble (Dave Pottinger, Greg Street, Bruce Shelley) but we’ll have to make do with Microsoft’s official statements.
Some outstanding questions:
1) What about Halo Wars’s post-release support? How does the end of Ensemble impact the chances of downloadable content or patches?
2) If […]

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I need to check my blogroll more often since I missed this post from Bruce Shelley about many things. Most importantly, it says a few things about how their RTS Halo Wars will be controlled on the console.
I may have mentioned many blogs ago that we reprogrammed Age of Mythology to be playable with an […]

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