Age of Ensemble

Light is shed on games that never happened as Ensemble Studios closes for good.

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By John Gillooly on 3 February, 2009

With so many game developers going under in past months, the decision by Microsoft to close Ensemble Studios remains a strange one. It is relatively easy to understand that developers of poorly performing titles go bust, or scary numbers of people are let go once a title ships, but Ensemble was a hit factory, responsible for some of the finer games of recent years.

In fact, the company’s final title is still to be released. The Xbox 360 real-time strategy (RTS) Halo Wars doesn’t hit shelves until the end of February, yet last Friday marked Ensemble’s closure. What is most confusing is that there still haven’t been solid reasons given for the closure. One would usually suspect that it was a sign of Microsoft wanting to focus entirely on console titles – however, this is precluded by the fact that Ensemble’s last title is an Xbox 360 exclusive.

The ever-humble Bruce Shelley made a great farewell blog post last week, but this is now gone from the Ensemble website (Google’s cache of the post is here). This, among all things, really drives home that the people behind the beloved Age of Empires franchise have left the building – that Ensemble, as we know it, is no more.

Gamasutra visited Ensemble last Friday, touring the half empty offices and discovering some very interesting information about games that never made it past prototyping. The feature also exposes some previously unknown facts about the Halo MMO that never happened.

Initially codenamed Titan, the MMO started life as a non-licensed sci-fi title. It was only later that discussions with Bungie led to the project evolving into a Halo MMO title. As had been indicated when the existence of the game leaked last year, it was a lot further along than just a prototype. In fact, Ensemble had begun work on the infrastructure required to operate a large scale MMO, building a campus for the necessary staff.

One wonders whether it was Microsoft shying away from the MMO project that led to Ensemble being cut lose. It had obviously committed to the project – the campus idea reinforces that. It may be some time before we actually know the series of events behind the game’s cancellation, and just how much influence it had on Ensemble’s closure.

The MMO wasn’t Ensemble’s only ‘mystery’ title. Gamasutra was shown concept art and ideas for a few different games, describing an eclectic mix of “a fantasy-adventure RPG called Sorcerer; Nova, a ‘Diablo in space’ game; a pirate-themed take on Diablo; a game called Wrench; a Ratchet & Clank-style platformer called Bam.” Seems like someone was a Diablo fan.

Most interesting, considering the non-Halo roots of the MMO, was that Halo Wars started life as a space-themed RTS from the mind of Graham Devine, titled Phoenix. This constant shoehorning of the ill-defined Halo universe into Ensemble’s ideas surely must have caused at least a modicum of friction between the developer and its parent company.

Something else to ponder is that, apart from Phoenix, the prototyped games mentioned in the Gamasutra article stepped away from Ensemble’s bread and butter RTS focus. Some of them sound like immensely cool ideas, but they indicated a desire by the company to try something different. Maybe it was this that scared Microsoft away from Ensemble – which is a massive shame, because a game described as “a pirate-themed take on Diablo” could be incredibly fun.

With the developer now gone, expect to see more tidbits about these unreleased games. A week ago, I would have expected to see the studios formed by Ensemble alumni pumping out new RTS titles. These prototypes show a genuine desire to break away from the mould, which is a very exciting prospect, considering the talent encompassed by Ensemble. For now, though, we’ll have to make do with these glimpses of what could have been.

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