Ensemble: We Were A Victim Of Our Own Success

Ensemble made the Age of Empire series. Which was hugely successful. Ensemble were, however, recently shut down. Was it because they were too successful? A former employee thinks so.

David Rippy – who is now in charge of Bonfire Studios, and leading a team of other ex-Ensemble employees – says the former Age of Empires developer went down because it had been pigeon-holed as an RTS specialist.

With the cost of creating games so high, studios are almost forced to diversify across platforms. Aside from the financial risk of sticking to one platform or one genre, you also risk being pigeonholed in the industry.

Ensemble was kind of a victim of its own success as an RTS shop. As hard as we tried, we were never able to have one of our non-RTS prototypes greenlit, largely because we were ‘the RTS guys’.

I’d like to sympathise, but really, Relic and Creative Assembly seem to be doing OK.

Ensemble Studios a “victim of its own success” – Bonfire [GI.biz]