Profile of SturmtigerCobra

https://www.pcgamesn.com/age-of-empires-ii-definitive-edition/spirit-of-the-law
*SNIP*
What do you think AoE2: Definitive will bring to the table in terms of AoE2’s future?

I’m optimistic about Definitive Edition. I’m not involved with the beta, so I don’t have any inside knowledge about it, but my hope is that it’s either amazing or terrible. If it’s just okay, I think it runs the risk of fracturing the community between those who prefer the current versions available. So far everything looks really promising to me from the screenshots and gameplay that’s been teased. It has a lot of quality of life improvements, while keeping the core experience intact.

For me, the bigger change that’s happened over the last few years in the community has been the rise of YouTube and Twitch. When I started my YouTube channel five years ago, the biggest channel at the time had 30,000 subscribers, and now there are a handful of Age of Empires-specific channels with over 100,000. I know of several Twitch streamers who stream AoE2 for a living. The game has transitioned from being something that’s exclusively played to something that is watched a lot. I see comments all the time from people telling me they’ve never even played the game, but just enjoy the theory crafting and watching others play. It seems to be something Microsoft is aware of and supporting with the upcoming Definitive Edition.

Jump back to quoted post19 Nov 2019, 18:53 PMNorthFireZ

Let's give a shout out for all the other casters who pitched in their efforts with all the games going on!

Yall have our thanks for providing us with great content.

Also the players for death matching each other

https://esportsobserver.com/starcraft-ii-esports-essentials/
*SNIP*
Brood War remained so popular in South Korea that Blizzard eventually released a remastered version of the game in 2017 and launched a new esports league for it.

As a result of StarCraft’s unparalleled popularity in the country, South Korean pros dominated the scene throughout Brood War’s entire lifespan. Few non-Korean players could even come close to keeping up with the best that South Korea had to offer. This did not discourage many from trying, and StarCraft remained popular as a spectator esport in the West.

By the time that StarCraft II came out in 2010, Brood War was an institution. Diehards were reluctant to move on to the new game, especially many of the established Korean professionals who continued to play Brood War, and thus a schism formed in the scene. This was further exacerbated in 2010 when a match-fixing scandal involving 11 players (Including Ma ‘Savior’ Jae Yoon, one of the most famous names in Brood War’s history) rocked the integrity of the professional scene. This incident, along with other external factors and the pre-existing schism, are widely credited for the decline of Brood War.

"Generally speaking, the longer a genre exists, the games that are responsible for taking it forward tend to make it more complicated. With Age of Empires 4, it was important for us to be like, 'okay, how do we back away from that?'. We do not want to take on all of the complexity that we see in RTS games today," Isgreen explains. "This is a fresh start for us. We want to modernise the series and that means we are going to do things differently."
*SNIP*

https://community.companyofheroes.com/discussion/243407/coh2-the-road-ahead
New Content (UGC)
Although we plan to continue releasing new in-game content in future updates, we will now be leveraging UGC such as vehicle skins and maps to help offer new gameplay experiences to the community. We hope that advances to COH2’s modding tools will also take place in the coming months, allowing additional forms of content to be created by the community as well - however this is still to be confirmed.

https://sperasoft.com/news/2019/11/sperasoft-partners-relic-entertainment/
November 26, 2019
USA, San-Jose – November 26, 2019 – Sperasoft, a Keywords studio announces its partnership with Relic Entertainment, an innovator in the real-time strategy genre.

Relic Entertainment is a Canadian video game developer based in Vancouver. For over 20 years they have specialized in award-winning real-time strategy games, and are known around the world for franchises such as Company of Heroes, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, and the upcoming Age of Empires IV. When working on these games, Relic uses its proprietary Essence Engine, developed in-house. The Essence Engine utilizes the Havok middleware physics engine and enables many next-generation features to help push their titles forward. Relic’s desire to innovate in the real-time strategy genre has led to numerous awards and accolades, and they’re bringing that same innovation to their next title, Age of Empires IV.

Being part of SEGA, Relic Entertainment strives to create rich, thoughtful strategy games that people love to play. Working in cooperation for over a year, Sperasoft provides art services for Relic and is regarded as a trustworthy and flexible partner.

Sperasoft is an old hand at game development, showing the studio’s true colors in its work with partners and clients, providing all the necessary resources and completing tasks of any complexity on time. Such a foundation allows us to build long-term relationships with our co-development partners.

“Sperasoft is a big fan of Relic Entertainments games and the RTS genre as a whole” – comments Denis Larkin, Chief Commercial Officer at Sperasoft – “it has allowed us to quickly find a rapport and hopefully, successfully gratify RTS fans everywhere”.

“Relic is excited to work with a trusted partner who shares our values of meaningful collaboration, transparency, creative problem solving, and learning from the experts around us.” – Heidi Eaves, Chief Operating Officer at Relic

About Sperasoft
Sperasoft is a leading game development company headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley with development centers in the USA, Poland and Russia. We offer full development capabilities with comprehensive professional teams that are built upon the best producers, engineers, game designers and artists in the industry. During 15 years of existence, Sperasoft studio has not only grown to 500 people and has opened 5 offices around the world, but also moved to a new level of cooperation with customers – becoming a co-developer of the world’s most famous publishers.

For more information, please refer marketing@sperasoft.com
*SNIP*

Relic External Development Teams & d3t Modding Tools

Re-posting info from my reddit post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CompanyOfHeroes/comments/a02dbl/relic_working_with_keywords_studios/
Update;
Keywords Studios: “We are going to keep acquiring new companies”
The video games outsourcing giant on expanding its services, fixing crunch and how it will avoid competing with its clients (November 2018)
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-11-22-keywords-studios-we-are-going-to-keep-acquiring-new-companies

To help ramp up content production in art and engineering/programming Relic is working with two studios now owned by Keywords international.
https://www.keywordsstudios.com

Keywords international are a growing services provider to the global video games industry.
Microsoft Studios and Relic/Sega are involved with this.

1) Sperasoft Studios
Client source:
https://sperasoft.com/about/ (see Relic in the client list)
A big international studio.

2) d3t Studio
A growing UK studio run by former THQ.
One of the operation directors is the former Relic senior programmer, Noel Austin:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/noel-austin-4b603912/
Client source:
https://d3tltd.com/projects/company-of-heroes/
Quote d3t: “We really enjoyed developing the Steam Workshop support for the classic Sega title"
The d3t 10 YEARS MODDING UPDATE:
Company of Heroes.”COMPANY OF HEROES GETS A MASSIVE MODDING UPDATE 10 YEARS ON (June 1, 2017):
https://www.gamespace.com/all-articles/news/company-of-heroes-modding-update/

-----
The founder of Sperasoft and co-founder of d3t (Jamie Campbell) were recently promoted to key leadership positions within Keywords international.
Keywords Studios announces Senior Management Team changes (07/10/2018):
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/pressreleases/321687/Keywords_Studios_announces_Senior_Management_Team_changes.php
Both of these two studios was recently acquired by Keywords international:

Keywords buy d3t for £3 million (October 2017):
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-10-19-keywords-buys-d3t-for-3-million
Keywords buy Sperasoft for $27 million (December 2017):
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-12-13-keywords-buys-sperasoft-for-USD27-million

Keywords International are connected to Vancouver based XDSummit which Relic/The Coalition has been involved with for years.
Microsoft currently has 3 people on the XDS advisory committee:
http://xdsummit.com/about/advisory-committee/

Below is Relic's XDS presentation in 2014 by Dilber Mann. XDS committee member 2014-2018.
Relic Development Director, External.

Linkedin Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dilber-mann-7364212/
Dilber Mann's Blog:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DilberMann/994704/
A similar Microsoft director position as Dilber Mann, also XDS member:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/samcarlisle/

Why did Dilber Mann leave Relic to join The Coalition studio in 2017? (Microsoft's Vancouver studio)

The d3t/THQ Team working on Relic games?:
Richard Badger Studio Head at d3t
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricbadger
Steve Powell Co-Founder and Director at d3t Ltd
https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-powell-b748829/
Jamie Campbell Engineering Service Line Director at Keywords Studios
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-campbell-0390b02/
Andrew Booth Studio Technical Director at d3t Ltd
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-booth-76681814/
Matthew Green Head of Art at d3t Ltd
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-green-75b71113/
Noel Austin, Operation Director (former Relic):
https://www.linkedin.com/in/noel-austin-4b603912/
Kenneth Jensen Localization Project Manager at Keywords Studios (former QA Lead on Company of Heroes 2)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenneth-jensen-mtl/

Relic Entertainment's Company of Heroes 2 "Grand Finals Weekend" finishes today. I love this franchise, working on it with Rob Cunningham, Josh Mosqueira, Owen Hurley, Adrian Vershinin, Quinn Duffy, the late Brian Wood and so many more amazing people as the first Narrative Designer was truly one of the greatest honors of my career. I grew up loving wargames and RTS. I've played more hours of this game than I care to admit, but it was work right? Right? No, I still play. It's just a passion. You can get COH2 free this weekend on Steam as well! https://bit.ly/37cWJFs While I didn't work on COH2, much of the speech that my writing team created remains when you use the four armies from the original COH, especially the Panzer Elite and British. It's always fun to hear those lines. Watch some of the best competitive players live now at the link below! hashtag#games hashtag#esports hashtag#wargames hashtag#gamewriting