To further elaborate on my predictions:
Historical SEGA and Relic both have good business relations with Microsoft. Don't forget that the founder of Relic (Alex Garden) also was a big name in Microsoft gaming development going way back to Homeworld 2 and Impossible Creatures. I'm old school HW fan and former top10 player in that game.
The current Relic boss/GM (Justin Dowdeswell) previously ran MS owned studio called "Bigpark".
So don't underestimate the significance of this new Relic/MS partnership. Creative Assembly have a partnership with both MS and Wargaming. I predicted for a long time these new Relic partnerships was coming but I would have personally preferred Nexon over MS. Several good former Relic and THQ people have worked at Nexon. Klei Entertainment (run by former Relic devs) exist because of Alex Garden/Nexon NA.
Klei began, like so many independent game studios, in a basement.
After college, Cheng parlayed an internship at Relic Entertainment in Vancouver into a full-time job. He enjoyed his time there and learned a lot, particularly from the company's young co-founder Alex Garden.
*SNIP*
Alex Garden and Jamie Cheng are a lot alike. Garden was hired by Distinction Software at 15. In 1997, the 21-year-old founded Relic Entertainment — the creators of the Homeworld, Warhammer 40,000 and Company of Heroes series — a company the young entrepreneur kept out of debt and employee-owned until its acquisition by THQ in 2004. Garden left shortly thereafter.
In November 2006, South Korean video game publisher Nexon hired Garden to lead its North American game development studio. With an empty production slate, the new boss needed new games. On his list of developers to call: Jamie Cheng, whom he'd hired years ago at Relic. https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/5/29/4362838/the-birth-and-re-birth-of-klei
Alex worked for Microsoft from 2011-2014 and Nexon 2006-2009.
I covered some of this in detail with reliable sources here; SEGA restructuring?
This is old news, but now Sega is getting involved again with Microsoft IPs (Halo "poster child" for Spencer's Windows 10/Xbox) and potential new partnerships are something that can have far reaching consequences for several development studios. Sega got a massive library of IPs through a vast array of genres that MS might want to buy.
In recent 10 years COH anniversary Relic stream, it also was re-confirmed by Quinn Duffy that Microsoft did indeed save Relic with Impossible Creatures published by MS. Relic used money from that game to build their RTS engine. No MS help, No Relic. It's as simple as that. So hate MS all you want, but Relic exists today because of Impossible Creatures.
But I already knew that from HW fans such as ÜberJumper. MS is not perfect but they do have some good people like Phil Spencer and Ed Fries.
As one of the oldest studios in Vancouver, Relic has a rich history with many talented devs that today have created their own independent studios. Most noticeable (Vancouver), Blackbird Interactive (former HW devs), Klei Entertainment (former DoW devs), Smoking Gun Interactive (former COH devs) and Hinterland (former Spacemarine/console devs).
I'm a guy that happened to live in Vancouver and liked video games. I saw the Homeworld trailer on the HL disk IIRC... thinking "That's dumb, who'd want to play Starcraft in 3d..."
Penny-arcade was raving about it, so when I saw news the demo was out in August of 1999 I downloaded it on a whim (a whole 65 MB or so).
I fell in love almost immediately. It felt like Battlestar Galactica, Starwars, Starblazers... all rolled into one. I was hooked.
I had trouble alt-tabbing out of the game... so I was trying to troubleshoot it. Went looking for forums... found Relic's website... they were in Vancouver! Hey I know that guy!
Couldn't find a post about my problem, so figured out the issue and posted it. Then stuck around to help other Homeworlders, then Impossible creature players, then HW2, dawn of war, company of heroes... 50 or 60 thousand posts later I was one of the most well known members of the "Relic Community". I also helped run relicnews.com, which for a few years was the unofficial official forums (Bart Mazus, another local guy owned Relicnews.com and was doing website work for Relic). Went to a couple of E3's, wrote a few articles and a few hundred news posts, etc etc.
So yeah, they had me as their number one fan for a while, I worked on HW2 as a contractor (I tell that story in another post), and in 2010, Rob Cunningham invited me over to show me the pitch video for what was Hardware (now Homeworldhipbreakers) so I helped out at Blackbird Interactive, but sadly haven't been bringing them donuts for more than a few months after my day job in Healthcare IT got exciting.
So yeah, some lucky guy that got to watch and help an awesome game community grow and made some awesome friends along the way.
Obtuse: I noticed the note in your yearbook entry, "Contract @ Relic Summer ‘03", how did that come about and what did you do there?
ÜberJumper: Well... I don't know how much you know about the History of Relic and Sierra, so I'll go back a bit. Homeworld was a successful product, didn't cost Sierra much to make, but Relic had to offer up their next 3 titles to Sierra before anyone else could bid on them. Relic started work on Impossible Creatures (which Sierra passed on, and Microsoft published), and there was another title that Sierra passed on as well (I think) then finally Homeworld 2. Relic had been working on Homeworld 2 since almost the end of Homeworld. I was there for a visit in July of 2000 IIRC with a couple of community folks (RipperT and Carradine). We sat in on a dev meeting, saw the game in action, played with it a bit, had lunch with them, it was all good. The Next E3 rolls around, and before that started, Sierra launched the now infamous Homeworld2.com site which had a timer on it counting down to the game's launch, so, I book a flight to LA for E3.
Meanwhile, Relic and Sierra are having some issues over money (which is what a lot of developers go through I hear), and the E3 display of Homeworld 2, and the launch of the website are cancelled. Anyway, while I was there, I got a chance to see Homeworld 2 (in it's then current form) and I was gob-smacked. Flash forward a couple of months to August and news breaks that Sierra had cancelled Homeworld 2. So the game, at that point, is Dead. I hang out for a while longer in the community, and when I think it's clear that Homeworld's not going anywhere, I "left" the community. Alex Garden heard that, and called me up and offered to take me to lunch. He convinced me to stay with the community, that it wasn't dead yet, so I hung out for a while longer. May of 2002 rolls around, and Relic's started work up again on Homeworld 2. They're hiring folks to fill positions that they'd had to let go as HW2 had been stopped (this is when Mecha, long time community member, moved over from England to work on HW2) so anyway, they're working away and basically starting from scratch, but Sierra's not the same Sierra that helped Relic birth Homeworld. They didn't put as much effort into it as they could have. Turn-around time on bug tracking and what not was essentially not happening, so they needed to bring people in to test.
Pike and I were both contracted to do "first pass QA" (credited as additional design support in the credits) on the game. I was working a full time job, getting to Relic at 4pm, working till 10-11pm, then heading home. That was for all of July. The game went gold first week of August and it still needed way more QA on it but it ended Relic's contractual obligations to Sierra and let THQ buy them up. I actually had a chance to see some of the DoW stuff while I was working there, was pretty cool, the early DoW stuff that is.
Hmmm keep in mind the page is quite old and still has Ensemble studios which has gone defunct. But then again the design could still keep in chronological order especially since the announcement trailer went through all the periods in order.
Phil Spencer (head of Microsoft Studios + Xbox) recently said he was a fan of Ensembles vision for AoE.
Could just be PR speach but then again you have Quinn Duffy working as AoE4 Game Director (COH2 game director). So yeah, who knows. I highly doubt Relic/SEGA will give up on COH3, so I don't worry about that.
I'll wrap up with a nice one. Tell me a little bit behind the process behind how Microsoft decided to bring Age of Empires back. Had it been kicking around for a long time?
I want to give Shannon Loftis a ton of credit. Shannon's been in Microsoft Studios for a long time, and is somebody I've worked with and have a ton of respect for.
There's some franchises... it's interesting, as we're investing more in our first party, and we've looking at new IP in some of our existing franchises and things that do really well, Age is just one of those things that year after year on Steam, we see it continue to sell, even though the infrastructure that's underneath the game is creaking a little bit. The community's been there supporting it.
She said, you know, this is something we should bring onto our modern platform. Make it visually more up to speed. You're obviously not going to take that game and completely make it a 4K game and everything, but make it look something closer to modern. Support some of the Live features that we have. And then let's think about where this franchise can actually go.
We own it, so maybe it seems like we're talking about ourselves a little bit, but I think it's one of the important franchises in gaming, and I think it deserves a future.
It's the 20th anniversary. So this could be the start of the renaissance? That's how you feel about it?
I do. And I think the interesting thing is the community's been out there kind of supporting this game without us. And shame on us, right?
They crashed the website today.
[Laughs] I'm really excited. They crashed our website? I actually didn't see that.
Straight off the reveal. They had it back up quickly.
Good! Good. I was involved... I started working with Ensemble on Age 3, I think was the first one I as a studio manager was working with them on. That was a studio that had some real vision in what they wanted to do with this mix of history and RTS coming together. I think it's one of those franchises that deserves a great future.
I'm not surprised only by the timing. If anything this confirm they are planning to port both COH and AoE4 to Xbox that runs windows 10. This is a growing cross platform team IMO, they will recruit new devs for this. I suspect they will do PC first on steam and then port later to Xbox. With Halo Wars 2 they got that backward and no steam support except Halo Wars: Definitive Edition. Hopefully, this is PC first, xbox second. Info from Phil Spencer (see below interview link) about AoE seems to confirm this will be on steam.
Introducing @AgeOfEmpires IV [T], only on #Windows10. Check out the brand new trailer. #gamescom2017
Working with Head of Microsoft Studios/Phil Spencer, properly save SEGA a lot of money building a larger cross-platform team. This is a win-win deal for both publishers. Combined with Creative Assembly, this will grow to become a pretty large RTS team. Who knows, maybe Creative Assembly will be involved in COH3 (for Xbox).
I said years ago they were planning something bigger than Halo wars 2 and this is just the beginning. Wargaming/CA team also has plans to bring Total War: Arena to console.
Phil Spencer (MS gaming executive) is the real deal and does seem to care about making good games. After Ed Fries left MS gaming, xbox/pc had some bad years with leadership and studios leaving/going defunct.
I'll wrap up with a nice one. Tell me a little bit behind the process behind how Microsoft decided to bring Age of Empires back. Had it been kicking around for a long time?
I want to give Shannon Loftis a ton of credit. Shannon's been in Microsoft Studios for a long time, and is somebody I've worked with and have a ton of respect for.
There's some franchises... it's interesting, as we're investing more in our first party, and we've looking at new IP in some of our existing franchises and things that do really well, Age is just one of those things that year after year on Steam, we see it continue to sell, even though the infrastructure that's underneath the game is creaking a little bit. The community's been there supporting it.
She said, you know, this is something we should bring onto our modern platform. Make it visually more up to speed. You're obviously not going to take that game and completely make it a 4K game and everything, but make it look something closer to modern. Support some of the Live features that we have. And then let's think about where this franchise can actually go.
We own it, so maybe it seems like we're talking about ourselves a little bit, but I think it's one of the important franchises in gaming, and I think it deserves a future.
It's the 20th anniversary. So this could be the start of the renaissance? That's how you feel about it?
I do. And I think the interesting thing is the community's been out there kind of supporting this game without us. And shame on us, right?
They crashed the website today.
[Laughs] I'm really excited. They crashed our website? I actually didn't see that.
Straight off the reveal. They had it back up quickly.
Good! Good. I was involved... I started working with Ensemble on Age 3, I think was the first one I as a studio manager was working with them on. That was a studio that had some real vision in what they wanted to do with this mix of history and RTS coming together. I think it's one of those franchises that deserves a great future.
Meanwhile, Heaton will continue in his role as studio director at Creative Assembly while also becoming a flag bearer for the continued development standards of Sega Europe's numerous studios. In addition to supporting Sega Europe's other studio directors, Heaton will also advise on best practice and encourage cross-studio collaboration across the business, and keep in close contact with Sega Europe's COO and president about all studio and development matters.
Cross-studio collaboration might be related to Relic expanding to console. CA AAA console team was Halo Wars 2 and Alien Isolation.
Hey there! I'm a community manager at a game studio and a freelance artist. This is where I come to play all my fave games and to get creative during my time off. Go ahead and give a follow so you know when I'm live!
No DoW3 credits included. So they have been working on other unannounced projects/games since they gave up on their five years COH2 plan.
Senior, versatile, experienced designer with 20 years in the Computer Games Industry including 17 years at critically-acclaimed studio, Relic Entertainment.
Titles/Roles Include;
Homeworld - Designer
Impossible Creatures - Designer
Company of Heroes - Senior Designer
Company of Heroes; Opposing Fronts - Gameplay Supervisor
Space Marine - Lead Designer
Company of Heroes 2 - Game Director
Several SEGA leaders has been promoted to support the 2020 plan, this includes but not limited to;
Meanwhile, Heaton will continue in his role as studio director at Creative Assembly while also becoming a flag bearer for the continued development standards of Sega Europe's numerous studios. In addition to supporting Sega Europe's other studio directors, Heaton will also advise on best practice and encourage cross-studio collaboration across the business, and keep in close contact with Sega Europe's COO and president about all studio and development matters.
Cross-studio collaboration might be related to Relic expanding to console. CA AAA console team was Halo Wars 2 and Alien Isolation.
Before leaving to join Tencent (owner of Riot Games) Jurgen Post gave several good interviews on SEGA;
"The games is where the love of the community starts, then secondly for the studio, and thirdly there is the publisher. So at some point, the success of the studios will start to reflect on Sega."
In 2012, Sega cut back to focus on three key series – Sonic, Football Manager and Total War – and has been gradually adding additional franchise ‘pillars’ ever since.
In 2013 it acquired Relic, along with the Company of Heroes and Dawn of War IP. This year, it has added Endless Space creators Amplitude to its family of studios.
Then there’s an altogether different pillar – one devoted to independent games.
“It’s called Sega Searchlight,” explains Post. “It looks into new creative opportunities, the sort of titles that could be a standalone pillar in the future. One example is Motorsport Manager by PlaySport. When it was released on mobile, it did 1.6m downloads... OK, it’s a $3 product, but it shows there is an appetite for something different. Now we are bringing it to PC this autumn. That’s a Searchlight product, and we have more of those with announcements due over the coming months.”
SEGA Europe IPs expanding into Asia;
“Another area we are focusing on is China. We have launched Football Manager Online in China, and we believe there is a big opportunity for strategy games in the territory, so we’re looking into that.”
He concludes: “It is an exciting times with lots of opportunities.”
Expanding RTS to console;
He continues: “As a non-strategy gamer, Halo Wars 2 is very easy to get into. It also plays very well on console. It is a great opportunity to bring the RTS genre to a wider audience, but also to bring RTS to console... these are all great learnings for all of us.”
The duo, who were previously responsible for titles such as Theme Park, Black & White and Fable, already have a new sim title in development, and the wider team at Two Point Studios is made up of ex-Bullfrog and Lionhead employees.
Bullfrog has previouly created RTS titles such as Dungeon Keeper and Populous with the legendary game maker Molyneux. Peter Molyneux with Lionhead previously worked with Relic founder (Alex Garden) when he was with Microsoft/Xbox. IMO, during the Homeworld era these two were among the very best RTS visionaries. Thx to EA, they really messed up Dungeon Keeper with mobile games.
Warhammer 40k: Dark Millenium Online - $30 million - Former THQ executive Danny Bilson told Eurogamer last year the publisher spent around $30 million on this licensed MMO before the title was cancelled.
Homefront - $50 million - THQ's attempt to take on Call of Duty had a $50 million development budget, according to former Kaos Studios producer Dex Smither (Update: Link to his CV removed at his request; he subsequently confirmed the $50 million budget figure to Kotaku directly).
RTS games - year 2001:
Black & White $5.7 million - Peter Molyneux's Game Developer postmortem for the game said the god game cost $5.7 million to develop.
RTS games - year 2006;
Anno 1701 - €8 million - A press release from developer Sunflowers pegged development costs of the strategy game at eight million euros.
Empire Earth III - $10 million - A former Mad Doc Software producer said the strategy sequel cost $10 million to develop.
As a series Warhammer 40k Dawn of War has sold more than 7 million copies worldwide, whilst the “Company of Heroes” series, a real time strategy game based on the modern history of warfare from World War II and after, has sold more than 4 million copies worldwide.
In the same time period (2014-2017), Relic grew to almost 200 devs. Vancouver living expenses are high especially real estate. This means their salaries have to be considerably higher than other cities to attract new talent outside Vancouver.
Relic has openly said this was their biggest RTS to date and they recruited many new devs based on that premise and future AAA games.
Denmark
hipbreakers) so I helped out at Blackbird Interactive, but sadly haven't been bringing them donuts for more than a few months after my day job in Healthcare IT got exciting.
Cobra
Ozena
Relic Entertainment
cblanco ★ 
보드카 중대 
VonManteuffel 
