Postmortem: Ensemble Studio's Age of Empires II: Age of Kings
This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
For anyone who has ever worked on a PC game and poured their heart and soul into their work, they may have imagined in an optimistic moment, “If this game sells a million copies…” Maybe it was spoken out loud, or carefully whispered so that no one else would hear. It’s the expression of the dreams and promise of success that drives so many of us. But recently I found myself somewhere I never anticipated as I listened to this ironic ending to that very statement: “… I am going to be so disappointed if that’s all it sells.” And you know what? I had to agree.
Two years ago in a previous postmortem published in Game Developer, I told you the story of Ensemble Studios, a scrappy upstart that overcame challenges to create the game Age of Empires (AoE). Since its release two years ago in the great real-time strategy (RTS) wars of 1997, approximately three million copies of AoE have been sold worldwide, along with almost a million copes of the Rise of Rome (RoR) expansion pack. The totals don’t give the whole story, though. AoE proved to be a consistent seller, hanging around the top of the PC Data charts, and even re-entered the top ten a year-and-a-half after its release. The demographics of the buyers were another surprise. Sure we had the sales to the 14- to 28-year-old male hard-core players, but we also had significant sales to older players, women of all ages, and casual game players of all sorts. That is to say we had a crossover hit on our hands. If you have ever watched the VH1 show Behind the Music, then you know the story of the upstart band that finds itself suddenly on top of the world — things change, and not always for the better. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that we sank into a wild orgy of sex, fast cars, and money — despite the wishes of a couple of our guys — but this change along with the benefits of success brought us a whole new set of challenges, making our next game no easier than the first.
