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Where do you get your ideas
One of the most frequent comments I get from people when I talk about what I do is "I have this great idea for a game!" Most of the time they're right. People have given us plenty of great ideas, more than I'll ever be able to develop in my lifetime, and I've even had a few of my own. In fact, Stainless Steel is focused on developing cutting-edge real-time strategy games because we believe that we've barely scratched the surface of what this genre is capable of being. There are a ton of great RTS concepts waiting to be developed. Unfortunately, great ideas are only the beginning of the game-development process.
So we started brainstorming, not only about what civilizations we wanted to see in the game but also about the very concept of a predefined civilization. That's where the strengths of Stainless Steel's organization really started helping us out. Every person at Stainless Steel, in addition to being highly proficient at their jobs, has a top-notch mind and is a passionate gamer. Letting a portion of that brainpower and passion go to waste would be a crime. That's why everyone is expected to help out in the design process. Unfortunately, "expected" is kind of a sloppy word: it implies a burden on the staff when we see it as liberation. We also have another incredible resource to tap - our gamers! The Internet and our Web site allow us to tap into a vast network of minds, each of which is capable of generating fresh concepts. Our own Empire Earth Strike Team is a squad of fifty of the world's best Age of Empires® players who play early versions of the game and give us feedback on what's working, what's fun and what needs to be changed.
We examined the role that civilizations would have in the game and each question we asked brought up more questions. We pondered this problem for a long time and listened to suggestions from a lot of different people (a process that's still continuing). Eventually, though, a thunderbolt hit us. If we were having this much trouble deciding what civilizations we wanted to put into the game, imagine the trouble the player will have while playing the game! One of the things we learned from Age of Empires is that among players of equal skill, the choice of civilizations and the attendant bonuses that come with them makes a huge difference.
The way the best design ideas often do, the concept of "civilization points" not only solved some nagging game play dilemmas, it also opened up broad new areas of strategy. For example, this system will help players get into the game faster. If you're like us, you know how annoying it can be in a multiplayer game waiting for the other players to select their civ/skin/mod/weapons or whatever. This system throws you right into the game and makes your choice a vital and strategic part of it. If, when you explore the map, you realize that you've started the game on a small island, you'll clearly want to jack up your boating skills - or will you? Perhaps you know that your opponent likes building impregnable cities so you want to increase the damage your catapults can do.
These civilization points also provide a way for players to handicap themselves to account for different levels of skill. Players of different skill levels can be allocated different numbers of skill points. That way a novice can take 100 points, say, and an experienced player 25. This means that both players can play the game at their maximum ability and be assured of a challenge. In this way, we expect Empire Earth to appeal to a broad spectrum of gamers, from those who have completely memorized Napoleon's order of battle to those who (to quote Bill and Ted) just know of Napoleon as "that short French dude." |
For example, at the beginning of the design process for Empire Earth we found ourselves discussing what civilizations we wanted to include in the game. We found ourselves debating endlessly back and forth about many of the great historical empires and why they would make good additions to the game. For example, playing as the English would allow players to get more involved with naval units because of the historical English talents on the sea. The Egyptians, on the other hand, would clearly have an advantage in social cohesion and the production of wealth (gold).
Beyond them, we have loyal fans who discuss the game all the time on bulletin boards and in newsgroups. We even get concepts from people talking on the 'net about what they liked and disliked in other strategy games. The best part about this network of gamers is that the majority of them really get it. They've played hundreds of games in their day and the ideas they offer aren't just fuzzy concepts like "I'd like to see chariots because they look cool." They understand that their ideas have game ramifications, that game balance and game play are delicate things made up of hundreds of interconnected factors. The reasoned analyses these gamers offer for free on the 'net are of incalculable value to game designers.
That's when we threw out the concept of pre-configured civilizations. In Empire Earth players won't select from a short list on the pre-game setup screen. Rather, each player will be allotted "civilization points" that they can use to customize their civilization from scratch. Players will be able to spend these points at any time during the game's first Epoch, allowing for exploration of the map. The player can't advance to the next Epoch until they make their selection and name their civilization, which is then automatically saved and broadcast to the other players. Once the points are spent the player won't be able to change it. Players can also create custom "civ packs" on their own when not in the game, save them and call them up as needed. That way if a player finds that their custom "Carthaginian Pack" is very useful on a particular map or against a particular enemy (heh heh!) it'll be quickly available for use.
Given the number of different options we are putting into the game, the selection of civilization bonuses quickly becomes one of the game's most fun aspects. Like in a huge game of rock/paper/scissors, players find themselves trying to outthink their opponents on a number of levels. "Well, this map is a desert map," a player might think, "so perhaps I should give my food gatherers a bonus, but my opponent knows I did that last time and he gave his priests a conversion bonus and stole my gatherers. Perhaps I should give myself a bonus against priestly conversion, but if he knows I'm going to do that…" and so on.
