Ensemble Studios Was a Victim of Its Own Success, Former Employee Says

Strategy games are a very special genre in the industry, as they usually address a niche audience, but, with the right marketing, can also appeal to a broader one. However, once they release a successful title, their developers are usually only classified by specialists as Real Time Strategy experts, and when they come up with new projects that don’t belong to the said genre, not a lot of individuals can take them seriously.

That is what has recently happened to Ensemble Studios, the creator of hit strategy franchise Age of Empires, which has been shut down by its owner, Microsoft, after completing the Halo Wars RTS title. According to David Rippy, a former member of the company that now leads Bonfire Studios, a team of other former staff from Ensemble, the success it had with Age of Empires made them be classified as the “RTS guys,” who only knew how to make strategy games.

“With the cost of creating games so high, studios are almost forced to diversify across platforms,” Rippy shares. “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.'”

With the recent disbandment of the company and the creation of several smaller studios led by former staff members, we will perhaps see new and interesting projects coming from them, which will bear the spiritual mark of Ensemble. Success can sometimes lead to some very unfortunate decisions, but seeing how some studios manage to create different titles like Insomniac, which is responsible for both the hardcore shooter series Resistance but also the more casual Ratchet and Clank series, there is still hope for a lot of other companies.