Chapter Review – Halo Wars

In the final chapter of Blood, Sweat, and Pixels that I will be reviewing, the company and game in question is that of Ensemble Studios, the creators of the game Halo Wars. Ensemble Studios back in 2004 was having a bit of an identity crisis, feeling they had lost their way and lost the joy of doing what they wanted to do while working on game prototypes that just weren’t making them happy. Years earlier, they had released a hit Real Time Strategy game called Age of Empires, which got them and their publisher, Microsoft, a heft fortune. After the sequel, several expansions, and other sources of profit, they were bought by Microsoft in order to continue to work on the games next installment, Age of Empires III, which was set to come out the next year in 2005. After many years of working on RTS games, they grew tired of the same old thing, but every chance they took to veer towards something new with their smaller development team, a problem in Age‘s development lead that team to keep going back to help fix it. After many months of working on Age, and as they grew more tired of their second project Wrench, a game about driving cars that no one on the team was overly excited about, they decided to cancel their production of that game and look into making a console RTS game, a task that seemed impossible and exciting for them, named Phoenix. Little did they know that Microsoft had other ideas.

Changing Gears

They worked on assets and stories for months, laying out ideas of how their game would work and function as an RTS on the console. When it finally came time to present their world to the Xbox executives, the executives were extremely on board with the idea. They loved the thought of a console RTS game, imagining how well it would sell, but they only had one change to make to the idea, using the Halo IP instead. All of the work on assets and stories would go to waste from the last several months, instead just creating the game based on the highly popular series. The developers were angered by this offer, feeling it to be disrespectful to the work they had done, as though they were being asked to swap out their newborn child with one that looked nicer. The Xbox team, however, put their foot down with the ultimatum: Either it’s Halo, or you’re all going to be laid off. This dashed the hearts of the designers, but without any other choice, they went to work redesigning the game from the ground up again. Not only was their workload increased again, but also the pressure they had on themselves to deliver a quality game. Age of Empires was extremely successful, but it was nothing in comparison to the behemoth of Halo, and the creation of a good game would heavily affect their future. With Halo 3 also in production around this time, the tension was on for the company, and their first debut of the game had it release around 2006, with a full release in 2007. Many problems were raised during their production, especially with an understaffed team. In the end, it would take an extra 2 years for the game to release in 2009. Before that though, Microsoft had some news.

Bad News

In September 2008, employees of Ensemble Studios gathered in an assembly with the executives of Microsoft and the head of Ensemble. As the head approaches, he drops the bad news. Ensemble is over. Microsoft is shutting down support on their studio, and they only have four months left to be open while they work on the rest of the game. With two other studios Microsoft could have let go, why did it have to be them? Put simply, that’s just how the market and industry goes if you make delays and are not the best. Even if you deliver good products, you won’t always make it. Upon its release finally, Halo Wars was a hit and made Microsoft a lot of money. But Ensemble Studios crumbled away, with many people leaving to make their own companies. To some, they possibly encountered a worse fate. They were reassigned into different Microsoft Studios, keeping their job but losing their family of many decades from Ensemble Studios.

My Thoughts

Ensemble Studios got the short stick when it comes to the business world, but with so many stories out there of studios going down like this, it’s not the most surprising either. In hindsight, there were many tells that would have lead to their getting shut down. For how many delays they had to suffer and how small of a studio they were in the grand scheme of things, not being able to timely deliver their product to Microsoft surely injured their likelihood of staying open. Another problem as well was their butting heads with the heads of the Xbox part of Microsoft when trying to get Phoenix to be their flagship game for the console RTS, being another variable leading to their getting laid off. Simply being more controlled by those who hire you, unfortunately, can sometimes save you from the bad future of getting fired, even if it drains your soul at times. As well as that, working in a much more timely manner could also help you stay afloat. If I was in a sinking company and I only had four months left until I was laid off, I am not sure what I would do. I feel it would at least give me a bit of a head start to start looking for a new job or trying to prove myself worthy of being kept around and moved to another studio. No matter the theoretical outcome, the true outcome of Ensemble Studio is an unfortunate, but ready reminder of the fears of working in the gaming industry and a warning to what could happen to your company, even if you deliver quality content.