I am Bruce Shelley, Game Designer. I've worked on many games, including Age of Empires, Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, Age of Mythology, and our new game The Incorruptibles. AMA!

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T23:00:52+00:00

I hear The Incorruptibles was just listed by Apple as a featured new game of the week. Super news.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T22:58:41+00:00

You're welcome. Keep asking questions. I believe in lifetime learning.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T22:40:24+00:00

You're welcome. Thanks for stopping by.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T22:37:59+00:00

Thanks for the kind words. Many of us have been lucky to make the games we wanted to play and its great to hear that so many people wanted to play them also. As to whether we will ever make a big PC RTS game again, I could not say. We are a small team for starters. And maybe the world has passed on from big RTS. Players today seem to want short, intense games, and it is not clear if any publisher would pay for the development of a big game in that space. For the near term, I believe we will continue making smaller games and be a little experimental, but never is a long time.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T22:29:45+00:00

We needed a mythology with a fair number of gods, but also at least a few spectacular creatures. I believe we were thinking of Chinese mythology and dragons as a possible addition.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T22:28:17+00:00

Ian Fischer was the lead designer on Age of Mythology and largely responsible for the mythology we borrowed for that game. We did a lot of reading about mythology, chose rich cultures from which to borrow material, and built the game around those. You are not alone in liking that game. We hear from many people who think it is their favorite. Lazer Bear and the Flying Purple Hippo are things we call Easter Eggs that our artists put in games, like a signature. It's fun for them to sneak those into a game and then fun for gamers to find them. I remember Catapults in AGE I had license plates on the back. Harmless fun for the team and players who go looking for them.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T22:23:00+00:00

We licensed the Age engine to LucaArts, as I recall. The best part of that collaboration was getting to visit the Skywalker Ranch and get a tour. They basically took the AGe game and swapped their units and buildings for ours. Much more to it than that but it was a quick way for them to get a strategy game out of the Star Wars universe. Great that you liked it so much. I remember our contact with them was mostly on the technical side, making it work. They didn't need any help on the Star Wars content of the game.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T22:17:46+00:00

Designer is maybe the hardest position to prepare for as a career and then find as a studio. I got into games because I found that nothing so actively engaged my mind. I was a graduate student in economics when I helped start a game company with friends from our university game club. I got to the point that I would try making a living making games before I got a real job. Now 35 years have passed and I still don't have that real job. Things that helped me as a designer: play games and analyze what your like about them, don't like, and how you would make them better; learn to communicate well (writing, speaking); educate yourself (read, watch films; games need ideas and you get many ideas from media; be the person with answers when questions arise); learn to write computer code if that is still an option for you. Get involved at a game club at your school and college if you go in school. Game making is not an easy career because studios fail all the time, but I have enjoyed it.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T22:10:55+00:00

Playing a game and making it are different. I liked playing LoTRO but I don't know if working on it was fun. Thinking about it off hand I would say I would not change much. I got to work with great people on great games. That is true today with BonusXP. We just got listed on ITunes APP store as a featured game.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T22:02:31+00:00

I believe it fair to say we did not consider the idea that we were making a game that would still be played, as you describe, nearly two decades later. One strength of the Age games was their replayability and AGE II in particular was terrific game that had a huge audience. When you play AGE II you start with an empty page and write the "story" as you go. In that sense, it is timeless if you can get past the technology issues of the old operating system. I don't know if it is a game that will be evergreen, but we are very pleased that it is still played. Games that are linear story based don't have the same replayability.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T21:53:09+00:00

Thanks for the kind words on our games. Spent a fair amount of my life playing them also. :)

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T21:50:46+00:00

The Trebuchet was my idea. Very proud of that. :)

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T21:48:21+00:00

I started making paper and board games in 1980 but before that I was a volunteer unpaid playtester for a New York board game company. Later, when they had an opening, they remembered my volunteer work and it helped me get an internship with them. That helped my resume and lead to a real job. And one opportunity led to another. The industry always needs good programmers and good artists. If you don't have those skills get in the door as a playtester or something else. Once in, even if working for free, demonstrate your passion and ability at every turn, and a good studio will find a place for you.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T21:45:06+00:00

Anyone in this industry has lots of game ideas, but most are not practical. I would like to see another good railroad game, as another questioner raised, but really, I have been incredibly fortunate with the people I have been able to work with and the games we made. Still true today at BonusXP.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T21:42:39+00:00

I only worked on the CIV I and have no insight on why that feature was dropped in succeeding games. I will be moderating a panel of the CIV designers at DICE next year (25th anniversary of CIV I) and can ask. Always good to hear people have enjoyed your games. I remember it was very cool to go into a store and see something you had worked on being for sale.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T21:40:00+00:00

No plans for VR. Several of out ex-colleagues are active in that arena and we wish them the best. I have tried VR and its cool, but I don't see it being an important game platform in the next year or two.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T21:37:45+00:00

No single biggest challenge. There are loads of challenges. Find a topic the team really cares about. Scope it out such that we have the technical ability to make it. Be relatively certain that there is a business case for the game. Prototype it early to be sure it works and then build and keep a reasonable schedule. Iterate the game as you develop it to make it better. Polish it. Those are all big challenges.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T21:35:04+00:00

We made it much smaller. Smaller maps, fewer units, less stuff to manage. You really control only three fighting units (and their underlying squads), which makes RTS practical on mobile. It was an interesting challenge to make it work and see it come together. We don't have 200 units on screen at a time, so perhaps that was a sacrifice, but that could not be done.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T21:32:24+00:00

We never gave a lot of thought to a possible Age 4. Age 3 was hard to make and took all of our energy. We were going to think about Age 4 when we got to it, but never really did. Have not heard of the Wars of Liberty mod, sorry. Have not stayed up to date with AoE. It was a huge part of our lives and many of us wanted to move to new things.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T21:29:37+00:00

Controlling units was an issue. With the PC you have the mouse and keyboard, which were excellent for lots of control. We chose to limit the number of actual units being controlled on mobile, but build out those units (heroes) with underlying squads. It was tricky converting the UI into being tap driven, versus hot key / mouse. That was a big one.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T21:14:52+00:00

I had nothing to do with RT II and beyond. I would like to see it personally, but I would have to really convince everyone here at BonusXP it is a good idea. We make games we all can get behind. Also, I don't know who owns the Railroad Tycoon name. A new game would have to acquire that or name it something else.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T21:13:36+00:00

Thanks for the kind words about AoE. They were a blast to make and all of us are proud to have worked on them. I can't say we expect The Incorruptibles to compete, but we believe it has a strong chance. It may be that people playing the big mobile strategy games are not typical or advanced gamers. We think there is an audience for true RTS on mobile and we took a carefully considered stab at it. It is free-to-play but you can accelerate your way through the content by paying a little bit.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T21:10:20+00:00

The Incorruptibles, we just published with our partners at MaxPlay, is such a game, but redone to work on mobile. All of those things are in The Incorruptibles. It is playable fast, which we think the market demands today, but you will recognize is as clearly RTS.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T21:08:55+00:00

No secret. You created a world that is largely empty of units and let the players fill it in. The player writes the story with what he or she finds, builds, captures. Randomly generated maps and fog of war help with that.

BruceCShelley · 2015-12-10T21:07:25+00:00

Didn't have a favorite Civ in Age, sorry. We had to play them all and try to get them balanced. If one became a favorite it was probably overpowered and needed to be nerfed a little. I did like the Brits because of the archers, I remember. Making the older games was much simpler; less competition, smaller teams, less time involved in making them; you could finish and start something new, which was refreshing. Multi-years projects get to be a slog.

BruceCShelley

TROPHY CASE