Postmortem: Big Huge Games' Rise of Nations
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P O S T M O R T E M t i m t r a i n w i t h b r i a n r e y n o l d s Big Huge Games’ RISE OF NATONS he name of our company is a summa- gle-player campaigns. In addition to these, we also tion of our corporate attitude: aim stumbled in some areas that were unique to our sit- for the top, but don’t take yourself uation and company culture. too seriously along the way. In this case, “aiming for the What Went Right Ttop” meant putting together a company and a game designed to go head-to-head in Prototype method of game one of the most competitive and resource- 1. design. Part of the core intensive segments of the PC market- vision for RISE OF NATIONS place: real-time strategy games. To suc- involved introducing gameplay ceed, our first game needed all the innovations inspired by our fun, depth, and polish of products experience making turn-based that enjoyed bigger budgets and games into the “classic” real more manpower due to their rec- time strategy mix. We had 10 ognizable franchises. Since they to 15 “wild” ideas about what don’t give out Game Developers might take realtime strategy in Choice Awards for “Best Game Made new directions, but we knew that only some, With Fewer Than 30 People,” we had to maybe only a small few, were going to work, and find ways to work both harder and we didn’t know which ones. It was essential that smarter if we wanted to achieve our goals. we find out as soon as possible which ideas were Big Huge Games was formed in early worth implementing, and we knew from experience 2000 by a core team who had worked that the only sure way to accomplish this is to together for close to 10 years, creating throw the ideas into a playable prototype right from best-sellers such as COLONIZATION, the beginning. CIVILIZATION II, and ALPHA We got a playable solo prototype running CENTAURI. This history of suc- within the first month, and a fully cessful strategy games allowed playable multiplayer version more than us to go to publishers with a two years prior to ship. We could throw convincing pitch for a next-gen- new ideas in and see the results almost eration RTS. Although we immediately: some concepts needed a understood the issues little tweaking to be fun, while oth- involved in creating turn- ers got trashed almost as soon as based games, almost all they went in. The value of pro- of the areas where we totyping is that core concepts failed to address risks end up being continuously adequately involved refined over years, while pro- areas where we had viding lots of time to balance minimal experi- the game. ence, such as mul- As part of the proto- tiplayer match- type approach to making and design, we make sure making linear sin- that everyone in the 36 j u l y 2 0 0 3 | g a m e d e v e l o p e r company is playing the game on a regular basis. After each daily play session, a member of the design team compiles everyone’s feedback and sends a summary to the rest of the designers. However, we found that we had to be willing to wade through some resistance to new features or gameplay tweaks. People would get very attached to certain strategies for playing or even just conventions of RTS games of which they were hesi- tant to let go. Choosing the right publisher. Over the 2. years, the production values and polish levels on RTS games have risen along with the popularity of the genre. Given the scope of the competition we were G A M E D A T A up against, a major concern for us was finding a pub- lisher who would be willing to invest the resources PUBLISHER:Microsoft necessary in a new company to produce a product that NUMBER OF FULL-TIME DEVELOPERS: 26 could go head-to-head with the “big boys” — in NUMBER OF CONTRACTORS:16 essence, finding a publisher who shared our culture and LENGTH OF DEVELOPMENT: 3 years values. Our task was made somewhat easier by the fact RELEASE DATE: May 20, 2003 that the core team had already notched a couple of mil- TARGET PLATFORM:PC lion-sellers with other companies, but we still had diffi- DEVELOPMENT HARDWARE: WinXP PC culty in selling publishers on our business model. DEVELOPMENT SOFTWARE USED: In early 2000, when the company began, the industry Boundschecker, Altova XMLSpy, was in the throes of online mania and at the height of Araxis Merge, MacroExpress, PCLint, the Internet bubble. The “smart” money was flowing to online game sites and massively multiplayer titles. 3DS Max, Character Studio, MS Developer However, in our pitch meeting with Microsoft, we were Studio 6.0, Perforce Source Control, impressed with their approach: when we asked them Xoreax Incredibuild, Visual Assist, which of our five proposals they were most interested Workspace Whiz, Alexsys Team, in, they just asked us which game we’d be most interest- Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, ed in making. They seemed more interested in the team Intel VTUNE than in the specific proposal, which in our experience is PROJECT SIZE: *.C, *.CPP, *.H: a great approach to produce top-quality games. 1,721 total source files, Once we signed on board with Microsoft, we were 837, 939 total lines, 24,610,223 total bytes; amazed at the level of support they gave us. When we *.BHS: 46 total files, 24,330 total lines, thought of Microsoft, we took their marketing and 966,289 total bytes sales capabilities for granted, but we were equally impressed by the quality of their development support. Two key groups really helped us polish our game: the T I M T R A I N | As vice president of operations and development, Tim heads up the internal development of Big Huge Games. With 12 years of leadership and team experience on numerous landmark PC titles beginning with CIVILIZATION I, Tim has worked in every genre of computer games. Tim served as executive producer and designer on RISE OF NATIONS. B R I A N R E Y N O L D S | Brian is president of Big Huge Games and a 12-year industry veteran. Honored by PC Gamer as one of 25 “Game Gods,” Brian has masterminded the design of numerous hit strategy games, including CIVILIZATION II and ALPHA CENTAURI, and now RISE OF NATIONS. w w w . g d m a g . c o m 37 P O S T M O R T E M catption here play-balancers and the usability labs. Throughout much of the two rounds of phone interviews are brought to Big Huge and last eight months of the project we had four to six full-time interviewed by every person on staff. After each interview the play-testers assigned to the project whose sole job was helping company meets and discusses the candidate’s strengths and weak- to balance the game. These guys were expert-level RTS players nesses, at which point anyone can veto a hire for any reason. who could smoke the designers after very little time with the Although this process has gotten more time-consuming and game. They helped us find and fix all kinds of broken strategies difficult as the company has grown, the end result has been well and degenerate gameplay, and ensured a much more balanced worth the effort. A major advantage of this system is ensuring game for hardcore players right out of the gate. that every new hire can work and play well with others; if they The usability labs took care of the other end of the spectrum, can impress through multiple interviews with a diverse set of the casual players who aren’t as familiar with the ins and outs of people, then we can have confidence that they will fit in from RTS games. Between the various tutorials, core gameplay, and the day one. Perhaps most importantly, it ensures that none of our Conquer the World single-player campaign, members of Big Huge full-timers has the experience of being introduced to someone took up five weeks of the usability labs as we watched beginner- they’ve never met before in their life as “. And here’s who level players struggle through basic game concepts. Our program- you’ll be working with on such-and-such for the next year.” mers were there in the labs, coding changes on the fly, able to put a new version up for the next subject. Usability’s input resulted in Developing powerful in-house tools. Our pro- hundreds of changes to the game, making it more streamlined and 4. grammers worked from the philosophy that taking a easy to jump into. It’s hard to overstate the contribution both the little extra time initially to develop a good tool or algorithm play-test and usability groups made to the final product. pays off manyfold in time saved over the course of the project, while improving the quality of the final product. We also Disciplined hiring process. We started the compa- learned not to rely exclusively on one particular tool but rather 3. ny with a proven method of developing strategy to use an array of tools to help narrow down a problem. games through prototyping, and soon afterward we had a pub- Following are some of the internal tools and techniques which lisher that shared our vision and complemented our strengths.