Developer Interview: Rick Goodman
GameSpot | 04/29/03

My name is Rick Goodman; I’m a game designer at Stainless Steel Studios. Well, I started out working on a game called Age of Empires. And after Age of Empires, I was lucky enough to be able to work on more real-time-strategy games and followed that up with a game called Empire Earth. And now, Stainless Studios is working on its next title called Empires: Dawn of the Modern World.

Well, the direction that we’re heading with Empires is one in which was helped to be defined by our customers. We’ve listened a lot to what our customers have to say and we’ve integrated a lot of their feedback into the design and into the process. So coming up with a vision for the game, we’ve really taken a lot of input from customers themselves. And one of the things that customers told us is that they really wanted a historical real time strategy game, epic in scope and scale. So you can play on large, large maps for example, combining air, land and sea operations. You can have long games, and you can have large sieges. Those are some of the things customers told us they really enjoyed about real-time-strategy games. But one thing that stood out the most, that they told us, was that they want to have a different experience each time they play. And lead a different civilization. They wanted each civilization in the game to be totally unique and totally different. And that’s really one of our main focuses. Each civilization is very different; it has unique economies, unique military abilities, unique inherent abilities, unique units, and unique technology trees.

In a typical historical real-time-strategy game, the technology that you research might boost your archer range by 20%. In Empires: Dawn of the Modern World, we’ve done away with that paradigm, because we didn’t think that was as fun as it ought to be. So the technologies we’ve included in the game are much more powerful, much more interregnal into the game. And so, for example, you can have a technology or a special ability for each civilization that allows you to cause a rebellion within your enemy ranks. Or another one: The King’s Encouragement, that is actually a very powerful ability that allows you to bring all of your units, across your entire civilization, to full strength immediately.

These technologies are so interesting and so powerful that they actually influence the outcome of the game. You want to climb the technology tree at a rate that’s appropriate for your game, so in some games, you’ll want to try to move forward in technology to beat your opponents; in other games, you’ll want to sit in one age for a longer period of time to make sure you’ve research everything that’s available to you. So, if you go to the next age, say you go from World War I to World War II, you get to upgrade many of your weapons, and technologies, and units. Now, you have technologies that you’ve also researched in World War I, which are carried with you. So they’re very much applicable to World War II, once you go to the next age. And also, of course, as the game progresses, you get access to new units, so in World War I, you first get access to anti-aircraft guns, tanks, and aircraft, to name a few of the new and exciting weapons available to you as you increase your technology.

One of the things that our customers told us was that they wanted more influence on the outcome of combat and battles, and that’s one thing that we… that’s one of our key design goals, was to make sure that each and every battle was determined not by the game designers, but by the players. So in fact, almost every unit in the game has special secondary abilities and attacks. For example, the German Sergeant has the ability to convey morale bonuses to his surrounding troops; he also carries a second weapon, which is a panzerfaust, which is effective against tanks, in addition to his pistol. So, players now in Empires have the ability to determine the outcome of the battle, in ways they’ve never been able to do before in a historical-strategy game. And I think that’s one of the things that gamers ask for that’s going to make this game as fun as it possibly can be.

Well, a few of the Middle Age specialized units that the English have, that define the English that are historically accurate, are the Battlefield Surgeon, which can raise mortally wounded troops on the battlefield. They have a trebuchet that can launch a carcass of a cow that’s been infected with Black Death on its enemies. And they also have special naval abilities, which allow them to designate a Flagship. A flagship is a super powerful ship in their navy. Which they always can have one of, never more, but they can always have one, which allows them to be a very powerful naval civilization. If you play England on up through the 5 ages in the game, you’ll also have new special abilities. Special air force abilities, special naval abilities, and special land abilities. For example, the English in World War II have an SAS unit that can plant bombs and detonate them to destroy buildings. It can also swim across rivers, and they also have an amphibious tank, which can travel on land and sea. So it’s very much in keeping with the historical special abilities and unique strengths of the English civilization.

The Chinese have a kind of theme to them, that in accordance with their traditions and their beliefs and their religion, because they have access to some semi-historical events and technologies which are fun and exciting and can really make a difference in playing the Chinese. But their unique in that sense, their technologies are a bit off over the top.

The Germans are a more traditional civilization in the sense that in World War I and World War II, they rely heavily on their tanks and weaponry. Since their technologies were much more advanced, than some of their opponents at the time. So, they have weapons such as the King Tiger tank, 88-millimeter anti-tank gun, and eventually, the V2.

Now, play balancing these very different civilizations was a huge challenge. In fact, we had to throw out everything we had learned about play balancing from our previous projects, and start from scratch on Empires. Because by its very definition, what we wanted to create were civilizations that were imbalanced, and the more imbalanced each component of a civilization is, the more fun it would be to play that civilization. What we wanted to do was achieve balance on a high level, but not on a unit-by-unit or economy or technology level. So, in fact, if you play some civilizations, you’ll find some with strong units, some with weak economies, some with strong air forces, and yet, on a whole, the goal at Stainless Steel Studios is to make sure each civilization was balanced against each civilization.

Currently, the game is about 60-70% complete. And we haven’t announced a public release date, but we will be doing so within the month.