The Rise and Fall of Empire Earth

congratulations comrade general see how the American president could dance for combat during the early 2000s realtime strategy games were booming from blizzard and westwoods fantastical machinations to creative assembly and ensemble Studios historical excursions the genre had a game in almost every style and setting conceivable and they were all consistently great yet of all these games few offered his widest scope as stainless steel Studios inaugural title Empire earth the brainchild of Rick Goodman who had previously helped conceive age of empires during ensemble's infancy Empire Earth allowed players to embark on a tour of human history the likes of which had never been seen before one that started at the dawn of human civilization ended in the far-flung future and offered an unparalleled level of customizability the entire way through well it wouldn't prove the most prolific game of this era it would have no trouble finding an audience willing to evangelize it as well as continue to support it once expansions and sequels would start arriving from a new developer Mad Dog software but almost as soon as Mad doc would show itself mostly capable of living up to the high bar set by stainless steel it would irreparably corrupt the series formula scaring off its fan base and sending it into a slumber from which it has yet to wake this is a story about an improbable realtime strategy series and all that was great about it yet this is also a story about the importance of balancing one's desire to branch out and reach new audiences and keeping true to what it is that people came to love about once work in the first place this is the rise and fall of Empire [Music] [Music] the origins of empire earth began in 1995 with a development of age of empire said ensemble studios established by a group of IT consultants turned game developers ensembles staff had become inspired to try and melt together the historicity and scope of sid meier's civilization with the realtime strategizing of warcraft and command & Conquer believing that the end result would make for a highly original and enjoyable product not only were strategy video games based on real life history uncommon at this point in time but by theming all of their games units around actual machines and people players were familiar with they would be able to more easily communicate their abilities and level of effectiveness where a sci-fi game like Starcraft forced players to learn more from experience than intuition how its obscure menagerie of aliens each function Age of Empires would allow one to figure out how its units functioned at a glance as they would be known troops like archers cavalry and swordsman the ideas were in place but actually fashioning them into a game would prove challenging its main designers Brian Sullivan and Rick Goodman both one of the player to be able to advance to a new epoch of history every time they reached a certain threshold of technological development yet had differing views on how long of an experience this should be Goodman wanted players to be able to advance from prehistory to classical antiquity over the course of 7 epochs while Sullivan wanted to keep the game's timeline smaller and more focused in the end Goodman would realize that he was out reaching his capabilities and agreed to rein in these designs resulting in the game's epochs being reduced down to four and ending in the iron age but this initial concept of what Goodman wanted Age of Empires to be would continue to permeate his thoughts and after its release in 1997 he would depart ensemble so that he could take another stab at it on his own terms in order to accrue the capital and talent necessary to do so Goodman would return to his home in Cambridge Massachusetts and established stainless steel Studios once the studio's halls were filled all would hunker down and set about defining the scope and systems of their freshmen effort it was quickly decided that its mechanics wouldn't represent a massive departure from what ensamble had already proven to be effective with Age of Empires players would control several empires made up of various historically based units fight other empires and harvest resources so that they could purchase new units technology and buildings and advanced to a new epoch once a sufficient number of the latter was produced but where Age of Empires had only featured four epochs this new game titled Empire earth would feature 14 this meant that Empire Earth would allow players to take control of many more types of units than what ensembles game had offered as well as be able to explore much wider range of strategic possibilities in scenarios in addition it was also decided that Empire Earth would feature 21 playable civilizations instead of Age of Empires as 12 and be fully rendered in 3d all of this made for a dauntingly huge project so much so that it would end up taking twice as much time to complete as ensembles first game and lead to the creation of a then unorthodox development procedure that stainless steel would continue to employ for the rest of its existence the strike team a collection of highly experienced real time strategy players strewn across the United States and beyond the strike team effectively functioned as a crack mobile beta testing unit evaluating and providing feedback on Empire Earth's latest builds almost as soon as they were completed back to their employers New England headquarters and yet despite all of this everyone on both the strike team and stainless steels core staff interviewed during his development would Express nothing but love for what they were doing the game that we're making was utterly satisfying to see come together their co-workers were as supportive and talented as one could ever hope for and Goodman for all his lofty ambitions was a great boss and tutor [Music] [Music] when empire earth would finally arrive on store shelves in November of 2001 this love could almost be felt within its code almost everyone agreed that the religious journey had provided of progressing from stones to nuclear warheads was fun as were its campaigns which offered various historic debase scenarios sent across a few fixed epochs yet it was quickly apparent that what was most enjoyable about it was the sheer level of customizability that had allowed for across all of these modes from the myriad of ways that civilization builder and scenario editor allowed one to craft nations and missions to their liking ahead of battle to the sizable amount of tactical options had offered in the midst of it Empire Earth showed nothing but respect for how its players wanted to play the game rather than dictating how it wanted to be played but it also had a robust multiplayer suite one that allowed players to save and load games mid-session only made it all the more special this isn't to say that Empire Earth was without its hangups perhaps players most openly disliked aspect of the game was its ai's ability to cheat when one played against it on random maps which allowed it to have access to an infinite number of resources and build units and structures at a breakneck pace in an interview with fansite EE France in 2003 Goodman would explain that they had intentionally designed it to be this way out of the hope that it would keep human players on their toes no matter how experienced they were but in practice all it did was wall off all but the most hardcore of players from having a good time criticisms would also be lobbied at the feeling of redundancy that permeated some of the epochs as well as the quality of its voice acting look ahead these niches burning should we go around nonsense we fly straight through and when it would arrive on store shelves in September of 2002 most would agree that its expansion the art of conquest trailed behind it in terms of quality although the latter hadn't been stainless steels fault after completing work on Empire Earth the studio had decided that its skills would be better served on something new and signed a publishing deal with Activision to work on an original property this had resulted in ceará which had published Empire Earth and now owned his property rights contracting mad dog software - expand upon its design and develop this expansion based at the time in Lawrence Massachusetts Mad doc had been founded in 1999 from a collection of former Activision and Looking Glass Studios employees its founder dr. Ian Lane Davis had previously earned a doctorate in artificial intelligence and robotics and served as Activision's technical director in the years leading up to its formation because of this connection the studio's first assignments had been finishing call to power - and Star Trek Armada strategy games that had been previously started within activision before moving on to personally helm the development of Star Trek Armada - which would end up releasing within the same month as Empire Earth while the former wouldn't blow critics away it proved mad doc to be a competent enough developer as well as one with no qualms about helming other people's properties and after being given the go-ahead on the art of conquest aspects of its design if coincidentally would find their way into the latter in addition to introducing a host of new units playable civilizations and campaigns for players to enjoy on terra firma Maddock would also use the expansion to add a space-age epoch to Empire Earth's menagerie of time periods or at least what appeared to be the Space Age after getting their hands on it players quickly discovered that much of the new epochs combat was largely just naval warfare reskin to look like it was taking place over the abyss of space instead of water it wasn't bad it just wasn't nearly as exotic or different of an experience as its name suggested it would be and the rest of its content while comparatively more honest in terms of what it had to offer wasn't particularly earth-shattering either by the time of the art of conquest release critics had seen much worse expansions find their way onto the market but they'd also seen much better ones [Music] both Empire Earth and the art of conquest would end up being bundled together as Empire Earth Gold Edition which would go on to release in May of 2003 but by this point most stainless steel fans had already set their sights on what the studio had been working on for Activision Empires dawn of the modern world after completing Empire Earth stainless steel had made a point of meticulously reviewing everything about its first game that could be further improved and quickly came to the conclusion that its next one would benefit from a smaller more concentrated scope almost everyone agreed that its focus on guiding a civilization through multiple epochs made for a good time but many both within and outside the studio felt that it's prehistoric and futuristic epochs just weren't all that compelling what was compelling to both east groups were the epochs based in the Middle Ages and world wars and the prospect of experiencing them using significantly more realistic civilizations than those featured in Empire Earth for this reason the studio had decided to make their next title focused solely on the slice of human history between these two periods and a smaller yet more distinctive roster of playable civilizations where Empire Earth's civilizations had largely shared the exact same units buildings and abilities dawn of the modern worlds would all feel vastly different from one another and possess a vast array of strengths and weaknesses that reflected their individual histories in order to ensure that said histories were depicted accurately stainless steel would conduct a tireless amount of research over the course of the game's development especially when it came to civilizations it planned to include that were scarcely represented in Western media such as medieval Korea it was a considerable amount of work yet making sure each of these different groups were also balanced against one another in combat would require even more speaking to GameSpot in 2003 Goodman would describe how the latter represented a particularly unique challenge as it forced the studio to completely overhaul everything it had learnt about game balancing over the course of Empire Earth's development that games civilizations had been more numerous but their relative similarity to one another meant that if each of their individual it's abilities and other attributes were balanced they would as a whole be balanced as well the extreme differences in the way dawn of the modern worlds functioned on the other hand meant that such a methodology was impractical if one civilization had a strong economy and weak technologies and another had an objectively weaker economy but much more powerful technologies it would only be fair to judge whether they matched up against each other holistically despite this stainless steel would succeed in getting empires dawn of the modern world out the door in October of 2003 and attracting many favourable reviews for its work while few would claim it to be especially innovative or fresh almost everyone would agree that innovative or not it was still a very well-crafted experience its single-player campaigns were engaging and chock-full of historical material its civilizations were likeable and balanced and its multiplayer offerings had something for real-time strategy fans of all persuasions even though it didn't share its name or breadth of content it was a worthy successor to what empire earth had started and another feather in stainless steels increasingly reputable camp sadly this cap was to be torn asunder with stainless steels next title rise and fall civilizations of war [Music] much like dawn of the modern world before it civilizations at war represented another publisher shake-up for stainless steel with the studio this time recruiting Midway to help fund its latest ambitions but unlike modern world these ambitions entailed a real-time strategy game less focused on trying to provide a deep dive into the history of human civilization and more on providing a rousing cinematic experience instead of being able to choose from a large selection of highly customizable civilizations there would only be four and instead of jumping from epoch to epoch the player would be able to activate hero mode which allowed them to briefly take control of historical figures like Cleopatra and Julius Caesar from a third-person perspective and directly lay waste to their enemies speaking to GameSpy in 2005 Goodman would explain that these shifts were motivated partly because they wanted to address industry-wide concerns over the past few years that the real-time strategy genre wasn't innovating enough and partly because they wanted to evoke the emotionality of pseudo historic films like gladiator and Troy in order to address gamers increasing interest in cinematic experiences even though it was a notable change in pace compared to what stainless steel typically made in the past players trusted that the studio would be able to mold it into another hit but then seemingly out of nowhere it would be reported in November of 2005 that stainless steel had closed down after a brief period of silence from both Midway and stainless steel as to why exactly this had happened Goodman would lay to rest what had occurred in an interview with German gaming website game star claiming that after deciding internally to delay civilizations at Wars release from October of 2005 to 2006 midway cut off funding to the studio forcing it to layoff its staff and shut its doors not content with letting what stainless steel had worked on it until this point go to waste Midway would later have its San Diego studio finished developing civilizations of war when it would finally make it out the door in June of 2006 critical opinions would be more mixed than positive most tended to agree that the game was flush with interesting ideas but that their execution was severely lacking to the industry at large it was clear as the day was long that it's mid development shake-up had done it a disservice [Music] at the same time that all of this was happening however the Empire Earth series had been attempting to carve out a life for itself that wasn't defined by stainless steels presence and for the most part it had been doing decently after the release of the art of conquest Sierra had decided to entrust Maddock with working on a full-fledged sequel to Empire Earth eager to deliver an experience that would please longtime fans and make them forgive that it wasn't being made by stainless steel Mad Dog staff took it upon themselves to try and make their greatest Empire Earth game conceivable they implemented as many features as they could to make his gameplay be as intuitive and easy to manage as possible such as a picture-in-picture window that one could bookmark to various positions of interest on the map a war planning screen to allow players working in concert in multiplayer to more easily coordinate attacks and a citizen manager to automatically set tasks for units they cooked up a sizeable collection of campaigns and scenarios for single-player aficionados to enjoy as well as a host of new multiplayer game types such as the diplomacy heavy sole survivor mode and last but not least they did their best to make it say I'm much much fairer knowing that there would be hell to pay of such an off disgust criticism of the first game wasn't addressed all of these additions and improvements represented an undertaking the likes of which Mad Dog had never experienced when making the Star Trek Armada games or the art of conquest and it was being made using zero technology from the original Empire earth to help make testing all of this faster mad doc would apply a mathematical framework to the process of balancing the game developing the idea of a cost-effectiveness ratio to determine whether specific unit matchups were in need of further tweaking as explained by Ian Davis in a 2005 interview with game spy this ratio which measured how many resources to different players would each have to spend to kill each other's units in a scenario where each side would have an equal number of resources but different units quickly proved a reliable resource leading the team to develop the auto balancer that would continuously arrange battles of this format for the remainder of the game's development however while this would become the studio's main means of evaluating whether something needed to be further improved it would continue to rely on the help of human play testers as well knowing that they would be able to offer insight that a machine would never be able to provide in retrospect mad duck might have wished it it relied on this human touch just a little bit more for while Empire earth-2 would overall go on to be well-received when it would release in April of 2005 one couldn't help but feel it was slightly more suited for machine than man most tended to agree that its single-player and multiplayer offerings were solid its swath of new features and modes functioned largely as advertised and that as a whole it was no more lacking and customizability than the year was lacking in days in terms of letting players play how they wanted to took after its progenitor wholeheartedly the problem was that many of these new features and levels of customizability contrary to mad docs and tensions had ultimately resulted in the game being more cumbersome of an experience rather than less where the original Empire Earth had managed to feel simple and intuitive despite attempting to explore 500,000 years of human history - felt needlessly complex turning the act of learning how to play it into a significantly more challenging affair this sentiment would be especially felt when it came to its scenario editor which many longtime fans would decry for having a significantly sharper learning curve when compared to that of the first games at the end of the day however this would do little to stop a sizable amount of players from enjoying every drop of gameplay that two had to offer and christening at their favorite in the series [Music] the latter half of 2005 would be punctuated by the release of Empire Earth mobile a Java based cell phone game developed by wonder phone a Parisian studio that had previously worked with other Sierra own brands like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro Mobile offered cellular gamers are significantly more pared down experience than its PC counterparts with its action taking place in turns rather than in real-time and focusing on only four epochs of history most of the series hardcore would pass it by yet those that played it found it a surprisingly decent experience for what it was if a little too slow-paced for its platform much less overlooked yet also not quite as well-received would be mad docks 2006 expansion to Empire Earth 2 the art of supremacy like the art of conquest before it the art of supremacy offered a hodgepodge of new single-player and multiplayer content including the series first playable African nations the Masai and the Zulu as well as new campaigns set in the Napoleonic Wars ancient Egypt and a futuristic version of Kenya although not overwhelmingly beloved the latter campaign would be affably received as would tug of war a new multiplayer mode centered around pushing opponents back on a linear string of Maps yet almost everything else would be criticized by pundits for being bland in sterile with many finding its Napoleonic campaign to feel especially by the numbers no matter how one sliced it there was just not enough on offer in the art of Supremacy that one could argue felt genuinely innovative or justified it's asking price but for all its issues it at least didn't feel like a betrayal of what had come before it both it and to which would go on to be bundled together as Empire earth-2 Gold Edition in July still felt true to the design and wide-ranging scope of stainless steels first title unfortunately the same wouldn't be said of empire 3 work on three had begun at matte dark almost immediately after its predecessor had shipped in 2005 yet the motivations driving its creation had been utterly unlike those of the latter instead of trying to design the most grandiose and far-reaching realtime strategy game conceivable the studio had decided to make the threequel a significantly more pared down experience and is chuh depth in favor of accessibility by a tremendous degree players would still travel from the Stone Age to the far-flung future but this time around they would only progress through five epochs and do so as just one of three playable civilizations a Middle Eastern faction a Western faction and a Far Eastern faction each of these civilizations would in turn be depicted using a much more exaggerated art style battle on maps that offered significantly less complexity than those of two and have access to far fewer game-type options when one played online in previews leading up to threes release Mandark would express that these changes were made in large part so that it could make good with its player base citing the pushback it received over two sub to sness as being one of their prime motivators for doing so by reducing the scope of options available for one to play with its developers argued they would be able to make a much more manageable and welcoming product and by making everything look more stylized it would be able to communicate more quickly how the individual components and it functioned [Music] in some ways history was repeating itself during the development of Empires dawn of the modern world stainless steel had also become convinced that it needed to reign in Empire Earth's history spanning aspirations and offer a smaller more streamlined selection of epochs and civilizations but where dawn of the modern world still managed to hold on to almost all of the depth and quality that had characterized its predecessor Empire earth-three would fail on both these fronts when it would release in November of 2007 fans and critics alike found that its newfound simplicity made for an incredibly lackluster experience bereft of any of the series prior charm or uniqueness its condensed selection of civilizations were bland its graphical overhaul felt cartoony to the point of being insipid and its single-player offerings which now involve slowly conquering a world map akin to Rise of Nations had none of the historicity that had characterized the series prior campaigns on top of all this the pathfinding abilities of a say I was incredibly lacking and its engine felt frustratingly unstable despite powering what was far from the most graphically or technically intense title on the market at the time of its release after watching the series rise so highly during its heyday it was upsetting to see it experienced so drastic a fall but what was even more upsetting was that mad doc had already demonstrated with - that it was more than capable of making a good Empire Earth game there had been no reason to assume that three would have been any less solid and yet it ended up being a complete and utter misstep so much so that mad doc would eventually scrub all references to the three quills development from its own page mom why'd you marry that phony what is wrong with you I can't believe this in the months that would follow Mad doc would enter into rockstars good graces after completing work on the xbox 360 version of bully scholarship edition the house of grand theft auto felt that the level of talent mad doc had demonstrated during the enhanced force creation was exemplary and after a brief period of negotiations that would announce in April of 2008 that it had acquired the studio outrage as well as renamed it Rockstar New England since then Rockstar knew England has aided in the development of all its parent companies titles helping bring games like Max Payne 3 Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2 into existence with the help of the rest of Rockstar subsidiaries while this life has been no less easy for the studio its in arguably a much more fortunate fate than what became of stainless steel in the midst of this the property rights to both Empire Earth and several other Sierra own titles would end up being acquired in 2009 by a rebellion the British video game developer best known for the Sniper Elite Series at the time rebellion indicated that it was putting plans together to develop new titles in each of these series yet nothing would end up coming of this when one looks at the landscape of realtime strategy game since its acquisition it's hard not to see why even though blockbuster franchises like Starcraft and total war remain perennially popular and independent efforts like north guard continued to find audiences willing to support them the genre as a whole has shortly contracted over the past decade much of the audience that would typically consume such games has either moved on to the more approachable and snappier pace of MOBAs or fallen off of the genre entirely finding it to have become too impenetrable at roughly 300 employees rebellion is no small studio but it's not so big that it can safely absorb the risk associated with reviving an undertaking as ambitious as Empire Earth today in the way that Microsoft can with age of empires that much of the series goodwill was also squandered by three before rebellion picked it up has undoubtedly only made the question of bringing it back that much more difficult for the studio despite this what's left of the Empire Earth community has done its best to keep the series flame alive projects like neo Empire Earth and Empire Earth to you continue to maintain online servers for the series first and second games multiplayers as well as patch and improve upon their designs and a few enterprising fans remain committed to remastering the first game on their own no matter how long it takes and then right next to it we have our long-standing realtime strategy franchise empire three really exciting is this time we've kind of stayed true to the name and we've actually put the earth in Empire Earth making video games is practically a strategy game in and of itself even though there are an infinite number of ways that it can be approached there are always going to be a laundry list of variables that one will need to keep track of while it's occurring and if one fails to do so it's very foundations will come apart the vastness of the Empire Earth series scope only exacerbated all of this and yet it didn't stop stainless steel and mad dog from pulling through with their first and second releases they weren't perfect games but they lived up to their promise of allowing players to lead a five hundred thousand year Empire within a real-time strategy framework setting a precedent that few other games in its genre have or ever will reach immunity led efforts aside the world will likely never get to experience another entry in the Empire Earth series again but the immenseness of its core design ensures that it will continue to live on in spirit influencing both strategy games and the discussions around them for many a box to come [Music] thank you for watching our video our documentaries are crowdfunded and made possible by your continued support for us we'd like to thank by name the generous patrons who have pledged to our highest reward tier ondrea's a Bernard Caleb she's keifa CH Jefferson dos Santos Olivera Chi Titus Kyle Poland on Mohammad Khan yet Petric bo leo if you enjoy our content please consider subscribing to our Channel and joining us on patreon thank you [Music] [Music]

Channel: GVMERS

Views: 377,199

Rating: 4.9480205 out of 5

Keywords: Empire Earth, The Art of Conquest, Empire Earth 2, The Art of Supremacy, Empire Earth 3, Empires: Dawn of the Modern World, Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War, The Rise and Fall of Empire Earth, Stainless Steel Studios, Ensemble Studios, Mad Doc Software, Sierra, Activision, Midway, Age of Empires

Id: NVMti68r6oU

Length: 31min 32sec (1892 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 21 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/sgthombre]

It's interesting that a lot of the old strategy series had a gradual decline as the genre lost a lot of its prevalence, but with Empire Earth III the series just came to a screeching halt.

[u/Gregas_]

I have never been as disappointed as when I was 10, a huge fan of the first 2 games, got home and started playing the 3rd one. That poor kid :(

[u/Thunder-ten-tronckh]

That opening cutscene used to hype me up SO. MUCH.

It's corny as hell now, but 10 year old me didn't know it.

[u/academicgopnik]

Stopped playing after I bought the 2nd part, I was very dissappointed. Got the first part running on Win10 again a month ago, it is that superior!

[u/youriqis20pointslow]

Man I used to love that game when I was 12. It was like AOE but in 3d! And it had modern weapons! Graphics did not age that well. The only games that aged well were the 2d isometric ones like age of Kings and StarCraft.

[u/jb2386]

Ah EE. I loved that game. I ran one of the fan sites at the time and got flown to Boston and met the dev team. It has awesome nuke explosions (for the time). Good times.

Would love to see a modern day one with updated graphics.

As many others. I lost interest after the second one :/

[u/SkyShadowing]

Such a good memory of this game. A friend and I played against each other, and I went to outtech him. Had planes and shit before he even had the tech for anti-air, so bombed him into nothing and he conceded.

Next match, I wanted the same strategy, but knew this time he'd be focusing on tech, so I sent spies into his territory and sabotaged all his research buildings so they produced no research. He kept screaming at me about "WHY THE FUCK ARE MY UNIVERSITIES GETTING SABOTAGED?" and I just played dumb. He didn't build any of the buildings necessary to actually SEE my spies. So then my planes came over the sky again and sure enough, he conceded almost immediately, only AFTER I had told him I was behind it the whole damn time.

[u/Muad-_-Dib]

Empire Earth 1 was great but when Rise of Nations came out it basically killed it for me and the fact that it took them another 2 years after that to deliver Empire Earth 2 which ultimately did not offer any improvement over the original game left me so uninterested that I barely bothered to follow the development and release of the 3rd game at a time when RTS games were my go-to choice of entertainment outside of Battlefield for my MP fix.