We spoke with Microsoft veteran Stuart Moulder about signing and launching one of the world’s most popular strategy franchises.
While Microsoft had been involved with games ever since releasing Microsoft Adventure on the TRS-80 and Apple II in 1979, their games were relatively few and far between, and generally aimed at older computer users. Their flagship Flight Simulator series, originally created by Bruce Artwick’s SubLogic, is a good example of this. As are their Microsoft Entertainment Packs.
Microsoft enters the games scene
Things changed dramatically in the mid-nineties, when Microsoft started expanding into the mass-market games business for their Windows operating system in a big way. One of their most enduring successes as a games publisher came with Age of Empires, a real-time strategy game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft in 1997.
Age of Empires combined ideas from earlier real-time strategy games such as Warcraft and Command and Conquer with the concept of gradually evolving your empire through research – an idea borrowed from the Civilization series, which director Bruce Shelley had played an instrumental role in creating. The result was exactly what was needed to take the real-time strategy genre to the next level.
The game remains popular to this day, with thousands of positive user reviews for the Definitive Edition on Steam. But it was the sequel that really stole the show. By refining and expanding on the original concepts, it became one of gaming history’s most addictive and fun strategy games.
The person responsible for signing Age of Empires to Microsoft was Stuart Moulder, who also helped shepherd the game – and its popular sequel – to release. We recently spoke with him about the whole process, and also found out that his specific playstyle played a major role in shaping the game’s computer opponents. Here is our interview:
What was your role on the Age of Empires games?
I was the Product Unit Manager for the Product Unit that signed, tested, and published Age of Empires (AoE). What that means in plain speak: Microsoft was organized by lines of business. From the top down, that included Operating Systems (Windows), Office (Word, Excel, etc.), Hardware (Microsoft mice and keyboards) and Consumer (Education and Games). Those divisions had Business units (e.g. Games) and then were further organized as Product Units. Word was developed within a Product Unit.
Within the Games Business Unit, I managed the Action, Adventure and Strategy games Product Unit.
The intention was that we act like a small business within Microsoft, focused on delivering great products and services that had good sales, were profitable and reflected well on the company. And supported an over-arching strategic vision. In our case, the vision was to grow a portfolio of AAA games published by Microsoft, establishing Microsoft as a premier publisher of games on par with Electronic Arts and others.
My job then was to find and develop those games, and ensure their success in the marketplace. I was more or less the CEO of that part of Microsoft’s world.
Ensemble Studios was the developer – they wrote the code, did the design, created all the graphics, etc. AoE is their game. We contributed testing, user feedback, technical support, marketing, and documentation. Plus small, but important nudges on the design. For example, there is pop-up text in the UI, an idea we lifted from the Office products and suggested Ensemble implement in AoE.
How did you and Microsoft become involved with Age of Empires, and when in the game’s development cycle?
One of my “talent scouts” was contacted about AoE by Ensemble Studios. Ensemble Studios was a business software services company at the time and a certified Microsoft partner. The leadership of Ensemble Studios loved games and wanted to invest some of their profits into making their own game. So, they created a small team and developed a prototype. Then they reached out to various game publishers looking for a deal.
As it happened, they were working with Bruce Shelley, who Tony and Rick Goodman knew from their younger days (Tony was the CEO of Ensemble and Rick was the lead designer on AoE).
This was a big deal to me because I loved Bruce’s work on Railroad Tycoon and Civilization (both MicroProse games). Those games were credited to Sid Meier, but Bruce played a key role on both and I knew that.
We flew down to Dallas, where Ensemble Studios was located, and they showed us a very early prototype. There was no combat. All you could do was hunt deer and gather wood as you built up your village and eventually went to the second Age. It wasn’t a lot, but the visual style was there, and the core interactivity was addicting.
What attracted you to the game?
The visual style was crucial. You have to remember that the mid-90’s game aesthetic was dominated by Doom/Quake. Dark worlds in black and white and gray with a bit of brown muddiness and red blood. Games wanted to be taken more seriously and pursued a kind of goth look that worked for a lot of games.
But it meant that everything had a certain sameness visually it was rather boring, netting the opposite reaction that art designers were after.
Tony Goodman was not only the CEO, he was the Art Director and his idea was to create a world you would want to be in. A beautiful, evocative, attractive world. And he hit that one out of the park.
Secondly, I was an enormous fan of Civilization and the idea of bringing that gameplay to the then dominant genre of real-time strategy games was incredibly exciting. I liked real-time strategy games but was frustrated at their lack of strategic depth. The promise here was to go deeper. A richer tech-tree and more interesting choices beyond being the fastest with the mouse and keyboard.
Were there any significant changes to the game after Microsoft got involved, and how did you help shape the final product?
Honestly no. We helped with tweaks to the UI here and there and our data on game balance was important. But Ensemble was really, really good and what we mostly gave them was a volume and thoroughness in testing they couldn’t achieve on their own.
I personally made a single, minor contribution to the AI and it amuses me to this day.
The fact is, I was not a great player and in multiplayer matches I wasn’t considered to be more than average. At best.
The thing was, I regularly beat the AI in single player games. Handily. At all difficulty levels.
This was galling. If a decidedly mediocre player could beat the AI easily, that was a problem. At that time, we had to assume most players would play single-player. As much as we all loved multi-player, at that time, it wasn’t the dominant play style.
We spoke with Ensemble and they agreed. My lead AI tester and their lead AI programmer came up with a plan. They would give me a new build every day. I would take it home and play it. If I beat it at the Difficult level, that was a failure and they would try again.
The problem, it turned out, was that I employed a “turtle” strategy. I walled off a portion of the map, defended that perimeter and used the enclosed, safe resources to build a Wonder and win. The reason that was a problem was that the designers had determined that was a losing strategy in multi-player (it was) and thus ignored it in their AI design.
As their AI lead put it, I was employing exactly the strategy that was best suited to defeat their AI.
I remember being told this and just staring back at my Test Lead.
And he looked at me and sighed. Because of course that is exactly what any human player does. We find the weakness and exploit the heck out it.
They went back to the drawing board and eventually the AI started sending bigger combined arms groups at my walls. From multiple directions. And eventually I lost a match. Not every time, but enough to feel challenged. Enough for us to feel the AI was good enough to ship.
Who’s idea was it to ship AoE with a map & campaign editor?
Ensemble Studios, with our very enthusiastic support. It was basically taking the tools that were already available and making them more customer friendly. And it suited the ethos of their people and ours. Folks forget that the roots of Microsoft were developer tools, long before it shipped consumer titles. Microsoft’s very first title was Microsoft BASIC.
Was it apparent at the start that the game would be a success, or was there some point in development/dealing with press etc. that you realized you had a winner on your hands?
We definitely got some cautious early encouragement from folks we showed it to at places like E3, but it’s notoriously hard to gauge what that really meant. I had enough friends in the press that I could read between the lines a bit and figure out how they really felt. And my assessment was that the press were very happy that Microsoft finally had a really solid gamer title coming out. But none of them were convinced we could meet or beat the top competitors.
The real-time strategy field was incredibly crowded at that point. Warcraft II and Command & Conquer were the clear leaders and had done so well that everybody was launching new real-time strategy games in the fall of ’97. Over 20 of them were published between June and December of that year for the big holiday sales push. Activision had Dark Reign (not bad but completely forgotten now). Electronic Arts had Peter Molyneaux’s Dungeon Keeper (very good but didn’t have staying power in the charts). And GT Interactive had Chris Taylor’s excellent Total Annihilation (fantastic, but not quite as successful sales-wise as AoE).
I knew we had a winner and tirelessly championed it with the press and within the company, pushing for more copies to be made and sold into stores for the holiday (we still sold out). I flew all over the world with Bruce Shelley doing press tours.
Reviews were good, but not fantastic. We had AI and pathing issues and folks felt we were neither fish nor fowl. I called AoE Civilization meets Warcraft, but folks wanted more of both or less of one vs the other. But that was the press. The public loved it.
Interestingly, we defied current trends in two ways that helped. We didn’t look like every other game out there (dark sci-fi/fantasy). And gameplay was naturally intuitive to even younger players because everyone could figure out what an archer did vs what a guy on a horse did. Contrast with Total Annihilation where you had fairly anonymous 3D block units doing various things.
We also sold with a very long tail. Most games sold 90% of their lifetime sales in the first 3 months. We sold at almost the same rate for nearly two years and fairly steadily for long after that. Thus we stayed in stock, which was challenging back before there digital sales.
When the game became a success, you obviously wanted to make a sequel – what were your main goals with Age of Empires II?
This was really interesting because we had to fail first to succeed. Let me explain.
Our first idea was to deliver a sequel exactly one year after AoE hit. We knew we had a great game and a hit. The logical thing to do was follow up as quickly as possible.
The problem was that it wasn’t possible. For one thing, we needed to patch/update AoE. The AI was OK, but still weak and the pathing portion was really not where it needed to be. We spent a lot of time and resources on both sides doing that work and it consumed months we couldn’t afford to lose if we were going to make a true sequel.
Eventually we determined that the right answer was a content-only release in a year. An expansion pack that required AoE. It was the right answer.
Simultaneously we kept working on the sequel. We had a design that incorporated all the features we had to cut from AoE. And more features that came as user requests. On paper, it was rich, ambitious and exciting.
But when we started playing it, all those features weighed the game down. It felt leaden. Both sides knew this wasn’t it. But what to do?
Tony Goodman decided to tear it all down. Keep the upgraded engine and AI. But tear out all the new features. Get the game back to the core fun of AoE. Then one by one, add back new features and determine if they added or subtracted from the experience.
Features like formations became a minor enhancement to the game, not another thing to micromanage.
How was the team at Ensemble like to work with?
Ensemble Studios were absolutely fantastic at every level. They were passionate, hard-working, fun, with complete integrity and a real joy to work with. I love every single one of them to this day and feel privileged to have gotten to work with them.
One thing that was interesting was that most of them didn’t look like game developers. They looked like prep school graduates. Clean-shaven, well groomed. Casual but neat attire. Even the artists! There was no dress code, that’s just who they were.
The takeaway – they didn’t give one spit about arbitrary style/fashion BS. They only cared about doing their best at their job to make the best game. One they wanted to play themselves. They weren’t poseurs or drama queens. Just damn good at their jobs.
Did you have any input in Microsoft’s acquisition of the team, and do you have any thoughts on their eventual fate?
The acquisition was my 4th acquisition for Microsoft. I was responsible for the acquisition of FASA (MechWarrior), Bungie Studios (Halo), Digital Anvil (Freelancer), and Ensemble Studios. I was extremely excited to bring Ensemble into the fold and by the time we acquired them I felt we’d sort of figured out how to do it.
And that was true to an extent. But I left Microsoft not long after the acquisition. And it turned out that handing them over to others who didn’t have the same personal connection was a problem. Those folks didn’t know what to do with a PC developer in a world increasingly dominated by Xbox and the console mindset.
I’m tremendously saddened at the ultimate fate of Ensemble Studios. But I can’t say it would have been different if I had stayed.
Do you have any thoughts on what is happening with studio closures and so on at Xbox these days? Any similarities with what happened to Ensemble?
I really don’t know enough about what is behind the studio closures the have occurred with Microsoft in the last few years. I can make some educated guesses though. Microsoft is a huge company and the games piece is a pretty small part. From the top, I think Microsoft leadership has been looking at overall costs vs profits and determined that they were carrying too much headcount overall. On a revenue generated per headcount basis, the games division was probably looking relatively heavy in terms of headcount and were told to make significant cuts.
You can’t really just “slim down” across the board in this case. Better to cut loose a studio and project with relatively modest prospects.
All of that sounds brutally cold and it is. I don’t know if I was still there if I could have executed on that plan or if I would have resigned as part of the wave of closures and layoffs.
[Editor’s note: It might be worth pointing out that Microsoft has received considerable criticism for firing employees across the board, which is exactly what Moulder cautioned against in his answer]
You mentioned Civilization and Sid Meier – did you ever attempt to work with Firaxis?
We did try to work with Firaxis. My boss and I took a red-eye flight to Baltimore to meet with them and while it was a very cordial meeting, nothing came of it. Microsoft was just not established enough as a publisher and they went with Electronic Arts.
And again, thank you for helping us document gaming history!
Of course. If you were reading carefully, you may have realized there is probably a story about the acquisition of Bungie Studios and Halo to be explored as well.
Be sure to check our other features and interviews in English, including an interview with Stuart Moulder about the Close Combat series.
All the screenshots featured in this article are official shots from the Age of Empires websites. They’ve been preserved by Mobygames.