OPINION | ALPHA //COMMENT: IP BUILDING Restoring the Empire by Al Bickham, The Creative Assembly
evolved remarkably since those days. Rome II will share a dash of DNA with the original – a mighty turn-based campaign game that spans the sweep of Roman history peppered with stunning real-time battles – but that’s largely where the similarity ends, and the way we’re going about it would probably baffle our eight-year-younger selves. Our processes and pipelines have evolved
to handle a game of this scope far, far better. A good example of this is that we’ve
devolved a number of our decision-making processes to lead level, in order to ensure a better dovetailing between design tenets and the coal-face realities of implementation. And our engine and tool-chain have changed enormously; they’ll continue to do so throughout the course of the Rome II cycle. We’re currently playing with SSAO, scene-lit particles and an array of other graphical techniques that are bringing a breath-taking, cinematic quality to our battles. We’re breaking ground online in a way that – by its nature – the medium of film can’t hope to compete with, outside of viral marketing.
Even a game with a tiny development
An early look at Total War: Rome II reveals how far The Creative Assembly has come since the original game eight years ago
THERE ARE TWO jostling factors at play when reprising a past classic; technique and technology, and it’s worth highlighting here the differences between cinema and games. As a medium, cinema has been knocking
about for over 100 years. It’s consolidated, mature, and in terms of technique, it’s increasingly rare to see evolution happening. When a new mode arises, it’s adopted and done to death in a heartbeat; the mockumentary offers a sterling example. Cinematographers therefore tend to lean
more on technology to differentiate their reboots, and that alone can be a dangerous crutch; almost every film uses CG in one form or another, but it’s hard to define whether that really adds to the experience, and film-craft often suffers as a result. Games development, barely a third of
cinema’s age and with a rapidly swelling number of target platforms, still gets to jimmy around with technique all it likes, and that places us in a thrilling, chaotic stage of evolution. Viewed broadly, from triple-A to the lonestar indies, dev is a hubbling broth of game-genes that spits out new forms and reconfigures old ones at a frankly terrific rate.
Al Bickham, is The Creative Assembly’s studio communications manager. A former journalist, he stands in this month for Develop’s regular CA columnist Tim Heaton.
www.creative-assembly.co.uk
14 | JULY 2012 For sure, there’s obvious consolidation in
many genres (FPS, RTS, third-person action, etcetera), but most big devs still have the luxury of playing around with both technique and technology. And with the wonder- channel of digital delivery yawning open in earnest, a good new idea, well-executed, can still make for a runaway success. Even a game with a tiny development budget can outperform a crucifyingly expensive summer blockbuster, un-reliant as games are on the saurian, monocled whims of the box-office. It’s an ageing beast, herded by risk-averse marketeers who, for the most part, value verisimilitude over variety.
SPLICE AND EASY And as a favourable result of all the furious splicing we perform, there’s one thing that games can do really well: differentiate. We’re in full production on Total War: Rome
II at the moment, and on a personal level, revisiting the period is enormously exciting for the studio. The Senate; the Legions; that string of legendary individuals who reshaped the world in their own lifetimes; it’s a period pregnant with promise for a super-deep game. And from the writings of Tacitus, to Sunday re-enactment societies, to Gods and nudies bonking their way across surviving pottery, there’s an absolute sea of source- material to draw upon for inspiration. It’s been eight years since we launched the original Rome: Total War, and our studio has
budget can outperform a crucifyingly expensive summer blockbuster, un-reliant as games are on the whims of the box-office.
TOO BIG FOR REBOOTS Our technique and technology are evolving in parallel, and when that happens, it’s surprising how quickly features can be added, modified or changed. It means we enjoy an agility of thought between design and implementation, and makes the idea of re-approaching a period we’ve dealt with in the past less a case of ‘how do we differentiate from what we did before?’, and more ‘where do we put the brakes on?’. With three times the staff of the original Rome, we have feature ideas coming out of our ears. Our challenge is to filter out the very best ones. In games development, new technology
isn’t simply a gateway to more impressive visual experiences. It can inspire new techniques, broaden the field of possibility and help realise new themes. Given the narrow outlet of the box-office, I’m not sure Tinsel Town has the luxury – or possibly the will – to explore these new vistas. Films only ever reboot. That word is way, way too small for what we’re doing.
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