The studio’s first ever original IP, Total War, is now set to see another new entry into the series, with Total War: Rome II currently in development
According to Simpson, this period of client
work, which spanned well into the mid- nineties, served the studio well, teaching the team a great deal of professionalism. ‘We never dared to imagine we might have such a long history,” reflects Simpson. “We just looked at the project we were doing. Things were always under a lot of pressure so there was always pressure to get the projects done and to a decent quality level and overcome whatever problems were in the way. It was fun and we enjoyed it a lot.“ As Simpson joined Ansell and his still small
team, The Creative Assembly had become financially robust, and established an impressive portfolio of work. But despite this, the studio was yet to embark on developing its own original IP. “Tim had got a very stable business going doing the Electronic Arts games, but he was never going to make it big with any of those,” admits Simpson. “The other thing he was aware of was that
if he ever did get any great success with any of them, EA would take it off of them and move it in-house. They’d already done that with FIFA. He did the first PC conversion of it and they looked at that and thought ‘we’ll move that in-house’.”
TOTAL CONFIDENCE With Simpson on board and confidence in the studio’s ability at an all time high, Ansell made a decision that would change the way the world thought about The Creative Assembly forever. It was time for the team to make its own games.
46 | AUGUST 2012
But what kind of content do you create
when your porting experience has covered numerous genres? As it happens, the early ideas were nothing
like Total War. The first notion was to build a roleplaying game based on the 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West. The game was to be developed in Singapore, after the country’s government began to offer immensely generous financial incentives for those wanting to set up a development house there.
We never dared to imagine we might
have such a long history. We just looked at the project we were doing.
Mike Simpson, Studio Director
“When we looked into the Singapore thing, like all things that look too good to be true, it was to good to be true. There were so many strings attached that by the time we’d gone through it in detail, we were just as well-off staying in Horsham and building a team there, and that’s what we started to do.” And so it was that a Singapore-made RPG became a UK-developed RTS by the name of Shogun: Total War. Announced in 1999, and released the following year, The Creative Assembly’s new game became a sensation
within its genre, meeting with vast critical acclaim and a shower of awards, including a BAFTA for the game’s soundtrack. The continually popular Total War was born, and was here to stay. Shortly after publishing of The Creative
Assembly’s games moved from Electronic Arts to Activision, and a wealth of other historical epochs were covered by the RTS series. Ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, the Napoleonic era and others were reimagined by the studio, to much adulation from critics and consumers. And to this day the console team that began life working on EA Sports games remains strong, having created a number of titles in recent years, including Total War spin- offs Spartan: Total Warrior and Viking: Battle for Asgard. There’s also the long-awaited Alien game
underway at the studio, and plenty else to keep the workforce busy; including those at the outfit’s Australian wing in Queensland.
THE COLLECTIVE ASSEMBLY Looking back on why The Creative Assembly has thrived, Simpson is convinced that, in spite of all the changes to the studio’s output and team size, there is one thing that has never changed. “We grew very, very gradually,” he says. “I
don’t think we ever lost that small team mentality. We don’t have boards of managers, we don’t have lots of producers – we’re very, very light on that side. We just get on with making the games. We don’t have strict job definitions where somebody will say ‘well