Life at Robot

At last month's Gamesauce Conference, Robot Entertainment Design Director Ian Fischer gave a presentation called "Just Getting Started." In the presentation, Ian compares the growth of the film industry and the growth of the video game industry, and uses the comparison to speculate about the game industry's future. Now, thanks to the folks at Gamesauce, you can see the presentation for yourself in the video below. READ MORE

Age of Empires games have always been built by playtesting.  At Ensemble before and at Robot now, our basic development philosophy remains unchanged – get a playable version of the game up and running as soon as possible, then play the living hell out of it. This approach has massive advantages.  Everyone on the team knows and contributes to their game.    If something is broken, all of the most capable eyes are looking.  If an idea isn’t going to work the way you saw in your head, the reaction in playtest makes that obvious.  And nothing is better for guiding fast, impactful changes – a few weeks back ... READ MORE

Hey everyone! Day three is all wrapped up for me at GamesCom, and in just a few hours I'll be on a plane back to the states. Today's update is going to be relatively short. I got rather sick last night, which is no surprise when you pack a couple hundred thousand people into one building, right? Anyway, my time on the show floor was limited today. I've added about 35 more photos to the gallery on our page at Facebook. That should tide you over for a little longer. READ MORE

Another day of GamesCom is almost on the books. Today was considered by many to be the proper first day of the show. Why? Because today was the first time that the general public was let onto the show floor. As you can see in the image above, there was no shortage of general public waiting to get their hands on the hundreds of games inside. And those are just the ones from the North Entrance, near our booth. READ MORE

Guten Tag! As my fellow bots at the Factory back in Texas are just getting their day going, I'm taking a break at the hotel after a long but awesome first day of GamesCom 2010. Today was press day, so it was mostly behind-closed-doors press demos courtesy of our very own Jerome, and press-only hands-on time at the Microsoft booth. This gave me a little time to walk the convention floor... and boy what a floor it is. It's only the end of our first day, and I already have blisters on my feet. This is a huge show. Thankfully, Age of Empires Online has a huge setup. READ MORE

What a busy week it’s been. I’ve spent the last several days getting all my ducks in a row for our little trip to GamesCom next week. But finally, I’m all packed and ready, as are a few other bots here. I’m bringing a little bit of swag with me, too. Did you see the new shirts we got earlier this week? I’ll be bringing a handful of the black ones with me to Germany, so if you’re at the show and want a shirt, you’ll have to keep a look-out for me (hint: I’ll be wearing a Robot shirt and bright red shoes)! READ MORE

Hello again. It’s been a while since we last talked. Now that we’ve got the new website up, that’s going to change. Since we put the new site up about a week and a half ago, you’ve all been kind enough to sign up and take it for a test drive. And we’re glad you did! Thanks to you guys, we’ve already started making updates to the site. We’ve been fixing bugs and improving various little features. And we’re not stopping any time soon. We’re currently doing a little under-the-hood work, but soon we’re going to begin work on some great profile improvements, as well as adding and improving forum feat ... READ MORE