Tag Archives: The Creative Assembly

Train2Game News: “Playing board games is fantastic training for game designers” – Creative Assembly lead designer

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Shogun 2 Total War

Game designers should play board games in to help improve their skills. That’s the view of The Creative Assembly lead designer James Russell, who was speaking about making the mechanics of Total War and game design at Develop Conference 2012.

“Playing board games is fantastic training for game designers,” he said. “Everything a player does is raw gameplay.”

It formed part of a wide ranging session in which the Total War lead designer discussed subjects ranging from the key game design pillars of Shogun 2: Total War, to how, ultimately every single video game is based around player choices.

“Gameplay is all about choices and trade-offs. Games present players with interesting decisions with pros and cons.” said Russell, adding that weak gameplay is generally down to weak design choices.

The session concluded with The Creative Assembly man showing off pre-Alpha footage of Rome 2: Total War for only the second time. The game is scheduled for release towards the end of 2013.

Keep reading The Train2Game Blog for the latest news from Develop Conference, while there’s more from The Creative Assembly here. That includes information about their recently released Shogun 2 map editor.

How important do you feel board games are for game designers? Are you a board game player?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

UK developers ‘bedrock’ of games industry say SEGA

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SEGA say their UK based studios are the bedrock of the UK games industry, in the same 7 days as it was reported by Train2Game news that one of them – The Creative Assembly – are hiring for a new Alien game.

SEGA are also the parent company of Football Manager developers Sports Interactive. Train2Game students may see the support SEGA give to their studios as a positive thing for their future careers.

“Our UK internal studios are probably the bedrock of our business.”  SEGA Europe senior vice president – Production Gary Dunn told GamesIndustry.biz

“Certainly, when I was signing off our studio bonus scheme and I was signing of the incentives last week, for the second year both Sports Interactive and Creative Assembly are outperforming their business plans from a profitability perspective. These guys are on top of the game, it’s a real testimony to the games they make.”

SEGA West President Mike Hayes added that The Creative Assembly are one of the crown jewels of the company.

“It’s interesting: Creative Assembly are seen as the jewel in the crown of SEGA. That’s an interesting thing, I don’t think that would have been a thought about that fifteen years ago – but probably Creative Assembly has the consistent highest quality in terms of gaming for any studio, so SEGA’s very proud of both,”

As many Train2Game students may already know, The Creative Assembly are the studio behind the Total War series of PC games.

Train2Game students can get an in-depth look behind the scenes at The Creative Assembly in a report detailing the Shogun 2: Total War developer session at last years Eurogamer Expo.

As previously reported by the Train2Game blog, Shogun 2: Total War is competing with James Bond: 007 Blood Stone and Enslaved: Odyssey to the West for the ‘Best Original Video Game Score’ at this weeks’ 56th Ivor Novello awards.

So Train2Game, what are your thoughts on SEGA’s comments? Does their praise of The Creative Assembly and Sports Interactive give you a positive feeling about the UK Games Industry? And do you have a favourite game by either developer?

Leave your comments here on the Train2Game blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

[Source: GamesIndustry.biz]