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TVTranscript
00:00Are you game?
00:01I am.
00:02Bruce Shelley's career began alongside one of his biggest idols.
00:06That was sort of his trial by fire.
00:08He got a chance to hang out with one of the great game designers in PC gaming history.
00:14Success followed, yet he followed his heart and left the business he loved.
00:19So I was out of the industry, essentially, and no one knew who I was.
00:21In a sense, I had no profile.
00:23And an old acquaintance lured him back.
00:26And I told my wife, I said, I think he's going to start a game company.
00:28I said go for it.
00:30An ensemble of talented people pegged their hopes on a challenging game based on history.
00:36I suppose it might have been too hard for the casual gamer.
00:40But the game earns the devotion of players almost from the start.
00:44The first game was one of those ideas that you kind of slap your forehead and go,
00:49why the hell didn't anybody else think of this?
00:52And the quiet game developer faced his fears.
00:56We did push Bruce into the role of the spokesperson.
00:58And it was because he was uncomfortable with that role that he's perfect for that role.
01:02He impressed others from the beginning.
01:05He's not a BS artist. It never has been.
01:07He was just a joy to work with.
01:09He was almost like my twin brother in a lot of ways.
01:12This is the story of the man behind the Age of Empires phenomenon.
01:15It's the compelling story of Bruce Shelley.
01:39Bruce Shelley, the man who would make and relive history with his innovative video games,
01:44began life in a very typical Chicago family.
01:47Both my parents were teachers.
01:49And my mother was a stay-at-home mom until my middle brother and I were old enough to walk
01:53to school on our own.
01:55I came out of my childhood really excited about reading and playing games.
01:59I remember thinking as a kid that I loved rainy days because all the kids had to do what I
02:03wanted to do,
02:04which was play games.
02:06The brainy kid is also incredibly well-rounded.
02:10I played sports in college and at the high school level.
02:14I was a boy scout.
02:16I really enjoyed scouting, outdoors experience, the leadership opportunities.
02:19That was important.
02:20And then college fraternity life.
02:22I think by the time I got through those three experiences, I was pretty much who I am today.
02:26But all the pop flies in the world can't replace his love for games.
02:31I discovered that playing a good game was the most intellectually intense thing that I had ever done.
02:37Bruce heads to grad school and hooks up with a couple of buddies who not only share his interests,
02:42but will help change the course of his life.
02:45We met at a war game club together where we played historical, you know,
02:49strategy games, board games before the age of computer games.
02:52I just remember treating him with respect and taught him games and welcomed him as part of the community.
02:56It was all kinds of age groups and people at his club.
02:58He was always the center of attention.
03:00I was just a kid from junior high school who came there to play games.
03:04And this college club gets Bruce one step closer to civilization.
03:09He'd just be sending his yellow pads just full of game notes, everything he thought,
03:13and into these game companies.
03:16So that's just basically my first memory of him.
03:18Actually, I helped start a company called Iron Crown Enterprises in Charlottesville, Virginia.
03:23There was friends of mine in a game club at the University of Virginia.
03:27I traveled to game shows and helped them sell the products.
03:30And we just all did it for free.
03:32And that job led to the next.
03:34Shelley lands one of his first real gigs as a professional board game designer with Avalon Hill in 1980.
03:39He finds success, but his creative side becomes restless.
03:41I was working for a board game company in Baltimore, Maryland.
03:45And one of my friends introduced me to a game called Pirates.
03:49People asked me what was the game that most influenced me getting into interactive gaming,
03:54and it was Pirates on the Commodore 64.
03:58The young game designer is so inspired, he makes a bold move.
04:04I thought it was an incredible game.
04:06It wasn't so much that I wanted to make that game myself.
04:10It was the fact that I wanted to work for a company that made products like that.
04:14I said, this is what the future of gaming is going to be.
04:20Shelley sets his sights on a job with Microprose, the game company led by gaming genius Sid Meier.
04:26I lobbied for that job for like a year, and I finally got that job and went to work for
04:31him.
04:31The young protege finds himself side by side with one of his idols.
04:36That was sort of his trial by fire.
04:38You know, he got a chance to hang out with one of the great game designers in PC gaming history.
04:44He prototypes by himself. He does his own art, does his own programming.
04:48And he brought me into that process.
04:49He was just a joy to work with. He was almost like my twin brother in a lot of ways.
04:53He gave me a lot of support, a lot of ideas. The games really wouldn't have been the same without
04:57him.
04:59We have to understand our work and relationship, basically.
05:01The two of us worked together almost by alone.
05:04It was like, there was a joke in the company that one group of people called us the A-team.
05:10He could kind of handle things that I didn't have time to work on,
05:13left me free to do the programming and a lot of the creative stuff.
05:16So we made a good team.
05:18Working with him was like going, I've described that as going to game design university.
05:21It was more than just making games. It was considering and analyzing the process.
05:26The game god and his disciple produce a number of home runs.
05:32The first is Railroad Tycoon.
05:36If you read the credits of the game, they say, buy Sid Meier with Bruce Shelley.
05:40I just thought that that was my role. He was a star.
05:43The strategy game Civilization is released in 1992 for the PC, led by designer Sid Meier.
05:49And on his wing is Bruce Shelley as co-designer.
05:57In the game, each player is given 6,000 years to turn a wandering tribe into a technologically developed society.
06:09Civilization is touted as the most open-ended and flexible computer game ever developed.
06:14And gaming fans around the world hope this dynamic duo will last forever.
06:19He worked with Sid for a while and in a lot of ways, I think, was sort of groomed to
06:23be his heir or protege.
06:26But another side of Bruce's life begins to take priority.
06:30My wife was an executive with Citibank.
06:32And she made a lot more money than she had her side. It was like three times mine.
06:37And there was a contraction in the mortgage industry and she did not want to move back to St. Louis.
06:42So she left her job and we started looking for a new job for her.
06:45And it turned out the best opportunity that came for her was in Chicago.
06:48And in 1992, Bruce Shelley leaves one first love for another.
06:53So we made the decision that I would leave Microprose and go with her to Chicago.
06:57And then I would look for something else to do.
07:00So he leaves designing behind and tries his hand at writing.
07:03I said, you know, I think I could do that. I've written all these 200-page manuals.
07:06I think I can write a strategy guy.
07:07And the publisher said, this is a great idea.
07:10We've never had a real person with game design experience write these books.
07:14The game genius finds it hard to hide his intelligence.
07:16If the game was a good game, it was a lot of fun.
07:20It was interesting to look and see what they've done.
07:22Shelley finds himself slipping further away from the business.
07:26And later makes a decision that will take him away from the person he loves the most.
07:30So I was out of the industry essentially and no one knew who I was.
07:33I mean, in a sense, I had no profile.
07:47In 1994, Bruce Shelley, the co-creator of such hit games as Railroad Tycoon and Civilization, leaves his key job
07:54at Microprose and Sid Meier behind.
07:56He follows his heart and his wife to a new life.
08:00I was living in Chicago and I was actually living as a freelance writer writing strategy guides.
08:05And Tony Goodman is all grown up and ready to play.
08:09He had started a business consulting firm in Dallas, never given up the idea of someday having a game company.
08:14And he started calling me up when I was in Chicago.
08:17And we had these two hour phone conversations about, well, how do you make computer games?
08:21And I told my wife, I said, I think he's going to start a game company.
08:24And he did offer me an opportunity.
08:25He says, do you want to come and join us?
08:27She goes, well, this is crazy, you know, the game business and this kid, you know, who's going to want
08:31to start a company?
08:32This doesn't make any sense.
08:33Well, he knew Tony Goodman when Tony was in junior high.
08:37So when Tony got together, some people, I said, go for it.
08:41But she got on board with it.
08:43So in January of 1995, Bruce Shelley accepts Tony Goodman's offer and joins the new company,
08:49sliding into the position of senior designer and co-founder.
08:52Bruce isn't only half the brain behind launching the company.
08:55He also spends time developing a new mythology department.
08:59The company name is Ensemble Studios.
09:01It's a nod to the way the group makes their games together as one big happy family.
09:06We didn't have one Sid Meier.
09:07We had half a dozen guys who together brought the skills together that he had in one person.
09:11So we had a couple of ways to use six people to do what he had done as one person.
09:16Joining the Cast Ed Ensemble in Dallas means leaving his wife behind in Chicago, but not for good.
09:23I go to Dallas at least once a month.
09:25A lot of the things I do, a lot of the writing and catch up on the game and do
09:28the team building things we do, do the play testing.
09:31And then I can also get quiet time away from all these meetings and, you know, do my own work
09:35at home.
09:35Everything about working with Bruce has just clicked from day one.
09:39I think he's amazing, the things that he does that I would never consider.
09:42Early on, we had no money. He was spending it.
09:45Very interested in marketing and the whole idea of getting our face out there.
09:49And the boys become inspired to create a new game.
09:51Bruce really liked the idea of doing a game about civilization.
09:55That's a topic that he had taken on before.
09:57But we wanted to do something in real time, as opposed to doing turn-based games.
10:01We had examined all the other games in our space, and what were they doing well?
10:06What was the bar that they had set? And where were the opportunities they left for us?
10:09There were lots of conversations about it.
10:11I said, you know, let's show what the history of Greece was about.
10:13You know, we had Jason the Argonauts and the Trojan War and things like that.
10:16A lot of people thought, well, historical games will never make it.
10:18Who's interested in history? If they wanted to learn history, they'd be at school and things like that.
10:22And how would you describe this new real-time strategy game?
10:25You're in the Stone Age and the whole world is dark. It's mysterious.
10:28You have very little knowledge of what's happening in the world.
10:31And you have a small little village and a couple of people.
10:34And your goal is to turn this little tiny star into the first great civilization on Earth.
10:41And the name of the game is revealed.
10:44I know it went through several name iterations.
10:46It was The Rise of Man, and it was called The Tribe.
10:51Age of Empires was the game that the name ultimately was shipped under, and that sort of stuck.
10:56Age of Empires, Ensemble Studios' first game, is released by Microsoft in 1997.
11:01Both gamers and critics are ecstatic.
11:09As soon as it went out the door, it was just souls and souls. We were real happy.
11:14The epic game spans thousands of years, in which the player is the guiding spirit in the evolution of a
11:21small Ice Age tribe.
11:23He's taken the real-time strategy model that was popularized by Command & Conquer and Warcraft and games of that
11:29nature.
11:31And I don't want to say he's added a layer of respectability to it, but he's taken it into a
11:37more realistic context.
11:39And Microsoft benefits too.
11:42After Age of Empires came out, people started to take Microsoft seriously as a gaming company.
11:47The game can be played in two to three hours, rather than the week or so required to finish a
11:51game of Civilization.
11:53And up to eight computers can be linked up to play.
11:55The artificial intelligence has been incorporated to ensure playing against the computer is also a bit of a challenge.
12:01Microsoft claims it's selling the game faster than they can ship it.
12:04Even though it's a game that takes hours and hours to play at each time, it did pick up a
12:09pretty huge casual audience and a pretty big female audience that we weren't expecting.
12:14Age of Empires, the first game, was one of those ideas that you kind of slap your forehead and go,
12:20why the hell didn't anybody else think of this?
12:22You take real-time strategy, which is the hot vogue, and you give it a historical context.
12:28Age of Empires receives numerous awards, and by June 1998, Microsoft has shipped more than one million copies worldwide.
12:36And later that year, Age of Empires, The Rise of Rome, an expansion pack to the award-winning strategy game,
12:42is released.
12:43I think we felt it was demanding, and we worked hard in our follow-up games to make it easier
12:49for the people.
12:50So, I mean, we recognized it. It wasn't perfect.
12:54We said, well, how can we top that?
12:56So we said, well, what's a bigger historical topic than ancients?
13:00We said, well, medieval, that's the biggest topic.
13:03Let's do a game about knights, kings, and castles.
13:09In the fall of 1999, Age of Empires II, The Age of Kings, is released, along with vast improvements from
13:15the first game.
13:17Two spans 1,000 years, from the fall of Rome to the Middle Ages.
13:21We need a mangonella ram to get through these walls.
13:23Look out! Our battle raises our heads. Stay back!
13:27Bruce rips out the first game's AI engine and rewrites it.
13:31And what's the gameplay like in this one?
13:33I think Age of Empires II, The Age of Kings, is as close to perfect as we've ever gotten.
13:38I mean, our challenge is to make a game that good again someday.
13:41I mean, it all came together in that game.
13:44The art was improved significantly.
13:46We sort of had less of a Legoland approach or look to the game in more of a realistic scale
13:51and depth.
13:52And the crew from Ensemble does it again.
13:55The original AOE was a success, but it was actually AOE 2 that became a monster hit.
14:03That's where the series really took off.
14:08It was then that I first saw the girl.
14:11It wasn't an accident that we put a woman in the game, you know, as a character.
14:14Her name was Jeanne.
14:15You know, we found out that women liked playing Age.
14:17So now there was a hero who was a female who they could follow the career of this woman in
14:21our game.
14:22Bonjour Jeanne. My colleague and I will escort you to the Chateau of the Dauphin or else we will die
14:27trying.
14:27It wasn't an accident that there was a French character and a German character.
14:31They were our two biggest international markets.
14:34And in the spring of 2001, Microsoft acquires Ensemble Studios.
14:40The Microsoft philosophy is really to get the best products in category.
14:46And they're not about just getting a huge roster of titles.
14:50It's really quality over quantity.
14:52And it's sort of cliché, but it's really in practice at Microsoft.
14:55And Ensemble is a leader in the RTS category.
15:00By the end of 2000, Age of Empires II, the Age of Kings, is number one on the holiday sales
15:05charts worldwide.
15:07And the expansion pack, Age of Conquerors, is also flying off shelves.
15:12But it's what Bruce Shelley and the group at Ensemble decide to do next that stuns fans.
15:27The Age of Empires II expansion pack is a massive international hit.
15:31And an official game of the World Cyber Games.
15:35And the quiet man who helped create a phenomenon sees his PR role expanding rapidly.
15:40We did push Bruce into the role of the sport person.
15:42And it was because he was uncomfortable with that role that he's perfect for that role.
15:46I think the first thing he has is just sort of unquestionable credibility.
15:50He's extremely popular across the world.
15:52And all the subsidiaries from Microsoft are always asking for him to come on the road and demonstrate and show
15:58the product for them.
15:59It's turned out to be a real asset for the product, for the industry, for Ensemble and for Microsoft.
16:03He's not a BS artist. It never has been. He's a very straightforward individual.
16:07He'll tell you what he thinks, and he's tactful about it, but you get the straight, the straight poop.
16:13You know, I happen to be a huge fan of the Age of Empires series, and Bruce will be the
16:17first one to say they're not my games.
16:18It takes a whole team, you know, and he's always careful to comment on that.
16:23We talk about that all the time. No one succeeds by themselves.
16:27No matter what it is they do, and it takes a whole team to make something good, and they're a
16:31tremendous team to deliver something this tremendous.
16:34But for Bruce Shelley and his team, creating something truly historical would require making a drastic change.
16:40We felt that we really had to do something a little different.
16:43We see it as like a fork from the Age franchise, not necessarily a linear follow-up.
16:49We worked on it for three years straight. This is the longest project we ever worked on. It's far more
16:53ambitious than anything we've ever done.
16:54So what will this new game be about?
16:56We wanted to rejuvenate the franchise, so we came up with the idea of doing fantasy.
17:00Everybody's doing fantasy games, so we came up with the idea of mythology.
17:07Well, it is a historically based game, a strategy game, where people are going to go in, they're going to
17:12try to build up their civilization.
17:14They're going to create peasants, gather wood, gather food, gather gold, and gather a fourth resource, which is favor, which
17:20is certainly unique to Age of Mythology over Age of Empires.
17:26Age of Mythology is Ensemble's most ambitious and perhaps enchanting game ever.
17:31There's a hero, Arkantos, and he's an admiral or a great hero from Atlantis, and he's called upon ostensibly to
17:37help out in the Trojan War on behalf of his Greek friends.
17:41While he's on his way there and gets involved there, he encounters some really unusual things.
17:47The gods in the game have certain god powers like earthquakes and tornadoes and meteor strikes.
17:56Those are very offensive weapons. They're also defensive ones or economical ones like rain.
18:01And based on your civilization, you also have access to different mythological creatures.
18:07Mythology is part of the human experience. It's not that great a departure from what we've done in the past.
18:11It's not completely historical, as closely historical as this other stuff we've had.
18:15But I think 1,000 years ago, people believed these gods were real.
18:20Behind the magic is something computer-driven, a new heavy-duty 3D engine.
18:25Unofficially, the work on the 3D engine began about five years ago.
18:28A 3D engine is the centerpiece, the piece of technology that allows the game to run.
18:33In mythology, we took advantage of the 3D technology with our dramatic god powers, tornadoes and earthquakes.
18:40Impossible to do in a 2D game, but really cool-looking and dramatic in 3D.
18:45The myth creatures are special attacks, flying units, underwater units.
18:49The combination of 3D technology and mythology just worked together really well.
18:56When a god power is revealed and meteors fall or lightning crashes,
19:00that's not something you would ever really see in a historical game,
19:04unless it was just a historical occurrence.
19:06But in Age of Mythology, that will be something the player can control and make a decision on
19:10and get a lot of visceral feedback.
19:13The game features an organic musical score
19:17by incorporating unique acoustic instruments
19:23and offers easy-to-play multi- and single-player modes.
19:27We've done a fantastic single-player campaign that's unlike anything anybody's ever done in a real-time strategy game.
19:34And for some fans of Age of Empires, it may feel somewhat familiar.
19:38If you're a fan of Age of Empires, you're going to love this game,
19:41because it builds on everything that made the other Age games terrific.
19:45Intuitive gameplay, attention to detail, historical flavor,
19:49plus now you have the addition of these mythological creatures and god powers.
19:54And easier gameplay for all levels of players.
19:57It's a new game and it's really great to play.
20:00It's got something for everybody.
20:01It really does.
20:02It's easy to pick up, it's easy to learn.
20:05You get to see some really cool things.
20:07I mean, you don't often get a chance to drop a meteor on someone.
20:11In the fall of 2002, the game launches with a gala premiere.
20:21And the woman who was there from the very beginning makes an appearance.
20:24Well, I think it's really great.
20:26I think everybody worked so hard for this.
20:28I think they deserve this celebration.
20:29And that, of course, includes Mr. Bruce Shelley.
20:33Bruce Shelley is really an incredible person because of the way that he looks at very simple means to deliver
20:41more exciting experiences.
20:44He approaches games as a gamer.
20:47He plays a lot of games and so he's able to sort of relate to the gamer on a level
20:51that I think some game designers can't.
20:53Bruce Shelley is the kind of individual who wants to, you know, just wake up every day and say,
20:58what can I do today to be the best person for this company?
21:01Bruce is your best friend.
21:04He's someone who's supportive, who doesn't have a negative thing to say.
21:08He commands the respect of his peers and have earned it.
21:11Bruce accomplished anything that he tries.
21:13I've been able to do the kind of thing I've loved to do my whole life and it's turned into
21:18a really good thing.
21:36Good luck on some of the whole studios!
21:47Good luck on some of the whole studios!
21:48You have many reasons!
21:48You've got one!
21:48You've got a lot of fun!
21:48You're going to talk about that!
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