Ex-Ensemble Dev Takes Issue With Closure Comments

An ex-Ensemble Studio staff member has stepped forward and taken issue with earlier comments made by his former manager, Paul Bettner, over claims that the developer’s closure was down to its work culture.

Speaking at GDC, Bettner blamed crunch for bringing down the studio, saying that Ensemble was staffed by “workaholics” and that development “took twice as long... and cost twice as much” as they said it would. 


“If you want to find mistakes with what we did, I’d suggest that those trips into the weeds, looking for new territory, with a partner who wasn’t fond of being there, was more our error,” responded Ian Fischer on his blog.


“Had we decided to crank out RTS after RTS instead of chasing after the MMOs and FPSs and RPGs and RTS-differents we constantly had in prototype, I’m sure we would have been a more efficient studio that could have operated with zero crunch.”


Ensemble closed its doors last year after finishing Halo Wars, veterans of the studio went on to form Bonfire Studios and Robot Entertainment – the latter of which continues to support Halo Wars and will be working on the next Age of Empires title.
Via VG247.