Dallas Developer: Twenty Years of Making Games in North Texas

I flew from California for my first visit to Dallas late on a sunny afternoon in early September. I had left my job a couple of months earlier, quitting a toxic work situation without an immediate backup plan for the first time in my career. 

I’d been in California for a couple of years, and while I didn’t much like my job, I loved the environment. I had a small but cozy apartment in Thousand Oaks, north of Los Angeles; I could drive twenty minutes over the mountains down to the beaches of Malibu. When the season was right, I could stop and pick up a pint of freshly picked strawberries from a roadside stand along the route.

Looking out the window of the plane on the descent into Dallas-Fort Worth airport, I was struck by the endless urban sprawl – miles and miles of superhighways and generic-looking suburbs, without a lot of distinct character to the flat landscape. Stepping out of the airport into a blast of dusty ninety-degree heat was also a surprise; I’d gotten used to southern California’s temperate coastal weather.

But I was there for a great opportunity – a job interview for a design position at Ensemble Studios, makers of Age of Empires and Age of Kings. Though the position was technically a step down in title – I’d been a lead designer on several projects at other studios – I knew the value of having Ensemble on my job history. Compared to the other positions I was interviewing for at the time, it was far and away the best of the bunch.

Plus, I knew people, so I wasn’t going in blind. Three other folks from my previous company had joined Ensemble before me. They all spoke highly of the culture, the people, and the process. I was excited to be there.

After a night in a nearby hotel, I woke bright and early the next morning, ready to go through Ensemble’s interview process – meeting every member of the 70+ person team in groups of ten or twelve at a time. It was going to be a long day, but I was excited to meet the team.

The date was September 10, 2001.

Rocky Start

I’ve learned over the years that while I’m a pretty good producer and designer, I’m a mediocre candidate in an interview. I’m anxious by nature, fidgety, with bad posture. I write better than I talk; in person, I stumble over words and don’t exude as much confidence as I feel. I’ve gotten gradually better at presenting myself over the years, but at the time I’d blown a couple of job interviews for positions I should have easily landed.

That said, I had solid recommendations from good friends already working in the studio and a substantial job history with quality game credits under my belt. I felt confident I was the right person for the Ensemble role. 

The team asked tough questions, but everyone was welcoming and made me feel at home. I had dinner with a couple of the other designers that evening before settling into bed at the hotel, confident I’d done well enough to at least merit strong consideration.

As I got up the next morning – September 11th, 2001 – packing and preparing to hop in a cab (no Ubers then!) to the airport, I flipped on the TV. I was just in time to see the second plane collide with the towers in New York. Mouth agape, I sank back down on the bed.

My flight (along with everyone else’s) was quickly canceled as all the airports shut down. Ensemble took great care of me; one of the designers called me directly and asked if I wanted to come back to the office to watch the news coverage with the team.

I took them up on the invite; the last thing I wanted was to be alone in a hotel room. I spent a couple of hours with the folks at Ensemble in their combination meeting hall and studio theater, watching the news in companionable silence as the tragic day unfolded. The hours spent with the team on September 11th reinforced my sense from the day before: this was just a great group of game developers, both on a professional and personal level.

Then I headed back to the hotel and, because I needed something to do, I started to problem-solve – how was I getting back? At the time, it wasn’t clear when planes would be able to fly again, and I had another job interview back in California in four days.

I ended up snagging a car rental the next day. The less said about the drive across west Texas, with only AM talk radio to keep me company in the two days immediately following 9/11, the better.

To my surprise, I aced the other interview in California and ended up with two offers. Taking the Ensemble position was, in the end, a no-brainer.

A Thriving Legacy

I spent eight years at Ensemble, from 2001 until its eventual shutdown by Microsoft in 2009, working primarily on Age of Mythology and Age of Empires 3. It was a great run. 

Like every studio, the company had its problems and its politics, but the people were fantastic, the products were great, and the benefits as a first-party Microsoft-owned studio were second to none. 

I shared offices with great designers like Sandy Petersen; I got to learn from industry luminaries like Bruce Shelley. I made some great friends – many of whom I would work with again after the studio closed, sometimes more than once.

The stories around the studio’s shutdown have been told better by others, so I won’t rehash them here. When the studio finally closed, it was home to 120 creative employees in the prime of their careers. Not surprisingly, new startups sprung up in the shutdown’s wake.

There was Robot, home to around fifty ex-Ensemble developers, where I spent four years, most of it building Orcs Must Die – still one of the high points of my career. There was Newtoy, which would go on to make Words with Friends before being acquired by Zynga. 

Later, there were second-generation studios founded by ex-Ensemble developers, such as Bossfight, PeopleFun, and BonusXP (where I recently spent three great years).

The new studios, to a greater or lesser degree, all took lessons from Ensemble’s culture and processes. Sometimes they took the wrong lessons – Ensemble wasn’t perfect – but placing high value on strong iterative development and team playtesting was the most enduring legacy.

And of course, North Texas is home to more than just Ensemble’s progeny. Gearbox has its home here, and I have many friends who have worked there. Bethesda Dallas, formerly Escalation, is no more than five minutes from Ensemble’s old office. The area’s developer community thrives despite a brutal industry layoff year.

Ensemble and its descendent studios were where I spent the bulk of my career to date. I’m in my third decade in North Texas – in truth, the last environment I’d choose to call home if making a living wasn’t a factor. 

But it’s also the place where I met and married my wife and raised my son. It’s hard not to be a little fond of this bleak suburban sprawl.

I’m fairly sure I won’t retire in this area. In fact, I may not be here much longer. My son will be off to college in a few years. In this new world of remote work opportunities, the prospect of additional hundred-degree summers coupled with the state’s political leanings makes the physical environment less palatable every year.

But overall, the area has been very good to me. Through the friends and connections I made at Ensemble, I’ve been fortunate enough to never lack for work very long. Even today in my work as a remote contractor and consultant, several of my clients have been ex-Ensemble developers or studios that sprung from the same lineage.

The Dallas area may be a boiling maze of stacked superhighways and cookie-cutter suburbs, but for the moment at least, it’s still home.

New blogs appear on ScreeGames.com every Tuesday.