S1, EP3: Sandy Petersen - A Deep Dive Into The Origins Of Age Of Empires & Game Design

It was a long chat but a great episode with Sandy Petersen, head game designer of the original AoE franchise! We spoke about this 25 year old game masterpiece and how difficult it was to balance it. Thank you for sending your fan questions via our Instagram & Twitter! Sandy has spent about 20 years in the computer gaming industry, as a designer on the teams that produced Civilization, Doom, Quake, the Age of Empire series, and Halo Wars. He returned to the world of tabletop gaming with the famed Cthulhu Wars strategy game, and now he is Chief Creative Officer of his own company. Check out his company and store at https://petersengames.com/ & his YouTube Channel at    / sandyofcthulhu   Like the video if you enjoyed it & Suscribe for more videos! DISCORD:   / discord   DONATIONS:   / aoelegends   DONATIONS: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/AoELegends INSTAGRAM:   / aoelegends   TWITTER:   / aoelegends   Chapters 0:00 - Intro 0:40 - Interview start & Sandy's AoE involvement overview 3:21 - Sandy’s Background 4:35 - Joining Ensemble Studios & the AoE franchise 11:16 - Age Of Conquerors mistakes stories 14:46 - Integrating history into the game 18:58 - Becoming a Game Designer 24:32 - What games did Sandy work on? 27:43 - Who came up with the mechanic of starting from the ground up? 29:14 - Ensemble Studios Team 31:18 - Do you still play AoE2? 33:32 - The current state of the game 40:42 - Auto Scout & Automatic Farm Reseeding 46:17 - Fan Questions 46:23 - Did you expect the game to be played 20 years later? 47:35 - Which is your fav Original Civ? Are there too many now? 49:34 - How did you choose what Civs were going to be included in the original game? 51:05 - Do you think there are any Civs that are still missing from the game? 53:39 - Are there any game bonuses that you would have liked to change? 54:31- Why was the idea of building bridges discarded? 55:51 - Have you ever considered working again in the AoE franchise? 56:22 - How did you decide to give each Civ different math bonuses? 1:00:09 - How hard was it to balance the game? 1:03:04 - AoE4 & the end of Ensemble Studios 1:13:10 - How did your work with Quake and Doom influence AoE? 1:16:03 - Handcart Questions 1:26:03 - Ending remarks #Podcast #AoE #AoE2 #SandyPetersen #AgeOfEmpires2DefinitiveEdition #AoEFranchise #Civilization #Doom #Quake #HaloWars CREATIVE LICENSES Sounds and Music were used from the following open sources: https://freesound.org/s/472688/ Fire Burst.wav By SilverIllusionist https://freesound.org/s/618242/ Relaxing-calming-crackling-fire-sounds-with-birds-and-crickets.mp3 By yaboiboimane https://freesound.org/s/218522/ Yap_Audio_Production MedievalCombatLoop.mp3 https://freesound.org/s/218478/ Yap_Audio_Production DrawSword02.mp3 Music from Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/pryces/aspire License code: CIK2BDTXSRQKZHPJ Supporting Images used for Thumbnail Art: Photo by Malik Skydsgaard on Unsplash