Ensemble's Bruce Shelley working on The Settlers 7

by Ben Gilbert on Jan 31st 2010 1:00PM

As spotted by Joystiq's sister site Big Download in a recent gameplay trailer, ex-Ensemble Studios co-founder Bruce Shelley is working on Ubisoft's next installment in the Settlers series, The Settlers 7. Oh, what's that? You've never heard of the Settlers franchise? That's okay, we're right there with you.

Popular in Europe (like Jerry Lewis, but less obnoxious), the city-building sim developed by Blue Byte Software will apparently get Shelley's input as a "game design consultant" -- and considering the pedigree that comes with Shelley, we have to imagine that, If you're into that kind of thing, it's time to start getting totally psyched. The game is currently in beta and will be headed to PCs in "late March."

Source

Tags: blue-byte, blue-byte-software, bruce-shelley, ensemble-studios, the-settlers, the-settlers-7, the-settlers-7-paths-to-a-kingdom, ubisoft

Reader Comments (34)

Settlers is awesome, surprised to hear that it doesn't do well in the US. What about the Anno series?

Define "well". I like the Anno series, but I doubt it gets more than 35k sold in any given game in the US.

Was just surprised that Settlers/Anno could be series that PC gamers in the US haven't heard of.

I'm sure the EU sales figures aren't that hot either but I suspect most PC gamers over here would've heard of and probably played one iteration.

This series is due for a huge reboot. The last few games have been getting shallower and shallower.

Yep. We need more refreshing "Civilization-type" games. The whole genre is getting stale. I'd say I reboot is a must.

For me sorting out the combat is a must. The resource gathering and city building elements remain fun, but tactics in combat are non-existent.

A Supreme Commander/Settlers/Sim City crossover is still my dream :/

You guys really don't know what The Settlers is? :\

No, Ben Gilbert doesn't speak for all of us. Some of us are very familiar with the Settlers series.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5QPzgbQ-cE

I find it kind of interesting how Bruce Shelley has more or less completely defined specific genres of strategy games, but still remains relatively quite/reserved and humble in a sense.

But then someone just throws a vague interest in BioWare and they wheel out a guy on a video showing off all his unrelated doctorates like war badges on his shirt, where he drones on and on about how they're brilliant visionaries who perfected an art form since they figured out how to increase the amount of swearing, blood and tits in a derivative fantasy game about parading dragons.

I agreed with you until the last part. If someone wants to publicly express their love for BioWare, to be specific, I say heck yes, go for it. Sure, maybe the guy should get more publicity, but have you ever considered the fact he may not want all of that?

Well, considering that Blue Byte has been slowly turning The Settlers into a lame Warcraft clone, Mr. Shelley's talk sounds mostly hypocritical. Especially with Rise of an Empire or Heritage of Kings. Both of them were so simplistic that the "economy" almost ran on auto-pilot and I frequently sat on massive stockpiles of every resource. The games mostly revolved around getting a massive army and just wiping out the other guy(s). If Blue Byte can turn the series around and put more emphasis on a real economy and more social aspects, then it could be worth playing.

At least BioWare consistently puts out exciting games. The same can't be said for what The Settlers has unfortunately turned into. Less settling and more warmongering.

@LaughingTarget

Don't be too narrow-minded, there's plenty of warmongering RTS titles out there, but there are only a very small selection of titles for those of us who enjoy the feudal city-building sim. Better to encourage the few devs who explore that genre. I've actually enjoyed the direction the Settlers franchise has taken where I get to focus more on building cities and establishing outposts than raising armies to mash against each other.

Admittedly, "feudal sim city" is sort of a niche market, but I'm always happy to encourage the few franchises that do it properly. Unfortunately Anno 1404 missed the mark by a wide margin, and it's been a while since the last Settlers... I'm not too sure about this new copy protection they're planning on using though, have to wait and see how it runs before I endorse it financially.

Well if I ever need to depict a stereotypical American geek, now I have the photo.

What's wrong with your own photo? Surely that'd work just fine too.

Haha! That's exactly what I was thinking!

Anyways, he reminds me of Graig, from Malcolm in the Middle, perhaps his long lost brother?

This is the 1st game from Ubisoft that will use their new and disgusting DRM that requires you to be online all the time while playing the game. I want to see how it works out to see if I'll buy Assassin's Creed 2 for the PC.

That guy is so ugly it makes me glad I have AdBlock to remove the image

Does this have anything to do with the settlers of catan? If not I'll go back to not caring.

he may not have looks, but at least he's got

...way more money than you. And the respect of his peers, which believe you me counts for a lot more than good looks.

Wow. Settlers II was is one of the best games ever made IMHO. If you want to check it out, I'd recommend the remake "Settlers II 10-th anniversary edition"... or the DOS original which still plays incredibly well, if you are into oldschool.

If I remember correctly this game had a splitscreen mode which allowed players to plug in two Mice!

The first few were great, but then it became too much like an RTS.

I loved the first settlers game... in the states it was called "Serf City"

Huh, I always thought it was a fairly well known series to PC gamers, and I live in the US. I loved it pre-combat, but now it's slowly becoming just like every other RTS. I like my strategy pacifist. It's nice I'm still able to do that in Civ.

wow you guys never heard about it ?

Settlers II is undoubtedly a PC classic and for its time one of the best strategy games ever created. (It's still a lot of fun)
The series has gone downhill when Settlers 5 arrived. (although the Settlers 2 remake is pretty good)

We're familiar with it alright; Ben Gilbert's knowedge of video games is not too deep though, apparently.

The Joystiq staff is primarily made up of console gamers and Apple enthusiasts (hence them tagging on Vista problems solved years ago and calling the $350 PC that runs Crysis too expensive). Even though older Settlers games are on the MacOS, Apple isn't known for gaming. So them being unaware of the series is understandable.

Does anyone else think this dude looks suspiciously like the Blendtec "Will it blend?" guy?

http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Business/images/will-it-blend.jpg

I loved Settlers back when it still had cute cartoon graphics. Would be nice to see a comeback to that but *sigh*.. Guess I'll just hold out and hope the gameplay sees some big improvements instead

I like the way Joystiq added PC coverage without actually getting anyone who plays PC games.
The sarcastic comments work on the console posts because they at least seem to know what they're talking about. On the PC posts it just comes off like Jaime Kennedy at E3.

Never played a settlers games and rarely play PC games, but how can you not have heard of them? There's like a billion*.

*7**
**well actually a lot more.

I dislike the newer titles, too much combat and too disjointed. I love building up a town, with defense being secondary.

Are you trying to tell me there were more games after The Settlers 2?

Man was that game good. They even did the anniversary edition. Pure '90s gold right there.

Hm.... just like Spore had that dev from the Civilization franchise (don't think it was Sid) as a design consultant? Announcing such a famous developer-as-consultant this late in development really doesn't mean anything to me except that their influence will likely be severely limited. But hell, maybe this is a game I would have liked anyway; I've never played Settlers. The only Sim games I really liked were the Egypt games and Stronghold games.

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Ensemble's Bruce Shelley working on The Settlers 7

Reader Comments (34)

Posted: Jan 31st 2010 1:04PM senorwhoppy said

Posted: Jan 31st 2010 1:17PM LaughingTarget said

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