How are we creating the vision for a new Anno game? Which challenges do we need to face when working on the concept of a new game? Let’s dive into the topic of designing an Anno game together with our Game Director Jan Dungel!

For this blog, we’ll first go a bit back in time to the beginnings of Anno 117: Pax Romana. Then we talk about the roles of Game Director and Creative Director in our team and about our overall approach to Game Design.

This is the first of two blogs on this subject: the second blog will go a bit more into the day-to-day work of the Game Design team on Anno 117.

First Steps

So, a little while ago, Anno 1800’s postlaunch was still ongoing and we started working on the console version, a small group of the team here in Mainz started brainstorming on the next project. Clearly, we wanted (and needed) a new project to follow after Anno 1800 – but what kind of project? In those discussions, several key points needed to be decided upon.

For example: What type of game do we want to create? – Well, that one was answered rather quickly: after the massive success of Anno 1800, of course we wanted to build on that with a new Anno title.

Part of this decision obviously had to be: What then should the setting for the next Anno game be? Now you know: it’s inspired by Ancient Rome!

Tied deeply into these discussions also was: What are our strategic goals for the new Anno game? For example, for Anno 1800 one huge goal was to go back to the roots – with the game being an answer to the feedback to Anno 2205.

Additionally, we checked if and how we achieved our goals for our last game(s) and evaluate past strategies and successes.

Questions like these set the baseline for all future discussions, therefore, let’s elaborate on the last two points a bit more.

Agreeing on strategic goals

One goal for Anno 117: Pax Romana, for example, is to provide once again a strong Anno for our fans and hardcore players after the massive success of Anno 1800; BUT we also have several points we want to improve on – a key being the experience for new players. That means tackling the topic of onboarding, for example. We are quite aware that saying things like this occasionally results in some worried faced within our core audience – but we consider it achievable, albeit challenging.

Game Designs job then ultimately is finding ways to achieve the goals we set ourselves for the new game.

Agreeing on the setting

Indeed, the setting for any Anno is one of the earliest things we decide on. That’s cause the setting itself can already answer strategic questions.

If we, for example, wanted to grow our Scandinavian audience (to use a VERY random example), maybe Vikings or the time of the Great Northern War would be well-suited.

It also immediately determines the narrative approach, as well as feature set. Anno 1800 could distinguish between sailing and steam ships, Anno 2070 could add aircrafts – and both examples impact logistics, warfare and more in these games and therefore have large impacts on many layers of the overall design.

And – as you know, we decided to set Anno 117: Pax Romana in an Ancient Roman setting. There were several reasons (and therefore also answers to strategic questions) for this, starting with the fact that (as we also know from previous surveys) Rome simply is a fan-favourite setting – something we know would go very well with our existing audience.

Rome, as a setting, also simply is an obvious choice for a builder game like Anno. Rome stands for a big empire, many different cultures, a network of trade (with plenty of trade by ship), centralised but also spread across many provinces (not unimportant when thinking about postlaunch opportunities) and the Romans themselves as builders – from towns to infrastructure to large public buildings.

The setting, also, has mass-appeal, and people know Rome and the Romans (to the point where parts of this knowledge might be considered stereotypes). That – to an extend – also provides a certain risk: we needed our own take, the Anno take, to the setting we have chosen.

There are so many aspects that appear in people’s minds when thinking about “the Romans”. The typical imperial legionnaires, political intrigue and Caesar’s murder, gladiators and all the ruins still visible today.

Self-identification

Another obvious question we had to ask ourselves, was: What type of game is Anno? And what makes Anno, Anno, from a Game Design perspective?

The first question is not that easy to answer, actually. And we see that often when following discussions between our fans as well.

Anno is a premiere builder game within the strategy genre – you’re doing far more than just building cities, though!

No, Anno goes beyond that and includes city building, deep economy simulation, 4X strategy elements and an immersive world with a narrative layer to hold it together and dive deeper into the setting. These systems interact with each other to a degree that Jan suggests Anno turns almost into a puzzle game.

It’s a unique mix and this is our specialization in the genre: we are Anno. And we call ourselves a builder game since these puzzle pieces, this complexity, is due to all the things players build in our games: cities, relationships, trading networks, fleets and strategies.

In fact, self-identification is key (we have talked about the approach by our Brand team previously), and we’re looking in detail at the evolution of our own games: Which new mechanics were introduced in past games? Which new features? Which features were tried and then never returned? Which features did we love and which ones did we not like?

That also includes putting ourselves into the place of the player, and asking the question: What are my expectations to an Anno game from this perspective? What are my needs and wishes when playing an Anno game? What excites me? What bores me? Accordingly, playing our own games, including older titles, also plays an important role for our Game Design team (and the onboarding of new Designers) in understanding what makes Anno, Anno.

In short: we need to become Anno players and remove ourselves from seat the of the developer for a bit. After all, ultimately, we’re (also) building the game for ourselves.

Let’s use one prominent example for this “Anno DNA” topic: Islands!

Islands are another unique selling point of Anno, a key ingredient since the very first game – and, phew, a much-discussed subject within our community as well. For us, islands – or at least the principle of islands: space limited areas with a logistics area between them – are core to the Anno experience. They would not need to be literal islands, but the limitation of space (through island size, number and design) and the challenges (see: puzzle!) that arise based on that are key – they create a purpose for the player and influence many other aspects of the game’s design.

Additionally, islands naturally communicate space: there’s no doubt where players can build and where they can’t. The separation between building area and logistics area is clear and doesn’t require and UI help or artificial map borders.

As many of you also pointed out in the past: islands are also a key aspect that makes us historically inspired but not historically accurate. Our real world does consist of many larger land masses, which are not present in an Anno game.

From Anno 1602 over Anno 1404 to Anno 1800 – the world is always made up of a multitude of islands with unique designs and terrain features. Easily visible by a quick glance at the minimap.

Finally, it’s important to note that we’re not working in a bubble: we’re performing quite a bit of research into what other games are doing. What are current industry standards for strategy games? (for UI/UX design, game design, narrative design etc.) And then there are of course playtests with members of our community – we’ll tackle that topic in a future blog.

Creative Directors and Game Directors – what’s the difference?

This is maybe a good time to stop for a second and ask: What does a Game Director do? And a Creative Director?

For us, both jobs’ responsibilities naturally overlap in many areas, since both are shaping the creative vision of the game.

Our Game Director Jan’s main task is translating the creative vision for Anno 117: Pax Romana into how the game is supposed to be. That includes narrative layers, Level Art (e.g. available building space) and Art (e.g. size of buildings) but also long-term plans (postlaunch) and all its implications.

He is directing the game and the team, with an emphasis on making sure the game is fun and that people are aligned on the vision and are not working in silos. For example, building size and island size need to work together for proper balancing, so, Game Design, Level Art and Art are in regular communication.

His tasks can go from high-level topics to low-level details like balancing.

The split in responsibilities is expressed in so far as that Jan is basically purely focused on the Anno team itself and on building the game.

Our Creative Director Manuel’s main mission is to come up with a strong creative vision for the project, communicate this vision to the team and stakeholders and to make sure that we stay on course over time. He is aligning, inspiring and challenging the team, mainly by providing direction on high-level topics. Off course he does this not alone, he is working closely with all disciplines of the Anno leadership team, most of the time with other Directors like Jan, to make sure that we achieve our goals and deliver a game that our fans and potential new audiences will love.

A big part of his work is also to represent the game and team outside of our studio. This can be within Ubisoft, or as a spokesman to our fans and press.  He is also working closely with Haye (Brand Director) and her team to make sure that the way we present Anno 117: Pax Romana is in line with the creative vision of the game.

It’s important to note that – as with many other aspects that we talk about in our blogs with game development insights – job descriptions are specific to Anno. Other projects and other developers might give roles with the same names different tasks and responsibilities.

Same goes for our approach to conceptualising a new game, the way our Production team (topic of a future DevBlog) works etc. Each project and team has different needs and priorities, there rarely is a “one-size-fits-all” solution to game development that can be just used for everything.

Outro

What followed these initial questions were weeks of research into the setting and potential features. Our Senior Writer Matt started outlining the world and exploring story angles, while all of them together also had to answer questions like:

• Is the setting done too often already?
• What will put us apart from other games?
• And: Do we like it and actually want to work on it?

On the topic of features, we did some first decisions on which “old” features to keep, which to change and which are mandatory – for example, because of the setting chosen.

However: now we’re already entering the development territory and leaving the original “creating a vision” space. Therefore, we’ll cover this in a future DevBlog.

To briefly summarize: We’re always starting with asking some very fundamental questions (Type of game? Goals? Setting?) while identifying and reaffirming the series’ DNA and main pillars. Only after that we start exploring narrative and feature questions to create the basis for the game and slowly onboard the rest of the team. This is when the team starts creating high concepts and later detailed design documents.

Stay tuned for our follow-up blog when we talk about the day-to-day work of the Game Design team and how we document features and mechanics.