Why Amplitude Studios had to leave Sega

Paris-based Amplitude Studios made its mark in 2012 with the 4X turn-based strategy title Endless Space, which led to a number of sequels and spin-offs, including Endless Legend and Dungeon of the Endless in 2014, and Endless Space 2 in 2017.

Sega bought Amplitude in 2016, with the studio trading its independence for greater resources that would allow it to realise its dream of making titles “on par with the games being made by Wargaming, Paradox and 2K,” said studio co-founder Romain de Waubert de Genlis at the time. That deal culminated in the release of the ambitious 4X title Humankind in 2021.

But in 2024, Amplitude parted ways with Sega, months after the Japanese publisher had sold off the similarly PC-focused Relic Entertainment. One year on, we sat down with de Genlis to hear what went on behind the scenes, and reflect on the ups and downs of the past decade.

Tell me about Amplitude. What’s the journey been like up to this point?

If you know a bit about Amplitude, we are just huge fans of 4X games – but coming from a time where it was not very sexy to say that you loved 4X, it was kind of a guilty pleasure. Originally what we wanted to do was to change that, in the sense that we realised how crazy we could get with 4Xs. We thought, what if we could bring more art into these games, more storytelling, more music, more focus on interface? These games are really heavy on interfaces, but it should be a pleasure to navigate, not the opposite.

That was the trigger point, and we also realized that many of these elements were not necessarily expensive. It was more about knowing the right people that could do it for you. That was the beginning, and I think Amplitude was successful in bringing 4X games to a wider number of people, because the games were more appealing.

We were aiming originally to sell our games to 40,000 to 60,000 people, and now all our 4Xs reach beyond 2 to 3 million people. And I think now, the good thing is that when you speak about 4X, most people know what it is – if they’re a gamer, of course.

I was going to say, I don’t think the term has really broken through into the mainstream – it’s very much a case of, if you’re a gamer, you’d know.

Yes, it’s only gamers. But what’s surprising is that it’s a term which is even more widespread in mobile, because for me it is such a PC genre. Mobile has all these games that are meant to be 4X – and they are, in a way, just free to play, which is quite different from what we do.

So that was the beginning, and originally I was the creative director for all these games – and I tend to be a very insecure creative director. I believe I want to do things in a certain way, and I’m not sure if anyone else will be interested.

So you’re constantly seeking reassurance?

Exactly, to the point where when we shipped Endless Space, I was saying to my team, ‘No, the game is bad, we can’t ship it, we’re not ready.’ One of my team members, the lead programmer, all the way through development he’d been a real pain in the ass, saying, ‘It’s not deep enough, it’s boring.’ And when I was finally saying, ‘No, we can’t ship it,’ he was like, ‘Hmm, it’s not that bad.’

So they brought some players to the office to tell me what they thought about the game. And they were like, ‘It’s really cool, it’s by far the best space 4X I’ve played in a long time, if not ever.’ So I was like, ‘Really? Okay, maybe we should ship it.’ And the rest is history.

We shipped in Early Access, but the systems were not complete, which is always scary. We’re doing it again with Endless Legend 2 – it’s still scary, but at the same time, it’s interesting to focus on what matters for your players, rather than you.

Humankind was a big launch for Amplitude, with huge hype around it. Is it fair to say it didn’t quite meet your expectations when it came out?

Yes and no. Innovating on an established recipe is difficult, and I think the innovations we brought with Humankind were threefold: How cultures are seen in the game, how players interact with the pure terrain – the world being very hilly and that being extremely important for tactical reasons and economical reasons – and the combat. It was something that was very dear to me to have very tactical combat in the game. It’s more like Total War, but with only one map, not two. And obviously these three innovations are extremely different from what existed before.

That’s a big leap.

It’s a big leap. But my belief was that if I’d tried to do Civilization, I would’ve been crushed by my players, because they are Civ fans.

What we did at the time, Civilization could not have done. They had to stay on the path that they built for themselves, but we had a blank page. We could do a historical 4X game with a different view on the history and how you reproduce it in a game. That being said, a lot of our players were also Civ players – like, 70% of our players.

So you did some research on that?

Yes, yes. Some were coming from Endless, but a lot of our players were Civ players – maybe even more than 70%, now I think of it. So obviously, they were seeing it as an evolution of Civ. Some of them were saying, ‘I was expecting Humankind to be Civ 7.’ But we never said it would be Civ 7, we said it would be Humankind.

It was a bit of a bummer. If we’d wanted to do Civ 7, I would have called Firaxis and said, ‘Can we do Civ 7?’ So that was difficult.

Now, that being said, the recipe was still green at the beginning, we definitely had to improve, and it took us quite a few years. It’s like chemistry, you have to be extremely precise on how you adapt things. It’s not about changing whole systems, it’s all small moves – and suddenly people love it.

It took us quite a while, but where we are today, we’re quite happy with. I still strongly believe in those three pillars that we brought as being a huge difference from Civ 6.

The very good stuff for us is it was our most successful game ever both financially and in number of players. Amplitude became a new company, in a way, after Humankind. And when Civ 7 came out with most of the innovations coming from Humankind, it kind of normalized a lot [of what we’d been doing].

Do you think they copied your homework?

Copied, no. Because I think it’s normal to be inspired by what’s being done around you. We were inspired by Civilization when we did Humankind. But I was personally extremely flattered by the choices they made, and yes, I think a lot of them were coming from Humankind. Battles were handled a bit differently: I prefer the approach we had with Humankind, although it’s not perfect.

What I really liked was that when you look at what players want to see improved in Civ 7, they don’t neccessarily want to change these pillars, but to keep refining them. And that shows we’re all on the right track.

Let’s skip ahead to 2024, when Amplitude exited from Sega. How exactly did that come about?

What we were doing within Sega was quite unique. When we looked at the strategies that they had – with a strong focus on their core IPs, consoles, mobile when they bought Rovio – it was like, ‘We definitely do a lot of PC, we don’t really have a core Japanese IP, we are not very mobile…’

Did you feel that unless you left Sega, there was a chance the studio could have been closed?

No. Maybe reductions of headcount could have happened, but that’s not what triggered it. What triggered the situation is we were just not aligned at all on what to do in the future or what our strengths were compared to Sega’s.

Do you think Sega was withdrawing to its core IPs and focusing on mobile?

I don’t really want to talk for Sega, but I think if we step back and look at the state of the industry during a crisis period – which we were in, are in, and are hopefully exiting – when you go into a crisis, you go defensive. You focus on your core strengths and what you’ve been known for. And Sega had all these elements, except mobile, which they had just bought and was an investment. They need to have a payback on that, right? They need to invest in that, they need to make sure it works.

But it’s not like someone came and told us, ‘Hey guys, we just made a plan, and you’re not in the plan, what do we do with that?’ What happened is they made the plan, we were looking at how we fitted into it, and it was hard for us to see how we could. It was more us that came to them and said, ‘Well, guys, really, I don’t see how it’s going to work.’

So when it came to leaving Sega, was it you who initiated it?

Yeah, it was me, but it took nearly a year and a half. That’s including me trying to understand how I would finance it, and how I would present it to Sega. That took a year actually, so it was a lengthy process, and even within that year, the whole industry changed, and the whole crisis got worse, so everything became different as we were discussing it.

And in that time, Sega made huge redundancies.

Yes, so basically this is what I saw coming. I saw that coming with Relic. So I was saying, ‘Well guys, if we want to do this, I need my teams untouched so I’m ready to take Amplitude indie again.’

So you said to Sega, ‘Don’t make any redundancies within Amplitude’?

No redundancies. And we want to keep the IPs, because that’s our value, and that’s how we will be able to survive. And of course, that’s also what made the discussion longer. It’s not easy to do.

Were they reluctant to give up the IPs?

It was obvious that it could only happen together. Again, in a time of crisis, you can’t give away workforce alone, it’s very difficult. When things were crazy back in 2019, 2020, people just wanted workforce to make the games, and they were all fighting to get the resources, but it’s not the case anymore. So you could only sell a studio with the IPs.

How do you see the studio evolving going forward? Speaking to Justin Dowdeswell at Relic Entertainment, he said his studio is focused on making games more quickly now it’s independent of Sega.

I think we all dream of the same [thing]. I think if you speak to any studio out there, we need to make cheaper games, basically, but without touching the quality. You need to make amazing games, but for a smaller budget, which comes down to time and people. So you definitely need to optimize your work habits. And I think we all had the same thing during the whole craziness of 2019 of throwing people at the games, fixing issues with more people.

Fewer people and more time could work, except that the issue that you have – and I think Justin has as well – is people could get bored with a game if they spend too long on it. And you want to make sure you keep the same team from the beginning to the end, because if suddenly you have people leaving because a game is taking too long, then you enter a situation where you can’t ship your game because you’re losing all the talent.

So, how do you make games quicker?

I think when you go indie, the decision making is much easier. If the team wants to do something, it goes to the lead, it goes to me, I say yes or no, it goes back to the lead, it goes back to the team. It’s very quick.

When you are in a bigger group, you have the whole process. If you need more money, you have to have a committee, it needs to be approved by headquarters, it goes back to the committee…. We had some decisions in the past that could take nine months, and by the time the approval came back to us, it wasn’t even valid anymore, because we were already onto the next problem.

So just by being independent, you gain a lot of time and quality. In the end, when your team is fighting for themselves, they are highly motivated to succeed. It’s a tricky problem for a bigger group to keep a whole lot of people motivated to fight for themselves, to feel that this is their game.

That’s definitely what we have today: we are fighting for our games. We are the experts in what we do, and that’s what we want to fight for, and be known for.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.