Type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Video games |
Founded | February 2000 [lower-alpha 1] |
Headquarters | , United States |
Key people |
|
Products | Rise of Nations series Catan Live Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning DomiNations Arcane Showdown |
Parent |
|
Website | bighugegames |
Big Huge Games, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Timonium, Maryland since 2000, known first for real-time strategy games such as Rise of Nations , later for the console RPG Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning , and more recently for mobile games such as DomiNations and Arcane Showdown. Throughout most of its history the company has been associated with its best-known founder, Brian Reynolds, whose prior career already included work as lead designer of Civilization II and Alpha Centauri , and co-founder of Firaxis Games . The studio's ownership has changed hands several times over the years, and it became briefly defunct in May 2012, [2] but it was revived by Reynolds [3] [4] along with several original alumni and new partners. The company is presently owned by Nexon, and actively runs its mobile titles DomiNations (released April 2015) and Arcane Showdown (released June 2020), while continuing to develop new games.
The company was incorporated in December 1999 and was first announced in February 2000 by Brian Reynolds along with partners Tim Train, David Inscore, and Jason Coleman. Among the founders, Reynolds principally specialized in game design, Train in production, Inscore in art direction, and Coleman in engineering. Although Brian Reynolds was also a founding member of Firaxis Games, he and the others left Firaxis to found the new company based on their desire to apply the complexity and concepts of the turn-based strategy genre to the real-time strategy genre. [5]
The company's first game, a real-time strategy game entitled Rise of Nations released in 2003 and became a critical and commercial hit ultimately achieving over 2,000,000 lifetime sales. [6] It received considerable critical acclaim and won awards including GameSpy's 2003 Game of the Year for PC-RTS and GameSpot's 2003 Best Strategy Game and 2003 Best PC. An expansion pack, Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots followed in 2004, along with a "Gold Edition".
Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends, a second real-time strategy game—this time fantasy and steampunk based, followed in mid-2006. Although this game had a positive critical reception, its sales underperformed, and it became the last full PC RTS from Big Huge Games.
In the year following the release of Rise of Legends, Reynolds took on two smaller projects with parts of the team. The first, Catan Live , was an Xbox Live version of Klaus Teuber's famous The Settlers of Catan boardgame, with an AI and console interface co-designed by Teuber and Reynolds. The second, Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties was an expansion pack for Microsoft's famous real-time strategy game.
Meanwhile, for its next large project, Big Huge Games turned to roleplaying games and another famous videogame designer. In February 2007, the company announced that Ken Rolston, the lead designer of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind , had come out of retirement to join the company as lead designer on an untitled role playing game (RPG). [7] Later that May it was announced that THQ would publish the title in 2009. [8] This marked the first title from Big Huge Games that was not distributed by Microsoft.
On January 15, 2008, THQ acquired the developer. [9]
On July 30, 2008, Grant Kirkhope joined the Big Huge Games team as an audio director. He had previously worked for Rare, composing for the Banjo-Kazooie and Perfect Dark games (among others). [10]
On March 18, 2009, during the height of that year's Great Recession, THQ announced that due to declining economic conditions, it would close Big Huge Games unless an outside buyer could be found in the next 60 days. [11] As fate would have it, a buyer was found and the studio remained open, while THQ itself went on to file for bankruptcy in December 2012.
On May 27, 2009, 38 Studios announced that they were acquiring Big Huge Games and retaining 70 employees out of approximately 120 who were at THQ. [12]
From mid-2009 to January 2012, Big Huge Games developed a single player role playing game titled Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning , which was released in early February 2012 and published by Electronic Arts (EA) and 38 Studios for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. The game is set in a fantasy world created with input from R A Salvatore and Todd McFarlane.
It was reported on May 24, 2012 that the studio and their parent company 38 Studios had laid off their entire staff. [13] [14]
Briefly, it appeared that the remaining Big Huge Games development team had found backing to keep the studio, or some part of the studio, running. In June 2012, Epic Games announced the opening of a new studio in Baltimore called Epic Baltimore. The studio consisted of a significant portion of ex-Big Huge developers. [15] The nascent studio was later renamed Impossible Studios, but the reboot effort was ultimately short-lived and Impossible Studios officially closed on February 8, 2013. [16]
In October 2013, it was revealed that Reynolds and Train had revived Big Huge Games, having reacquired the trademark at auction from the state of Rhode Island, which owned it following the bankruptcy of 38 Studios. This name was given to their new venture founded in 2013, which was formerly briefly known as SecretNewCo. In addition to Reynolds and Train, the new owners included Bryant Freitag and Dan Halka, both Big Huge Games alumni, and Vinh Trinh who had worked with Reynolds during his time as Chief Game Designer at Zynga, where Reynolds had spent much of the 2009–2013 years. More hires soon followed including many more alumni, and the new studio developed a mobile strategy game for tablets and smartphones called DomiNations , for release on iOS and Android. [17] It is published by Nexon's mobile gaming group. [3] and was released for Android and iOS in April 2015. [17]
The game experienced major success; as of March 2016, it had been downloaded over 19 million times, and Big Huge Games actively continues to run the game and develop features for it as recently as summer 2020.
In the wake of DomiNation's successful launch, Nexon announced on March 9, 2016 that it had acquired Big Huge Games; the studio would continue to produce new titles and maintain DomiNations. [18]
Arcane Showdown, the next major game from the studio, was released in summer 2020 on mobile platforms and Steam. It was shut down on May 29, 2021. [19]
Throughout its first decade, Big Huge Games made extensive use of its internally developed game engine, the Big Huge Engine, in both Rise of Nations and Catan. The engine features support for a variety of applications and technologies, including physics, artificial intelligence, animation, and others. [20]
Release Date | Title | Genre | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2003 | Rise of Nations | Real-time strategy | |
2004 | Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots | Real-time strategy | Expansion pack |
2006 | Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends | Real-time strategy | |
2007 | Catan | Turn-based strategy | Xbox Live Arcade |
2007 | Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties | Real-time strategy | Expansion pack |
2012 | Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning | Action role-playing game | Co-developed with 38 Studios |
2015 | DomiNations | Turn-based strategy | Co-developed with Nexon |
2020 | Arcane Showdown [21] [22] | Real-time strategy | |
At the time of their move from THQ to 38 Studios, Big Huge Games was working on two large game projects, which were then canceled. [23]
Brian Reynolds is an American videogame designer who is currently president of Firaxis Games. Reynolds has designed at SecretNewCo, Zynga, Big Huge Games and MicroProse and has been chairman of the International Game Developers Association. He has played a major part in designing a number of multi-million selling games including Civilization II, Rise of Nations, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and FrontierVille. He has also founded or co-founded three game companies, SecretNewCo, Big Huge Games, and Firaxis Games.
THQ Inc. was an American video game company based in Agoura Hills, California. It was founded in April 1990 by Jack Friedman, originally in Calabasas, and became a public company the following year through a reverse merger takeover. Initially working in the toy business, it expanded into the video game business through several acquisitions before shifting its focus away from toys entirely. THQ continued its trend of acquiring companies throughout the 2000s.
Rise of Nations is a real-time strategy video game developed by Big Huge Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios in May 2003. The development was led by veteran game designer Brian Reynolds, of Civilization II and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. The game has taken several concepts from turn-based strategy games such as territories and attrition warfare. Rise of Nations features 18 civilizations, playable through eight ages of world history.
Relic Entertainment Inc. is a Canadian video game developer based in Vancouver, founded in 1997. The studio specializes in real-time strategy games and is known for series such as Homeworld, Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and Company of Heroes. Acquired by THQ in 2004, the company was sold to Sega on January 22, 2013 as part of THQ's bankruptcy. Relic is now a part of Sega Europe, which also comprises Creative Assembly, Sports Interactive and Amplitude Studios.
Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots is the official expansion pack to the real-time strategy video game Rise of Nations. The game is the second in a series of Rise of Nations games by Big Huge Games. Thrones and Patriots had its premiere release for Microsoft Windows on April 27, 2004 in North America, and was later bundled up with Rise of Nations as the Gold Edition, which was released for Windows on October 28, 2004, and for Mac OS X in November 2004. Rise of Nations: Extended Edition was released on Steam on June 12, 2014 and includes both the original game and Thrones and Patriots with updated graphics and Steamworks integration for multiplayer.
MapleStory is a free-to-play, 2D, side-scrolling massively multiplayer online role-playing game, developed by South Korean company Wizet. Several versions of the game are available for specific countries or regions, published by various companies.
Age of Empires is a series of historical real-time strategy video games, originally developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Xbox Game Studios. The first game was Age of Empires, released in 1997. Nine total games within the series have been released so far as of October 28, 2021.
Ken Rolston is an American computer game and role-playing game designer best known for his work with West End Games and on the computer game series The Elder Scrolls. In February 2007, he elected to join the staff of computer games company Big Huge Games to create a new role-playing game.
38 Studios, LLC was an American entertainment and video game development company founded in 2006 by Major League Baseball player Curt Schilling and named for his jersey number. Originally based in Massachusetts, the company moved to Rhode Island as part of securing a $75 million loan guarantee from that state's quasi-public Economic Development Corporation (EDC). In February 2012, the company released its only title, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, a single-player action role-playing video game for several platforms. The game received positive reviews and sold an estimated 330,000 copies in its first month, rising to 1.2m copies in the first 90 days. 38 Studios shut down a few months later. The failure of the controversial Rhode Island loan spurred investigations by the news media and the government.
Nexon Co., Ltd. is a global video game publisher, listed in Japan, that specializes in online Virtual World games for PCs, consoles and mobile. Nexon is one of the world’s ten largest interactive game companies based on market capitalization and maintains over 45 titles across 190 countries with popular IP franchises such as MapleStory, Dungeon&Fighter, Sudden Attack, and KartRider. As of 2022, Nexon games have registered close to one billion registered players with multiple games that rank among the world's top-grossing entertainment franchises.
The Genie Engine is a game engine developed by Ensemble Studios and used in several computer games, such as Age of Empires, Age of Empires II and its expansions and Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. Some of those games have been ported to the Apple Mac.
Titan Quest: Immortal Throne is an expansion pack to the 2006 action role-playing hack and slash video game Titan Quest. Developed by Iron Lore Entertainment, it was originally published by THQ in 2007: it would be Iron Lore's last original project prior to their closure in 2008. Following directly on from the events of Titan Quest, Immortal Throne follows the player character as they are confronted by a new wave of monsters attacking the mortal realm from the Underworld. Gameplay is identical to that of Titan Quest, with navigation through locations around the Ancient world and action combat. For Immortal Throne, improvements were made to the inventory system and multiplayer, and a new character class was added.
5th Cell is an independently owned video game developer founded in 2003 as 5th Cell Media, LLC. led by Jeremiah Slaczka and Marius Falhbusch. The company is most well known for creating the Drawn to Life and Scribblenauts series.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a 2012 action role-playing video game for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 developed by Big Huge Games and 38 Studios, who also published the game with Electronic Arts. It was the only game released by 38 Studios before they filed for bankruptcy.
THQ Nordic GmbH is an Austrian video game publisher based in Vienna. Formed in 2011, it is a publishing subsidiary of Embracer Group. Originally named Nordic Games, as was the parent company, both companies were renamed THQ Nordic in August 2016 after the parent company had acquired the "THQ" trademark in 2014. THQ Nordic's core portfolio comprises assets that were acquired from other developers and publishers, such as from JoWooD Entertainment and its subsidiaries DreamCatcher Interactive and The Adventure Company in 2011, THQ in 2013, and NovaLogic in 2016. THQ Nordic has acquired and established several subsidiary studios, including Black Forest Games, Bugbear Entertainment, Gunfire Games, HandyGames, Piranha Bytes, Purple Lamp and Rainbow Studios.
Mark E. Nelson is an American video game designer and humor writer best known for his work with Bethesda Game Studios and the game series The Elder Scrolls. In March 2007, he joined computer games company Big Huge Games to create a new role-playing game, joining industry veteran Brian Reynolds and long-time collaborator Ken Rolston.
Kevin D. Saunders is an American video game designer and producer, best known for his roles in developing Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir (Producer), and Torment: Tides of Numenera.
DomiNations is a 2015 freemium mobile massively multiplayer strategy video game developed and published by Big Huge Games. The game was released on April 1, 2015.
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