Big Huge Games

History

Big Huge Games was founded by Jason Coleman, Tim Train, David Inscore, and Brian Reynolds in Febuary 2000. The company's first game was the critically acclaimed real-time stratagy game Rise of Nations, which combined both real-time and turn-based strategy components. It later released the expansion Thrones and Patriots for Rise of Nations in April 2004. Two years later in May 2006 Rise of Nation: Rise of Legends was released. Rise of Legends is a spin off of Rise of Nations and had a overall gameplay structure that was similar to Rise of Nations but set in a fantasy/steampunk world and featured three factions that each had a unique way of playing. (one of the factions even had a different primary resource) It also featured an actual story mode compared to Rise of Nations which had a single player campaign that is comparable to Risk and later added scenarios based on real war campaigns from various events in history such as the conquest of the known world by Alexander the Great, Napoleon I's conquest of Europe and the Cold War. This was followed by the Xbox Live Arcade game Catan and Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties. Ken Rolston joined Big Huge Games in early 2007.

Acquisition

THQ acquired Big Huge Games in January 2008 and later announced that the developer was working on an RPG for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 with Ken Rolston as lead designer. In late May 2009, Curt Schilling's 38 Studios acquired Big Huge Games. 38 Studios' CEO and President Brett Close had this to say about the acquisition, "The acquisition enables us to develop and deliver top-quality games in multiple genres that are based in a shared world, ultimately maximizing the value of our Copernicus MMOG and the intellectual property as a whole."

The first fruits of their first and last work with 38 Studios was Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. After the downfall of 38 Studios in 2012 the former employees of Big Huge Games were hired by Epic Games to form Impossible Studios.

Games