Big Huge Games

Big Huge Games is a computer game developer located in Timonium, Maryland. The company was founded in February 2000 by four veteran game industry developers: Tim Train, David Inscore, Jason Coleman and Brian Reynolds (lead designer of Alpha Centauri, et al). Their first game, Rise of Nations, was a critical and commercial hit.

History and events
Although Reynolds was a founding member of Firaxis Games, he and the others allegedly left Firaxis to found a new company based on their desire to apply the complexity and concepts of the turn-based strategy genre to the real-time strategy genre. The corporate website stresses the company's dedication to the strategy game genre.

In February 2007, Big Huge Games announced that Ken Rolston, the lead designer behind 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). Later that May it was announced that THQ would publish the title in 2009. This will mark the first title from Big Huge Games that is not distributed by Microsoft.

On January 15, 2008, THQ acquired the developer.

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).

On March 18, 2009, 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.

Releases

 * Rise of Nations, May 2003
 * Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots, April 2004
 * Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends, May 2006
 * Catan, May 2007 (Xbox 360 version)
 * Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties, October 2007

Upcoming titles

 * Untitled RPG, 2009 (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
 * Untitled Wii game

Game engine
Many of the titles developed by Big Huge Games makes use of their internally developed game engine, the Big Huge Engine. Although the engine is available for licensing by third parties, its primary use is in-house, where it was used for both Rise of Nations and Catan.

According to the website, the engine features support for a variety of applications and technologies, including physics, artificial intelligence, animation, and others