in
2003 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. 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. 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). Later that May it was announced that
THQ would publish the title in 2009. This marked the first title from Big Huge Games that was not distributed by
Microsoft.
Acquisition by THQ 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, 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. 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.
Acquisition by 38 Studios On May 27, 2009,
38 Studios announced that it was acquiring Big Huge Games and retaining 70 employees out of approximately 120 who were at THQ. Brian Reynolds left the studio for
Zynga shortly afterwards. 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 its parent company 38 Studios had laid off their entire staff.
Formation of Epic Baltimore 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. 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.
Revival by Reynolds and Train 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. It is published by
Nexon's mobile gaming group.
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. ==Game engine==