Big Huge Games

Big Huge Games is a video 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 Brian Reynolds was a founding member of Firaxis Games, he and the others 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.

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.

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.

Unfinished titles
At the time of their move from THQ to 38 Studios, Big Huge Games was working on two large game projects, which are now presumed to be canceled.


 * Ascendant, 2009 (Xbox 360, PS3, Microsoft Windows)
 * God: The Game Wii game

Game engine
Big Huge Games made use of their 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.