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By Tim Train and
[Author's Bio]
Brian Reynolds
[Author's Bio]

Gamasutra
June 27, 2003

Introduction

What Went Right

What Went Wrong

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Features

Postmortem: Big Huge Games' Rise of Nations


Rise of Nations

The name of our company is a summation of our corporate attitude: aim for the top, but don't take yourself too seriously along the way. In this case, "aiming for the top" meant putting together a company and a game designed to go head-to-head in one of the most competitive and resource-intensive segments of the PC marketplace: real-time strategy games. To succeed, our first game needed all the fun, depth, and polish of products that enjoyed bigger budgets and more manpower due to their recognizable franchises. Since they don't give out Game Developers Choice Awards for "Best Game Made With Fewer Than 30 People," we had to find ways to work both harder and smarter if we wanted to achieve our goals.

Big Huge Games was formed in early 2000 by a core team who had worked together for close to 10 years, creating best-sellers such as Colonization, Civilization II, and Alpha Centauri. This history of successful strategy games allowed us to go to publishers with a convincing pitch for a next-generation RTS. Although we understood the issues involved in creating turn-based games, almost all of the areas where we failed to address risks adequately involved areas where we had minimal experience, such as multiplayer matchmaking and making linear single-player campaigns. In addition to these, we also stumbled in some areas that were unique to our situation and company culture.

 

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