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Brian Reynolds’s Big Huge Game

Brian Reynolds is the man behind the curtain. The game God nobody knew about. He had the luck and misfortune to work with one of the biggest names in the business, one of the few true legends in game design, Sid Meier, and that name swallowed up a lot of the praise aimed at Brian. What do I mean by that? It’s simple, Brian Reynolds made Sid Meier’s Colonization, he was lead developer on Sid Meier’s Civilization 2, and he partnered with Sid and Jeff Briggs to found Firaxis, was lead playtester on Sid Meier’s Gettysburg and finally, was lead developer of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, a Brian Reynolds Design. Yeah, finally at the end there he got a title credit, even if it made the title an awkward mouthful. Despite this Brian has acknowledged the power of the Sid Meier name, and how much he’s learned from his former mentor, friend, and partner. Now he’s struck off on his own, joined by several of Firaxis’s best and brightest, to found Big Huge Games. He quickly struck a deal with Microsoft and we’re about a month and a half from his debut game, Rise of Nations. No ‘Sid Meier’ in the title this time!

You’ve read the preview (and if you haven’t, you probably should), now learn with us how such a monstrous and—ahem—such a big huge game was developed. Ladies and gentlemen, Brian Reynolds talks about Rise of Nations.

FiringSquad: Hello Brian. Let’s start with some background. Prior to founding Big Huge Games you were with Microprose and helped found Firaxis. At both places you worked with Sid Meier. Why did you feel it was time to strike out on your own?

Brian Reynolds: As we got to the end of Alpha Centauri—keep in mind Alpha Centauri was a turn based strategy game and so was Civilization 2 before that—I felt like the future of strategy games was really heading toward real-time for a number of reasons: One, you can have a decent multiplayer experience with real-time in 30 minutes, or an hour, over a lunch break. Secondly (with an RTS) you have more opportunities for cutting edge graphics and 3D animation and so forth. So basically, real-time games let you deliver a more polished experience in a lot of ways. So I felt like I ought to be doing a real-time game and… real-time games cost a lot more to make than turn-based games. So I needed a business model that could bring those kinds of resources to bear. That’s why I set up Big Huge Games and got together with Microsoft.