Big Huge Games is an American video game developer based in Timonium, Maryland, known first for genre-blending real-time strategy games and later for large-scale mobile strategy titles. Incorporated in late 1999 and formally announced in February 2000, the studio was founded by four industry veterans—Brian Reynolds, Tim Train, David Inscore, and Jason Coleman—who divided responsibilities across game design, production, art direction, and engineering. Reynolds, the studio's best-known figure, had been a founding member of the celebrated strategy developer Firaxis Games and lead designer on genre-defining turn-based strategy titles, and the team left Firaxis united by a shared ambition: to bring the depth, complexity, and grand historical sweep of turn-based strategy into the faster-paced real-time strategy genre. That vision materialized in the studio's acclaimed 2003 debut, a historical real-time strategy franchise that fused sweeping civilization-building scope with accessible real-time gameplay, earning strong reviews, major awards, and sales exceeding two million copies, before the studio broadened its range by co-developing a strategy expansion for another marquee franchise and later venturing into console action role-playing.
The studio's history has been marked by repeated changes of ownership, weathering more turbulence than most. Acquired by THQ in January 2008 and then by the newly formed 38 Studios in 2009, Big Huge Games contributed to an ambitious console RPG before the collapse of its parent company forced the original studio to close in May 2012. In a determined second act, founders Reynolds and Train reacquired the Big Huge Games name and revived the studio alongside several original alumni, pivoting toward the mobile market and releasing successful strategy titles that blended historical progression and competitive multiplayer for smartphones and tablets. Acquired by South Korean gaming giant Nexon in 2016, Big Huge Games continues operating from Maryland as a subsidiary focused on live mobile strategy games, sustaining the strategic design expertise its founders have carried across more than two decades and multiple incarnations of the studio.
