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- Apr 21, 2015
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Leaders, below is a letter from the CEO of Big Huge Games Tim Train in recognition of DomiNation's 5th year anniversary!
Hello DomiNations Leaders,
We’ve now hit FIVE YEARS of our journey through human history, and what a great trip it’s been! The game began in 2013 as a first project for our new startup, originally named SecretNewCo. As a team with strong empire-building roots going back to the days of the original Sid Meier’s Civilization in 1991, we were excited to bring deep strategy experiences to the mobile platform. One maxim we learned from Sid was “make games you want to play, and you will probably find an audience.” So the first thing we did (after setting up makeshift desks in my dining room) was to start a prototype that we could jam all our cool ideas into.
We would congregate 2-3 times a week and play new builds of the game, then discuss what was fun and what was not fun. Out of each conversation we’d generate a list of tasks for the engineers to work on, dubbed the “Wall of Pain” because of how quickly we wanted to iterate. This is usually the most fun part of game development – when you are painting on a blank canvas and you can see your ideas come together very quickly. The first magical moment for me was the original build that had hunting and gathering in it – tapping on deer and fruit trees, collecting rare resources, and then going to battle with historical units. We were excited to bring some of the feel of classic historical strategy games to the mobile build-and-battle genre, including a sense of progression through the Ages, meaningful choices like Nations and Wonders, and deeper combat with troop generators and fragile siege units to protect.
Along the way, we reacquired the name Big Huge Games in an auction from the State of Rhode Island, who ended up owning the name after the implosion of 38 Studios (feel free to Google for more info on THAT industry war story…). Many of the founding group had been involved in the original Big Huge, and we wanted this successor studio to live up to the same ideals as the original. We were excited to build great games that could find a broad audience, and create a company that avoided so much of the toxicity of the tech industry by valuing team skills as much as technical skills.
Of course, nothing ever goes quite according to plan in the startup world. We launched DomiNations with a team of about 20 people, very small by industry standards. This was our first mobile title, our first project developed in Unity, and of course our first game as a new studio. Within a few weeks of launch, more people had played DomiNations than had played any of our previous strategy titles, which was a scale of audience we were unprepared for. As such, we spent the first few years trying to balance the addition of new features with more investment in fixing our “tech debt” that allowed so many security issues and other bugs. We may have made some wrong decisions in the early years of DomiNations, but as it became clearer that this game could have a ten or fifteen year lifespan, we have shifted more of our resources to addressing security holes. This is always a little bit of a game of “whack-a-mole,” where new exploits are discovered as fast as we can fix them, but hopefully Leaders have noticed a much more proactive approach to banning cheaters, fixing exploits, and keeping the Leaderboards clean.
All of this is with an eye towards continuing to support this game for another decade or more – as long as you, the players, are willing to keep coming back to the game and telling your friends about a title I firmly believe is the best build-and-battle game on mobile today.
As we enter the second half of our first decade, we will be telling the story of humankind all the way through to the present day – and maybe a little beyond! We have an exciting 2020 roadmap that will make working together within your Alliance more crucial than ever:
Tim Train
CEO, Big Huge Games
Hello DomiNations Leaders,
We’ve now hit FIVE YEARS of our journey through human history, and what a great trip it’s been! The game began in 2013 as a first project for our new startup, originally named SecretNewCo. As a team with strong empire-building roots going back to the days of the original Sid Meier’s Civilization in 1991, we were excited to bring deep strategy experiences to the mobile platform. One maxim we learned from Sid was “make games you want to play, and you will probably find an audience.” So the first thing we did (after setting up makeshift desks in my dining room) was to start a prototype that we could jam all our cool ideas into.
We would congregate 2-3 times a week and play new builds of the game, then discuss what was fun and what was not fun. Out of each conversation we’d generate a list of tasks for the engineers to work on, dubbed the “Wall of Pain” because of how quickly we wanted to iterate. This is usually the most fun part of game development – when you are painting on a blank canvas and you can see your ideas come together very quickly. The first magical moment for me was the original build that had hunting and gathering in it – tapping on deer and fruit trees, collecting rare resources, and then going to battle with historical units. We were excited to bring some of the feel of classic historical strategy games to the mobile build-and-battle genre, including a sense of progression through the Ages, meaningful choices like Nations and Wonders, and deeper combat with troop generators and fragile siege units to protect.
Along the way, we reacquired the name Big Huge Games in an auction from the State of Rhode Island, who ended up owning the name after the implosion of 38 Studios (feel free to Google for more info on THAT industry war story…). Many of the founding group had been involved in the original Big Huge, and we wanted this successor studio to live up to the same ideals as the original. We were excited to build great games that could find a broad audience, and create a company that avoided so much of the toxicity of the tech industry by valuing team skills as much as technical skills.
Of course, nothing ever goes quite according to plan in the startup world. We launched DomiNations with a team of about 20 people, very small by industry standards. This was our first mobile title, our first project developed in Unity, and of course our first game as a new studio. Within a few weeks of launch, more people had played DomiNations than had played any of our previous strategy titles, which was a scale of audience we were unprepared for. As such, we spent the first few years trying to balance the addition of new features with more investment in fixing our “tech debt” that allowed so many security issues and other bugs. We may have made some wrong decisions in the early years of DomiNations, but as it became clearer that this game could have a ten or fifteen year lifespan, we have shifted more of our resources to addressing security holes. This is always a little bit of a game of “whack-a-mole,” where new exploits are discovered as fast as we can fix them, but hopefully Leaders have noticed a much more proactive approach to banning cheaters, fixing exploits, and keeping the Leaderboards clean.
All of this is with an eye towards continuing to support this game for another decade or more – as long as you, the players, are willing to keep coming back to the game and telling your friends about a title I firmly believe is the best build-and-battle game on mobile today.
As we enter the second half of our first decade, we will be telling the story of humankind all the way through to the present day – and maybe a little beyond! We have an exciting 2020 roadmap that will make working together within your Alliance more crucial than ever:
- Build the mighty Parliament, unlocking a new Alliance-wide Research system where you’ll work together to unlock powerful new benefits for all members of your Alliance.
- Progress faster with the ability to request aid from Allies that reduces your in-progress timers.
- Become a world-leading Super Power with cyclical World War Seasons and custom ladder rewards.
- Study under Sun Tzu at the University to master War and unlock the Art of War.
- Seize the power of the Information Age and its new Wonders.
Tim Train
CEO, Big Huge Games
Lame.
