Age of Empires
Age of Empires is a series of historical real-time strategy video games, originally developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Studios. The first title of the series was "Age of Empires", released in 1997. Seven titles and three spin-offs have been released.
Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties
In developing "Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties", Ensemble Studios worked with Big Huge Games for the first time. This partnership came about as a result of Ensemble Studios being busy with other projects including "Halo Wars", and Big Huge Games' real-time strategy team with spare time on their hands. Several Big Huge Games employees, including Brian Reynolds, had declared they were fans of the "Age of Empires" series, and thus they asked Ensemble Studios if the two could work together on the upcoming expansion. The two studios did large amounts of communication through the internet, and Reynolds says the entire process worked well. Ensemble Studios took the role of the "customer" in their relationship with Big Huge Games, and thus the game was designed to satisfy Ensemble's needs. Ensemble designers Greg Street and Sandy Petersen were also heavily involved in brainstorming and developing the game.