slides & audio (72 MB)
Big Huge Games recounts their move from a one project to two projects at a time company and recounts this issues that occur in the transition of scaling up.
our take:
This session is for those who think that casual games are easy to make.
Delivered at Casual Connect Seattle, 19 July 2007
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Jason Coleman (email)
As a founding partner and VP of Software, Jason Coleman leads the programming effort for Big Huge Games. With 12 years of industry experience, Jason continues to thrive on the ever-changing landscape of game development and on working with some of the coolest, most creative people on the planet.
Taking a break from graduate school in the summer of 1994, Jason took a temporary job as a tester at Microprose where he helped test Sid Meier's Colonization to completion. Within a week, he had fallen in love with the industry and the people, and was soon requesting a year off from his studies. While working in Quality Assurance (the mail-room of its day), Jason morphed his Fortran knowledge into C skills and soon found himself working directly with Brian Reynolds on the completion of Sid Meier's Civilization II.
In 1996, Jason left Microprose to become Firaxis' first employee. With the "many hats" prerequisite of working for a startup, Jason set up the network, managed the hardware, and coded the core engine for both Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds to whatever specification they required. This enabled the development of both Sid Meier's Gettysburg! and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
In 2000, Jason left Firaxis to found Big Huge Games with Brian Reynolds, Dave Inscore, and Tim Train, with the rather simple goal of making AAA games that are both critical successes and commercial blockbusters. Jason was the Lead Programmer on both Rise of Nations (2003) and Rise of Legends (2006).
Jason holds a Master's in Physics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a BA in Physics from Johns Hopkins University.
