Deluxe Hardcover: Preorder Now, Get it in November! (Note: If you add Age of Empires to your order, the ENTIRE order will not ship until November.)
Ebook: Get it now!
ISBN: 978-1-940535-43-2
204 pages
Printed Lithocase Hardcover
6 x 9"
Black & white interior with glossy color inserts
“Tony came in one day, out of the blue, and said to everybody in the room, ‘Hey, would any of you rather be programming games than databases?’”
Upon its release in 1997, the real-time strategy game Age of Empires turned heads with its varied campaigns, competitive online play, “Hollywood” approach to history, and its bright and colorful aesthetic.
Helmed by brothers Tony and Rick Goodman, Age of Empires was a game about bringing thousands of years of human history to life—and making it fun and accessible. Over the course of its three-year development, the game shifted from an ancient-world twist on SimCity to a historical real-time strategy game, but through all its iterations Age never strayed from that core vision.
Based on interviews with 29 former Ensemble and Microsoft executives and staff, documentarian Richard Moss tells the story of how a scrappy team of first-time developers partnered with the biggest tech company in the world on a game that would test the brothers’ relationship like nothing before.
This deluxe hardcover edition contains everything from the standard paperback edition, plus:
* A cover variant by illustrator Jack Bloom
* 55 pages of drawings, photos, and design docs that take you behind the scenes from the development of Age of Empires (28 pages of glossy color inserts and 27 pages of B&W images throughout the book)
* An additional chapter, "Pax Romana," about how the team at Ensemble Studios created the game's "Rise of Rome" expansion
Richard Moss is an award-winning writer, historian, journalist, and documentary filmmaker from Melbourne, Australia. His other works include The Secret History of Mac Gaming, A Tale of Two Halves: The History of Football Video Games, and the acclaimed five-part docuseries TerrorBytes: The Evolution of Horror Gaming. You can find him online via mossrc.me.
