The Boss Fight Books series will be getting a bit of an aesthetic refresh with its next book, Age of Empires: How Ensemble Studios Made History.
The iconic stock images have been retired in favor of fully-illustrated covers from “real, human artists.” As you can see, the publisher will also be adding subtitles to all future books in the series, as well as employing a bigger title font.
But don’t worry, the design on the spines will remain the same. So all your previous Boss Fight Books purchases will continue to line up nicely with all of your future Boss Fight Books.
Age of Empires will be written by Richard Moss (who previously authored The Secret History of Mac Gaming and A Tale of Two Halves: The History of Football Video Games), and it’ll feature interviews with more than 25 people who helped bring the strategy game to life (including the Goodman brothers, the Rippy brothers, Ed Fries, and many more).
“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.
Boss Fight Books is currently accepting pre-orders for Age of Empires: How Ensemble Studios Made History through Kickstarter. The book will be published in ebook format this June, with the paperback to follow in July.