query: designer age of empires 
supports: Rick Goodman is a video game developer and the founder and owner of the now-defunct Stainless Steel Studios. He is best known for the RTS games he designed, such as Age of Empires and Empire Earth. Age of Empires is a series of personal computer games developed by Ensemble Studios (defunct in 2009) and published by Microsoft Studios. The first title of the series was "Age of Empires", released in 1997. Since then, seven titles and three spin-offs have been released. The titles are historical real-time strategy games, and their gameplay revolves around two main game modes: Single player and campaign. They competed with another popular strategy series, "Civilization". Microsoft Windows (or simply Windows) is a metafamily of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It consists of several families of operating systems, each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry with the OS typically associated with IBM PC compatible architecture. Active Windows families include Windows NT, Windows Embedded and Windows Phone; these may encompass subfamilies, e.g. Windows Embedded Compact (Windows CE) or Windows Server. Defunct Windows families include Windows 9x; Windows 10 Mobile is an active product, unrelated to the defunct family Windows Mobile. Age of Empires ( AoE ) is a history - based real - time strategy video game released in 1997 . Developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft . The game uses the Genie , a 2D sprite - based game engine . The game allows the user to act as the leader of an ancient civilization by advancing it through four ages ( the Stone , Tool , Bronze , and Iron Ages ) , gaining access to new and improved units with each advance . It was later ported to Pocket PCs with Windows , resulting in a version very similar to the PC game . Originally touted as Civilization meets Warcraft , some reviewers felt that the game failed to live up to these expectations when it was released . Despite this , it received generally good reviews , and the expansion pack Age of Empires : The Rise of Rome was released in 1998 . Both the original Age of Empires and the expansion pack were later released as `` The Gold Edition '' . A sequel , Age of Empires II , was released in 1999 . Age of Mythology (AoM) is a mythology-based real-time strategy video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It was released on October 30, 2002 in North America and a week later in Europe. Ensemble Studios was a video game developer initially established in 1995 as an independent company by Tony Goodman, Rick Goodman and John Boog-Scott, but was acquired by Microsoft in 2001 and operated as an internal studio until 2009, when it was officially disbanded. Ensemble developed many real-time strategy games, including the "Age of Empires" game series, "Age of Mythology", and "Halo Wars". In addition to game development, Ensemble Studios also made the Genie Game Engine used in "Age of Empires", "", and "". The studio sold 20 million games and was worth an estimated $500 million. Halo Wars is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360 video game console. It was released in Japan and Australia on February 26, 2009; in Europe on February 27; and in North America on March 3. The game is set in the science fiction universe of the "Halo" series in the year 2531, 21 years before the events of "". The player leads human soldiers aboard the warship "Spirit of Fire" in an effort to stop an ancient fleet of ships from falling into the hands of the genocidal alien Covenant. Microsoft Corporation (commonly referred to as Microsoft or MS) is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, Microsoft Office office suite, and Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface tablet lineup. As of 2016, it was the world's largest software maker by revenue, and one of the world's most valuable companies. Redmond is a city in King County, Washington, United States, located east of Seattle, within the Seattle metropolitan area. The population is 60,560 in 2016, an increase from the 2010 census, up from 45,256 in 2000 census. Redmond is commonly recognized as the home of Microsoft and Nintendo of America. With an annual bike race on city streets and the state's only velodrome, Redmond is also known as the "Bicycle Capital of the Northwest".
candidates: ensemble studios ibm nintendo rick goodman
answer: rick goodman