Jeffery L. Briggs | |
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Born | |
Occupation | Video game composer, designer |
Known for | Civilization series |
Dr. Jeffery L. Briggs (born March 10, 1957, in Florence, Alabama, United States) is the American founder and former President and CEO of Firaxis Games, a video game developer based in Hunt Valley, Maryland, United States. He was previously a game designer at MicroProse but left that company in 1996 along with Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds to form Firaxis Games.
Briggs holds a Doctorate in Musical Composition and Theory from the University of Illinois. Briggs' composition teachers included Samuel Adler, Warren Benson, Joseph Schwantner, Donald Freund, and John Melby.[ citation needed ] His career began in New York City where he composed music for various events, including dance and theater groups. He took a job as game editor and designer at West End Games where he worked until 1987. He then joined MicroProse Software, where he served as designer, writer, composer and producer, becoming the company's Executive Producer and, finally, its Director of Product Development.[ citation needed ]
Briggs's music first appeared in a 1989 MicroProse release Sword of the Samurai . Following that, most MicroProse games featured his work. Before working in software entertainment, Briggs' music had already received performances by ensembles internationally in Paris' Pompidou Centre ("Ecliptic"), New York City's Avery Fisher Hall ("Comets"), and in the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Illinois ("Adjectives," "Firaxis", "Chimera," "Aurora," and others) as well as various smaller venues in New York and other cities throughout the United States.[ citation needed ] In 1996, he was awarded US Patent 5,496,962 for a "System for Real-Time Music Composition and Synthesis" used in a product called "CPU Bach". [1]
Briggs left MicroProse in 1996 to co-found Firaxis Games. In a 2004 interview he commented his decision: "Civ II had just come out and MicroProse had been purchased by Spectrum HoloByte. [...] Things had gotten pretty bad. By that time I was director of product development and they were asking me to do things and tell people things that I just didn't like. I decided that I could do a lot better job running the company than they could, so I left." [2] Briggs then led the design of Civilization III and oversaw the expansion of the company into a major developer of strategy computer games. He also co-designed Colonization and Civilization II , as well as composing much of the original music in Civilization IV . He negotiated the acquisition of Firaxis Games by Take Two Interactive in 2005, became its Chairman in spring of 2006, and left Firaxis in November of that year. [3] [ citation needed ]
In 2009, the Westfield Symphony Orchestra presented the world premiere of his composition "Celebration for Orchestra". [4]
Name | Year | Credited with | Publisher |
---|---|---|---|
Sword of the Samurai | 1989 | composer, writer | MicroProse |
Silent Service II | 1990 | composer | MicroProse |
Railroad Tycoon | 1990 | composer | MicroProse |
Covert Action | 1990 | composer | MicroProse |
Lightspeed | 1990 | composer | MicroProse |
Knights of the Sky | 1990 | designer | MicroProse |
Civilization | 1991 | composer, writer | MicroProse |
Hyperspeed | 1991 | composer | MicroProse |
Gunship 2000 | 1991 | composer | MicroProse |
F-117A Nighthawk Stealth Fighter 2.0 | 1991 | designer, composer | MicroProse |
Task Force 1942 | 1992 | composer | MicroProse |
Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender | 1992 | composer | MicroProse |
F-15 Strike Eagle III | 1992 | composer | MicroProse |
Darklands | 1992 | composer | MicroProse |
Command HQ (Macintosh) | 1992 | composer | MicroProse |
The Ancient Art of War in the Skies | 1992 | composer | MicroProse |
Super Strike Eagle | 1993 | composer | MicroProse |
Railroad Tycoon Deluxe | 1993 | composer | MicroProse |
Pirates! Gold | 1993 | composer | MicroProse |
Colonization | 1994 | designer, composer | MicroProse |
Civilization II | 1996 | producer, designer, composer | MicroProse |
Gettysburg! | 1997 | designer, programmer | Electronic Arts |
Alpha Centauri | 1999 | composer, executive producer | Electronic Arts |
Alien Crossfire | 1999 | composer, executive producer | Electronic Arts |
Antietam! | 1999 | designer | Firaxis Games |
Civilization III | 2001 | designer | Infogrames |
Civilization III: Conquests | 2003 | designer | Atari SA |
Pirates! | 2004 | designer | Atari SA |
Civilization IV | 2005 | composer | 2K Games |
Civilization IV: Warlords | 2006 | composer | 2K Games |
In 2003, Briggs was named software "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Ernst & Young, and in 2004 he was named "CEO of the Year" by Baltimore SmartCEO magazine. [5]
He was awarded the Bernard and Rose Sernoffsky and Louis Lane Prizes for Music Composition at the Eastman School of Music (1978, 1979),[ citation needed ] the Haimsohm Prize for Musical Composition at the University of Memphis (1980),[ citation needed ]the ASCAP Award for Young Composers (1984), and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship (1986).[ citation needed ]
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a 4X video game, considered a spiritual sequel to the Civilization series. Set in a science fiction depiction of the 22nd century, the game begins as seven competing ideological factions land on the planet Chiron ("Planet") in the Alpha Centauri star system. As the game progresses, Planet's growing sentience becomes a formidable obstacle to the human colonists.
Sid Meier's Civilization is a 1991 turn-based strategy 4X video game developed and published by MicroProse. The game was originally developed for MS-DOS running on a PC, and has undergone numerous revisions for various platforms. The player is tasked with leading an entire human civilization over the course of several millennia by controlling various areas such as urban development, exploration, government, trade, research, and military. The player can control individual units and advance the exploration, conquest and settlement of the game's world. The player can also make such decisions as setting forms of government, tax rates and research priorities. The player's civilization is in competition with other computer-controlled civilizations, with which the player can enter diplomatic relationships that can either end in alliances or lead to war.
Sidney K. Meier is a Canadian-American programmer, designer, and producer of several strategy video games and simulation video games, including the Civilization series. Meier co-founded MicroProse in 1982 with Bill Stealey and is the Director of Creative Development of Firaxis Games, which he co-founded with Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds in 1996. For his contributions to the video game industry, Meier was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame.
John Wilbur Stealey Sr. is an American game developer and publisher who founded MicroProse with Sid Meier. He also founded and is the current CEO of iEntertainment Network.
Sid Meier's Civilization II is a turn-based strategy video game in the Civilization series, developed and published by MicroProse. It was released in 1996 for PCs and later ported to the PlayStation by Activision.
MicroProse is an American video game publisher and developer founded by Bill Stealey and Sid Meier in 1982. It developed and published numerous games, including starting the Civilization and X-COM series. Most of their internally developed titles were vehicle simulation and strategy games.
Firaxis Games, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Sparks, Maryland. The company was founded in May 1996 by Sid Meier, Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds following their departure from MicroProse, Meier's earlier venture. They were acquired by Take-Two Interactive in August 2005, and subsequently became part of the publisher's 2K label. Firaxis Games is best known for developing the Civilization and XCOM series, as well as many other games bearing Meier's name.
Brian Reynolds is an American videogame designer who now designs online social games. Reynolds has designed at SecretNewCo, Zynga, Big Huge Games, Firaxis Games, and MicroProse and has been chairman of the International Game Developers Association. He has played a major part in designing a number of multi-million selling games including Civilization II, Rise of Nations, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and FrontierVille. He has also founded or co-founded three game companies, SecretNewCo, Big Huge Games, and Firaxis Games.
X-COM: Enemy Unknown is a 1994 science fiction strategy video game developed by Mythos Games and MicroProse. It was published by MicroProse for MS-DOS and Amiga computers, the Amiga CD32 console, and the PlayStation. It is known as X-COM: UFO Defense in North America.
Carl Sanford Joslyn "Sandy" Petersen is an American game designer.
1996 has seen many sequels and prequels in video games and several new titles such as Blazing Heroes, Super Mario 64, NiGHTS into Dreams..., Crash Bandicoot, Resident Evil, Dead or Alive, Duke Nukem 3D and Tomb Raider.
Bruce Campbell Shelley is a board and video game designer. He is primarily associated as the co-designer of the video games Railroad Tycoon and Civilization with Sid Meier, and later the Age of Empires series.
Soren Johnson is an American video game designer and programmer.
Civilization is a series of turn-based strategy video games, first released in 1991. Sid Meier developed the first game in the series and has had creative input for most of the rest, and his name is usually included in the formal title of these games, such as Sid Meier's Civilization. There are six main games in the series, a number of expansion packs and spin-off games, as well as board games inspired by the video game series. The series is considered a formulative example of the 4X genre, in which players achieve victory through four routes: "eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate".
Jon Shafer is an American designer and programmer of computer games. He was the lead designer of the strategy game Civilization V, developed by Firaxis.
Geoff Knorr is an American composer, orchestrator, and sound designer. He has worked on video game titles such as Civilization V, Civilization: Beyond Earth, Civilization VI, Galactic Civilizations III, and Ashes of the Singularity.
Sid Meier's Civilization II Scenarios: Conflicts in Civilization is a single-player historical turn-based strategy game, and the first expansion pack to Civilization II. It contains 20 new scenarios; 12 made by the expansion pack developers, and 8 "Best of the Net" scenarios created by series fans. These were the fan-made scenarios that were "deemed the best by the developers". The game was developed and published by MicroProse. The game was "produced by the players and the development team, including some of the script and the 'new content'". This content contained new worlds, new maps, units, an updated technology tree, and new music. The game also allowed players to create their own custom scenarios. it was released November 25, 1996.
Nuclear Gandhi is an Internet meme and an urban legend about the video game Civilization. According to the legend, there was a bug in Civilization that eventually forced the pacifist leader Mahatma Gandhi to be extremely aggressive and to use nuclear weapons heavily.