Jeffery L. Briggs (born March 10, 1957) is the American founder and former President and

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

Firaxis 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 ...

, a

video game developer A video game developer is a broad term for a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large ...

based in

Hunt Valley, Maryland Hunt Valley is an unincorporated community in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States, near the site of the Maryland Hunt Cup Steeplechase. It lies just north of the city of Baltimore, along York Road (Maryland Route 45), parallel to Interstat ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. He was previously a

game designer Game design is the art of applying design and aesthetics to create a game for entertainment or for educational, exercise, or experimental purposes. Increasingly, elements and principles of game design are also applied to other interactions, in ...

MicroProse MicroProse is an American video game publisher and developer founded by Bill Stealey, Sid Meier, and Andy Hollis in 1982. It developed and published numerous games, including starting the ''Civilization'' and '' X-COM'' series. Most of their in ...

but left that company in 1996 along with

Sid Meier Sidney K. Meier ( ; born February 24, 1954) 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 ...

and Brian Reynolds to form Firaxis Games.

Career

Briggs holds a

Doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

in Musical Composition and Theory from the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Uni ...

. Briggs' composition teachers included Samuel Adler,

Warren Benson Warren Benson (January 26, 1924 – October 6, 2005) was an American composer. His compositions consist mostly of music for wind instruments and percussion. His most notable piece is titled ''The Leaves Are Falling''. Biography Benson was born in ...

Joseph Schwantner Joseph Clyde Schwantner (born March 22, 1943, Chicago, Illinois) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer, educator and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 2002. He was awarded the 1970 Charles Ives Prize. Schwantne ...

, Donald Freund, and John Melby. His career began in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

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 West End Games (WEG) was a company that made board, role-playing, and war games. It was founded by Daniel Scott Palter in 1974 in New York City, but later moved to Honesdale, Pennsylvania. Its product lines included ''Star Wars'', ''Paranoia'', ...

where he worked until 1987. He then joined MicroProse Software, where he served as designer,

writer A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce different forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, books, poetry, travelogues, ...

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Def ...

and producer, becoming the company's Executive Producer and, finally, its Director of Product Development. 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 The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

("Ecliptic"), New York City's

Avery Fisher Hall David Geffen Hall is a concert hall in New York City's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts complex on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The 2,200-seat auditorium opened in 1962, and is the home of the New York Philharmonic. The facility, desi ...

("Comets"), and in the

Krannert Center for the Performing Arts The Krannert Center for the Performing Arts is an educational and performing arts complex located at 500 South Goodwin Avenue in Urbana, Illinois and on the campus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Herman C. Krannert, an indust ...

in Illinois ("Adjectives," "Firaxis", "Chimera," "Aurora," and others) as well as various smaller venues in New York and other cities throughout the United States. 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". 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." Briggs then led the design of ''

Civilization III ''Sid Meier's Civilization III'' is the third installment of the '' Sid Meier's Civilization'' turn-based strategy video game series. It was released in 2001, and followed by ''Civilization IV''. Unlike the original game, ''Civilization III'' was ...

'' and oversaw the expansion of the company into a major developer of strategy computer games. He also co-designed ''

Colonization Colonization, or colonisation, constitutes large-scale population movements wherein migrants maintain strong links with their, or their ancestors', former country – by such links, gain advantage over other inhabitants of the territory. When ...

'' and ''

Civilization II ''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. Players build a c ...

'', as well as composing much of the original music in ''

Civilization IV ''Civilization IV'' (also known as ''Sid Meier's Civilization IV'') is a 4X turn-based strategy computer game and the fourth installment of the ''Civilization'' series, and designed by Soren Johnson under the direction of Sid Meier and his vide ...

''. 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. In 2009, the Westfield Symphony Orchestra presented the world premiere of his composition "Celebration for Orchestra".

Games

Awards

In 2003, Briggs was named software "Entrepreneur of the Year" by

Ernst & Young Ernst & Young Global Limited, trade name EY, is a multinational professional services partnership headquartered in London, England. EY is one of the largest professional services networks in the world. Along with Deloitte, KPMG and Pricewat ...

, and in 2004 he was named "CEO of the Year" by ''Baltimore SmartCEO'' magazine.Firaxis' Jeffery Briggs named CEO of the Year
by Gamespot Staff on October 11, 2004 He was awarded the Bernard and Rose Sernoffsky and Louis Lane Prizes for Music Composition at the

Eastman School of Music The Eastman School of Music is the music school of the University of Rochester, a private research university in Rochester, New York. It was established in 1921 by industrialist and philanthropist George Eastman. It offers Bachelor of Music ...

(1978, 1979), the Haimsohm Prize for Musical Composition at the

University of Memphis } The University of Memphis (UofM) is a public research university in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1912, the university has an enrollment of more than 22,000 students. The university maintains the Herff College of Engineering, the Center for Ea ...

(1980),the

ASCAP The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadca ...

Award for Young Composers (1984), and a

MacDowell Colony MacDowell is an artist's residency program in Peterborough, New Hampshire, United States, founded in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, pianist and philanthropist Marian MacDowell. Prior to July 2020, it was known as the MacDowel ...

Fellowship (1986).

References

External links

Jeff Briggs' home page
*
Jeff Briggs Named 'CEO of the Year' by Smart CEO Magazine
Firaxis press release {{DEFAULTSORT:Briggs, Jeff 1957 births 20th-century American composers 20th-century American male musicians 21st-century American composers 21st-century American male musicians American chief executives American male composers American video game designers Living people MicroProse people People from Florence, Alabama Role-playing game designers Video game composers