Brian Reynolds (born 1967) is an American

videogame designer Video game design is the process of designing the content and rules of video games in the pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the production stage. Some common video game design subdiscipline ...

who is currently president of Firaxis Games. Reynolds has designed at SecretNewCo,

Zynga Zynga Inc. () is an American developer running social video game services. It was founded in April 2007, with headquarters in San Mateo, California. The company primarily focuses on mobile and social networking platforms. Zynga states its missio ...

, Big Huge Games and

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 inte ...

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 ''Sid Meier's Civilization II'' is a turn-based strategy video game in the Civilization (series), ''Civilization'' series, developed and published by MicroProse. It was released in 1996 for personal computer, PCs, and later ported to the PlayS ...

'', ''

Rise of Nations ''Rise of Nations'' is a real-time strategy video game developed by Big Huge Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios in May 2003. The development was led by veteran game designer Brian Reynolds, of ''Civilization II'' and '' Sid Mei ...

'', '' Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri'', and '' FrontierVille''. He has also founded or co-founded three game companies, SecretNewCo, Big Huge Games, and Firaxis Games.

Early life

Reynolds made his first game sale with Quest 1 to '' SoftSide'' magazine, its August 1981 cover feature. He was a gamer in high school, and a

SysOp A sysop (; an abbreviation of system operator) is an administrator of a multi-user computer system, such as a bulletin board system (BBS) or an online service virtual community.Jansen, E. & James,V. (2002). NetLingo: the Internet dictionary. Net ...

Randolph School Randolph School is an American independent private kindergarten-through-12th-grade college preparatory school chartered in 1959 in Huntsville, Madison County, Alabama. It started in a home on Randolph Avenue in downtown Huntsville with a handf ...

's (

Huntsville, Alabama Huntsville is a city in Madison County, Limestone County, and Morgan County, Alabama, United States. It is the county seat of Madison County. Located in the Appalachian region of northern Alabama, Huntsville is the most populous city in th ...

)

PDP-11 The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were so ...

mainframe computer A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterpris ...

. A 1990 graduate of the

University of the South The University of the South, familiarly known as Sewanee (), is a private Episcopal liberal arts college in Sewanee, Tennessee. It is owned by 28 southern dioceses of the Episcopal Church, and its School of Theology is an official seminary of ...

, Reynolds briefly pursued graduate studies in Philosophy at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

Career

Reynolds initiated his game career with

where he worked as lead programmer for a number of graphic adventure games. These included '' Rex Nebular'' in

1992 File:1992 Events Collage V1.png, From left, clockwise: Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment building in Amsterdam after two of its engines ...

and '' Return of the Phantom'' and '' Dragonsphere'' in

1993 File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peace ...

. It was at MicroProse where Reynolds first worked with Sid Meier and the two collaborated on a strategy title by the name of '' Sid Meier's Colonization'' which was released in

1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nelson Ma ...

. Reynolds went on to become lead designer for a sequel to '' Sid Meier's Civilization''. ''

'' was released in

1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 800, causing the plane to crash and killing everyone on b ...

and sold multi-million copies. While at Firaxis, Reynolds contributed to ''

Sid Meier's Gettysburg ''Sid Meier's Gettysburg!'' is a 1997 real-time wargame developed by Firaxis Games and published by Electronic Arts. It was designed by Sid Meier, and followed by ''Sid Meier's Antietam!'' in 1999. Gameplay The game allows the player to control e ...

'' in

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...

, followed by the creation and design of '' Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri'' in

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...

. Alpha Centauri became his second multi-million selling title. In

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...

Reynolds left Firaxis games and sold his share in the company to become

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 especiall ...

of Big Huge Games. On June 30, 2009,

announced that Brian Reynolds was leaving Big Huge Games to lead the formation of Zynga East, and serve the role of Chief Game Designer. In February 2013, Reynolds left Zynga. In March, he revived Big Huge Games (temporarily known as SecretNewCo). In July, the team announced their partnership with

Nexon Nexon Co., Ltd. is a global video game publisher, listed in Japan, that specializes in online Virtual World games for PCs, consoles and mobile. Nexon is one of the world’s ten largest interactive game companies based on market capitalization a ...

, a

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

n game developer, to develop their first game, ''

DomiNations ''DomiNations'' is a 2015 freemium mobile Mobile may refer to: Places * Mobile, Alabama, a U.S. port city * Mobile County, Alabama * Mobile, Arizona, a small town near Phoenix, U.S. * Mobile, Newfoundland and Labrador Arts, entertainment, ...

'', a mobile game similar to Civilization or ''

Age of Empires ''Age of Empires'' is a series of historical real-time strategy video games, originally developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Xbox Game Studios. The first game was ''Age of Empires'', released in 1997. Nine total games within the ser ...

''. Big Huge Games was acquired by Nexon in 2016. Reynolds later returned to Firaxis as its president.

Contributions

Although marketed under Sid Meier's name, ''Civilization II'', ''Sid Meier's Colonization'' and ''Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri'' all credited Reynolds as lead designer. The credits for ''Civilization II'' only list Meier as the designer of the original ''Civilization'' game, and Reynolds stated in an interview that for this game Meier "was no longer involved except in name." The credits for ''Alpha Centauri'' state that the game was "Created by" Brian Reynolds and Meier is listed with several other team members on the "With" line - in the Designers Notes in the game manual Reynolds also thanks him for all his sage advice. Brian Reynolds' first major break was the design of ''Sid Meier's Civilization II''. Meier had created ''Civilization'' but had moved on to other projects. MicroProse wanted to make a sequel and asked Reynolds to design it. MicroProse put Meier on retainer for consultational advice and for the use of his name, but Meier only had peripheral involvement in the design of this game. The sequel game, hence, was primarily designed by Reynolds. ''

'' was Reynolds' first game at Big Huge Games. Later came '' Rise of Legends'', a real-time strategy game,

published Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, new ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

. Reynolds and

Klaus Teuber Klaus Teuber (born June 25, 1952) is a German former dental technician and designer of board games. He is best known for designing the strategy board game Catan. Career Teuber won the Spiel des Jahres ("Game of the Year") award four times: fo ...

collaborated to develop the

Xbox Live Arcade Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) is a digital video game download service available through the Xbox Games Store, Microsoft's digital distribution network for the Xbox 360. It focuses on smaller downloadable games from both major publishers and independen ...

game ''

Catan ''Catan'', previously known as ''The Settlers of Catan'' or simply ''Settlers'', is a multiplayer board game designed by Klaus Teuber. It was first published in 1995 in Germany by Franckh-Kosmos Verlag (Kosmos) as ''Die Siedler von Catan''. P ...

''. Reynolds led the development of '' FrontierVille'' and ''

CityVille 2 ''CityVille 2'' is a defunct casual gaming, casual social network game, social city-building game, city-building simulation game, simulation game developed by Zynga and released globally on Facebook November 1, 2012. ''CityVille 2'' was a 3D game t ...

'' for

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

Games

* '' Quest 1'' (1981) (Author) * '' Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender'' (1992) (lead programmer) * '' Return of the Phantom'' (1993) (lead programmer) * '' Dragonsphere'' (1994) (technical director) * '' Sid Meier's Colonization'' (1994) (designer and programmer) * '' Sid Meier's Civilization II'' (1996) (lead designer and programmer) * '' Sid Meier's Gettysburg!'' (1997) (contributions) * '' Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri'' (1999) (lead designer) * ''

'' (2003) (lead designer) * '' Rise of Nations: Thrones & Patriots'' (2004) (lead designer) * '' Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends'' (2006) (project lead and lead designer) * ''

'' (2007) (project lead and AI) * '' Age of Empires 3: The Asian Dynasties'' (2007) (creative director) * '' FrontierVille'' (2010) (chief game designer) * ''

'' (2014) (chief game designer)

References

Interview with Brian Reynolds
at IGN
Top 100 Game Creators of All Time
at IGN * 49 Greatest Developers, PC Gamer magazine, April 2009 *
Legendary Game Designer Brian Reynolds Joins Zynga as Chief Designer
on Press Release
Zynga's Chief Game Designer Brian Reynolds Resigns

Brian Reynolds on Zynga, Games, and the Future

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Reynolds, Brian American video game designers People from Huntsville, Alabama 1967 births Living people MicroProse people Zynga people Sewanee: The University of the South alumni