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 chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

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 (game designer), Brian Reynolds following their departure from MicroProse, Meie ...

, a

video game developer A video game developer is 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 business with em ...

based in

Hunt Valley, Maryland Hunt Valley is an unincorporated area, unincorporated community in Baltimore County, Maryland, Baltimore County, Maryland, United States, near the site of the Maryland Hunt Cup Steeplechase (horse racing), Steeplechase. It lies just north of th ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. He was previously a

game designer Game design is the process of creating and shaping the mechanics, systems, rules, and gameplay of a game. Game design processes apply to board games, card games, dice games, casino games, role-playing games, sports, Wargame (video games), war ga ...

MicroProse MicroProse is an American video game publisher and video game developer, developer founded by Bill Stealey, Sid Meier, and Andy Hollis in 1982. It developed and published numerous games, including starting the ''Civilization (series), Civilizat ...

but left that company in 1996 along with Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds to form Firaxis Games.

Career

Briggs holds a

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''doctor'', meaning "teacher") or doctoral degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' licentia docendi'' ("licence to teach ...

in musical composition and theory from the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...

. Briggs' composition teachers included Samuel Adler,

Warren Benson Warren Frank 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'' (1964). Biography Benso ...

Joseph Schwantner Joseph Clyde Schwantner (born March 22, 1943) is an American composer, educator and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 2002. He was awarded the 1970 Charles Ives Prize. Schwantner is prolific, with many works to his cred ...

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

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

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, genres and techniques to communicate ideas, to inspire feelings and emotions, or to entertain. Writers may develop different forms of writing such as novels, short sto ...

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 (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

("Ecliptic"), New York City's

Avery Fisher Hall David Geffen Hall is a concert hall at Lincoln Center on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. The 2,200-seat auditorium opened in 1962, and is the home of the New York Philharmonic. The facility, designed by Max Abramovitz, was o ...

("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. 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 Spectrum HoloByte, Inc. was an American video game developer and publisher. The company, founded in 1983, was known for its simulation games, notably the ''Falcon'' series of combat flight simulators, and for publishing the first version of ''Te ...

. ..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 ''Civilization (series), Sid Meier's Civilization'' turn-based strategy video game series. It was released in 2001, and followed by ''Civilization IV''. Unlike the original game, ''C ...

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

Colonization 475px, Map of the year each country achieved List of sovereign states by date of formation, independence. Colonization (British English: colonisation) is a process of establishing occupation of or control over foreign territories or peoples f ...

'' and '' Civilization II'', as well as composing much of the original music in ''

Civilization IV ''Civilization IV'' (also known as ''Sid Meier's Civilization IV'') is a 2005 4X turn-based strategy video game developed by Firaxis Games and published by 2K. It is the fourth installment of the ''Civilization'' series and was designed by S ...

''. 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 2011,Jeffery Briggs was awarded the 2011 International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition by the National Academy of Music for two pace-setting works: Celebration - for Orchestra and 3rd String Quartet. In 2003, Briggs was named software "Entrepreneur of the Year" by

Ernst & Young EY, previously known as Ernst & Young, is a multinational corporation, multinational professional services partnership, network based in London, United Kingdom. Along with Deloitte, KPMG and PwC, it is one of the Big Four accounting firms, Big F ...

, 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, United States. Established in 1921 by celebrated industrialist and philanthropist George Eastman, it was the ...

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

University of Memphis The University of Memphis (Memphis) is a public university, public research university in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1912, the university has an enrollment of more than 20,000 students. The university maintains the Herff Col ...

(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, broadc ...

Award for Young Composers (1984), and a

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

Fellowship (1986).

References

External links

Jeff Briggs' home page
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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 technology chief executives American male composers American video game designers Living people MicroProse people People from Florence, Alabama American role-playing designers American video game composers