Jeff Briggs

Jeff Briggs (born March 10 1957 in Florence, Alabama) is founder and former President, and CEO of Firaxis Games, a computer 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 to form Firaxis Games.

Briggs holds a Doctorate in Musical Composition and Theory from the University of Illinois. 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, one of the original premiere computer game development houses. At Microprose, Briggs served as Designer, Writer, Composer, Producer, Executive Producer and, finally, Director of Product Development. He left in 1996 to found Firaxis Games, where he led the design of "Civilization III" and oversaw the expansion of the company into a major developer of strategy computer games. Other game design work by Jeff Briggs includes co-designing "Colonization" and "Civilization II", as well as composing much of the original music in "Civilization 4".

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. In 2005, Briggs negotiated the acquisition of Firaxis Games by Take Two Interactive, became its Chairman in spring of 2006, and left Firaxis in November of that year to pursue new career options.

Briggs was possibly the first academically trained and celebrated composers to work in the software entertainment industry. His music first appeared in this context in "Sword of the Samurai", a 1989 MicroProse release. Following that, virtually every MicroProse game featured his work.

Prior to working in software entertainment, Briggs' music had already received performances by ensembles internationally in Paris' Pomidieu 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.

Briggs was awarded the Bernard and Rose Sernoffsky and Louis Lane Prizes for Music Composition at the Eastman School of Music (1978, 1979), the Haimsohm Prize for Musical Composition at the University of Memphis (1980), the ASCAP Award for Young Composers (1984), and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship (1986). Briggs' Composition teachers include Samuel Adler, Warren Benson, Joseph Schwantner, Donald Freund, and John Melby.

External links

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* [http://www.firaxis.com/news/news_detail.php?id=1 Jeff Briggs Named 'CEO of the Year' by Smart CEO Magazine] , Firaxis press release