Sid Meier

Sidney K. Meier  (born 1954 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American programmer and designer of some of the most commercially and critically successful computer strategy games of all time. Meier has won several accolades for both his contributions to the computer games industry and for the titles that have gained huge commercial successes. Sid Meier is a Director of Creative Development of computer game developer Firaxis Games, which he co-founded with Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds in 1996.

Sid Meier founded MicroProse together with Bill Stealey in 1982. At MicroProse, Meier developed the game series for which he is most widely recognized, Civilization, although he was not the game designer of any of the Civilization games except the first installment. Meier eventually left MicroProse and in 1996 founded Firaxis Games along with veteran designer and gaming executive Jeff Briggs. Today Firaxis makes strategy games, many of which are follow-ups to classic Meier titles, such as Civilization IV and Pirates!.

In 1999, Meier became the second person to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame. The first to receive that honor was Shigeru Miyamoto from Nintendo.

Meier is not always the main designer on titles that carry his name. For instance, Brian Reynolds has been credited as the primary designer behind Civilization 2, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, and Sid Meier’s Colonization,while Jeff Briggs designed Civilization III and Soren Johnson led Sid Meier’s Civilization IV. Currently Meier’s role appears to be that of a creative director, simultaneously contributing to multiple projects.

Meier worked with a team on a dinosaur themed game starting early 2000, but announced in an online development diary on January 24, 2001 that the game had been shelved. Despite trying various approaches, including turn-based and real-time gameplay, he said he found no way to make the concept fun enough. In August 2005, Meier said “We’ve been nonstop busy making other games over the past several years, so the dinosaur game remains on the shelf. However, I do love the idea of a dinosaur game and would like to revisit it when I have some time.”

In January 2008, CMP Game Group announced that Meier would be receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2008 Game Developer’s Conference.

Meier currently lives in Hunt Valley, Maryland with his wife, Susan, and son, Ryan. He met his wife at Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church in Cockeysville, where they both sing in the choir.

Games

• Spitfire Ace (1982) — The first project in which Sid played a major role in the game creation stage.
• HellCat Ace (1982)
• Floyd of the Jungle (1982)
• NATO Commander (1984)
• Solo Flight (1984)
• Kennedy Approach (1985)
• F-15 Strike Eagle (1985) — one of the first combat flight simulators
• Silent Service (1985), a World War II submarine simulation game, and Meier’s first foray out of flight sims.
• Sid Meier’s Pirates! (1987)
• F-19 Stealth Fighter (1988)
• F-15 Strike Eagle II (1989)
• Covert Action (1990)
• Railroad Tycoon (1990), an economic simulation game that paints the early development of railroads in the United States and Europe, a time when competition between railroad companies was very fierce. With the release of Sid Meier’s Railroads!, this series now has four installments.
• Civilization (1991), Meier’s most successful game to date. It has lived through several versions (see below) and sold over 6 million copies. This game is a turn-based strategy game.
• Pirates! Gold (1993)
• Colonization (1994), a turn-based strategy game themed on the early European colonization of the New World, starting in 1492 and lasting until the age of independence in 1850. To achieve victory in this game, the player must declare independence, and win in a revolutionary war against their mother country in Europe (France, England, The Netherlands, or Spain).
• Civilization II (1996) Follow-up to Sid Meier’s successful Civilization; Brian Reynolds was lead designer on the game.
• Magic: The Gathering (1997) This would be the last game that Sid Meiers worked on for Microprose.
• Sid Meier’s Gettysburg! (1997) Sid Meier’s first real-time tactical game.
• Sid Meier’s Antietam! (1998) Sid Meier’s Gettysburg and Antietam are part of his Civil War set.
• Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (1999) Brian Reynolds was lead designer on this adaptation of Civilization to an outer space theme. Alpha Centauri is set in a futuristic setting on an alien world, with ideological factions substituting for civilizations. This is a much more versatile version of Civilization, featuring economics and unique military customization, as well as diplomacy.
• Sid Meier’s SimGolf (2000) A golfing simulation in which the player built their own golf course and played it, against computer players, co-created by Maxis, the creator of the enormously popular family simulation game. Not to be confused with Maxis’ 1996 title SimGolf.
• Civilization III (2001), Jeff Briggs designed the third installment of the series, with improved rules, graphics and gameplay. New features include expanded Diplomacy much like Alpha Centauri, and also introduces “Culture” as a tool of domination, and “Strategic Resources” required for trade and to produce certain units. Sales of this installment makes the Civilization series the best selling PC series to date.
• Sid Meier’s Pirates! (2004), follow-up to the acclaimed Pirates! game from 1987, updating the graphics and featuring some entirely new gameplay elements and an all new ballroom dancing segment.
• Civilization IV, Designed by Soren Johnson and released October 25, 2005. A full 3D engine replaces the isometric maps of Civilization II and III. This installment makes “Religion” (present in earlier versions only as a means of population pacification and control) a tool of domination, alongside the Culture and Diplomacy elements from previous incarnations.
• Sid Meier’s Railroads!, released October 17, 2006. When Take 2 shut down PopTop Software and folded it into Firaxis, Meier once again became responsible for the Railroad Tycoon series, and this is billed as the sequel to Railroad Tycoon 3.
• Civilization Revolution, announced on June 28, 2007. A seventh generation console edition of Civilization.

Sam Houser

Sam Houser is an English computer game producer and developer. He is the co-founder and president of Rockstar Games and one of the creators behind the Grand Theft Auto-franchise, being director and producer since the third game. He is responsible for taking GTA into the 3D-environment era, recreating real cities under fully 3D-engines and turning the series into huge profits during video games sixth generation era.

Despite their cult-hero status as creators of Grand Theft Auto and one of the most successful video game franchises of all-time, Sam and his brother Dan have shied away from the celebrity spotlight. Instead focusing on the Rockstar Games brand, rather than any one person getting the credit for the games’ success.

Executive Producer

• Grand Theft Auto III (2001)
• Max Payne (2001)
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002)
• Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (2003)
• Manhunt (2004)
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004)
• Red Dead Revolver (2004)
• The Warriors (2005)
• Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (2005)
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (2006)
• Bully (2006)
• Manhunt 2 (2007)

BBFC Decides to Contest Manhunt 2 Appeal Decision

 

The Video Appeals Committee had previously overturned the BBFC’s rejection of Manhunt 2, but now the Board is seeking to overturn that decision, as well as a suspension of the Committee’s decision to grant the game a classification.

According to a statement released by the BBFC, the Board believes that if its original decision isn’t allowed to stand there could be significant consequences on future classifications.

“The BBFC is contesting the VAC judgement because in the Board’s view, it is based on an approach to harm which is an incorrect interpretation of the Video Recordings Act. The VAC judgement, if allowed to stand, would have fundamental implications with regard to all the Board’s decisions, including those turning upon questions of unacceptable levels of violence.”

The statement also added that Manhunt 2 will not be classified until the outcome of the judicial review if the VAC’s decision is suspended.

Crysis v1.1 Patch Released

At long last, EA have finally released a patch for Crysis. Most of the changes seems to point towards DX9 & DX10 optimizations.As usual, you can get the 139 MB patch from the FileFront link provided below. A complete list of changes are provided after the break.

Download Crysis v1.1 Patch

Activision Apologizes, Promises Fixes to PS3 Call of Duty 4 Online

As you might have noticed in the comments of a story I posted in November, there are some issues with Call of Duty 4’s online play on PlayStation 3. (If you didn’t, I don’t blame you for plowing through 850+ comments. )  Developer Infinity Ward’s community manager, fourzerotwo, has posted a message from Activision’s Chief Technical Officer, Steve Pearce, which attempts to explain what has caused the problems and what’s being done to repair the situation.

In short, they didn’t have enough servers to maintain the load of players. They’ve implemented a fix, and to make some additional changes, the servers will be taken offline tomorrow, Wednesday, January 9, at 4:00 AM PST. It should only be down for a few hours at most, but that seems like a small price to pay to allow IW to ensure there won’t be any further latency problems from their end.

Check after the full message from Pearce after the break.

Firstly, on behalf of Activision and DemonWare, I’d like to apologize for the difficulties you’ve experienced while playing the PlayStation 3 version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare during the holiday season.

The fact is that we’ve experienced an unprecedented load on the DemonWare backend servers, which has steadily increased since late December beyond our expectations.  In spite of all of our planning and precautions, the extreme load revealed several issues.  These issues triggered unscheduled downtime this past month. As we encountered issues, we deployed additional hardware and/or optimized the server infrastructure to keep the service up and running.  However, while the servers were active for the vast majority of the time, many players experienced significant wait times repeatedly when joining games.

To overcome this issue, we’ve implemented a fix today, which should dramatically improve the time it takes to join an online game.  And, in order to make additional improvements we are briefly taking the servers offline tomorrow, Wednesday January 9th at 4:00 a.m. PST

As a rule, we try to avoid scheduled downtime whenever possible.  However, at this juncture we will need 1-2 hours to update a number of server infrastructure components.  We apologize for any short-term inconvenience this may cause, and appreciate your ongoing support and patience.

Our expectation is that the server load will continue to increase as system bottlenecks are removed.  So in the coming days, we will continue to monitor our system and make further optimizations and improvements as necessary.  We will be deploying additional hardware to improve our database throughput and load handling.  In addition to the added hardware, we are further optimizing components of the underlying server software to improve performance.  We hope to be able to hot deploy these updates while the system is live.  In the event that the system requires further scheduled downtime, we will post a message both here and in-game via the “Message of the Day” to keep everyone informed.

Rest assured that we are taking every possible action to insure that your Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare online PS3 experience is smooth and trouble free.  We apologize for the trouble this has caused and ask for your understanding and cooperation as we get things sorted over the coming days.