The world’s top game developers, who have a clear vision and a keen insight, and who have excellent insights into the world, are beginning to falter. Even Sid Meier, one of the world’s best game developers, has not surpassed the wall of the company in the business world.
The company, Microprose, has never felt the prospect of the best masterpiece games ever since its launch, shaking the history of human history. The term civilization includes not only the civilization that is commonly known but also the meaning of society (organization), and Sid Meier, who is supposed to create a civilization game, could not persuade even one small society of his own.
However, Sid Meier was firm, apart from the fussy reaction and unadorned attitude of the company and management. I could not persuade the society I belong to, and I did everything in the game plan called civilization, which would be a dream of my life without worrying about whether I would make a civilized game that deals with the history of mankind tremendously. Since I was a child, I had to introduce myself as an enthusiastic history lover. The game of civilization to Sid Meier was like a mission that I must make in my life.
Sid Meier’s first conceptual game of civilization was to incorporate the history of all humankind into one game. It was such a huge and ambitious ambition, and the fundamentals of the civilization game were completed, but the problem was the development workforce. Even the most talented people have limitations in the area they can do alone. Even Sid Meier of the world could not make that huge game alone. Despite the desperate need for a development team to work together, it was not as easy as it would seem to build a proper development team because the company refused to cut it off because there was no manpower to invest in damn games anyway.
At the time, Microprose was already developing other military simulation games, and the entire development staff was hanging on this project, so there was no room for additional development staff. If you really realized the possibility of a game called civilization, you could have done additional employment, but the company did not have any support for additional employment because it was a game that was not going to be thorough. The person who wanted to finish his job was given a great privilege of finishing the job and participating in the civilization project in the remaining time, but no one was able to finish his main job and spare time. After all, Sid Meier, who proposed the first game, and Bruce Campbell Shelley, who had been working with him since the previous project, were forced to hang on to this.
Bruce Shelley has been involved in several games with Sid Meier and is a key figure in developing Railroad Tycoon. Bruce Shelley had a lot of interest in railway and train board games since he was a child, and he made a big contribution when Sid Meier designed Railroad Tycoon. After developing Railroad Tycoon, I joined Sid Meier’s team to develop civilized games. In recognition of his hard work and hardship in the process, the first title screen of the civilization game was honored to announce his name “with BRUCE SHELLEY” after Sid Meier.
However, apart from individual honor, it was not acknowledged by those of the high-ranking Microprose, who had been uncomfortable with the non-military game itself, civilization. Even after the release of the civilization, Bruce Shelley was forced to quit his company and set up a firm called Ensemble Studios. There are many people who do not know if you name it, but there are many people who know Age of Empires, which is often compared with civilization games. The company that created the Age of Empires was Ensemble Studios, co-founded by Bruce Shelley, Tony Goodman, Rick Goodman and Brian Sullivan.
Tony Goodman and Rick Goodman are brothers, as the co-founder’s name suggests. Ensemble Studios was acquired by Microsoft in 2001, followed by Age of Fire games with the Microsoft logo. For Microprose, it was another famous franchise game business. Ensemble Studios, creator of Age of Empires, was created by Bruce Shelley, a brother of Tony Goodman and Rick Goodman, who were mentors and board game circles when they were in high school.
The Age of Empires released by Ensemble Studios was a company that Bruce Shelley brought with him after hearing that Bruce Shelley was not appreciated for developing a game called civilization in Microprose. So many things resemble civilization games.
AEE (Age of Empire) is a franchise business that has been actively playing until recently. In June 2019, Microsoft will launch a new studio, Shannon Loftis, Microsoft’s global publishing executive, Studio Age of Empire ‘founded. He is in charge of the development of the fourth edition of Age of Empires 4, and there are a lot of fans expecting it to be new in 15 years since the series 3 of 2005. Microprose has blown two civilization games and two AOE (Age of Empires) games with a clumsy and stiff corporate policy and executive inadequate incompetence. It is completely useless to be a family in history, but even if Microprose keeps a game called Civilization and a game called AOE well, the company seems to have failed.
Microprose, which left the core workforce to leak out, was paid off. It was the end of the emptiness that the company itself had disappeared after frequent mergers and acquisitions without maintaining the groundwork of the once famous fighting flight simulation game for a long time. The civilization game that they dumped and the game called AOE which the abandoner made are continuing to be continued series since then. At the time, Microprose was advocating a military professional game developer in the direction of co-founder Bill Stall, a military expert.
I was extremely sensitive about escaping from the military, so it was surprising that some games like pirate games or railroad tycoons came out of Microprose. Unless Sid Meier was in the co-founder’s position, such a game could not even begin to develop, but luckily Sid Meier was able to do it because he was in a position to co-founder Bill Stall.
Nevertheless, I was able to guess how thoroughly abandoned the project was because I received almost no support at the time of civilization game development. Unlike most start-ups, when companies become bloated, organized and bureaucratic, their productivity drops dramatically. This is because competition and antagonism between departments are connected based on whether or not the main issue of the company is more appropriate or not necessary than whether it is necessary or not. At that time, Microprose had to argue that a game called civilization did not need to be in line with their corporate policy direction, but rather needed in terms of the company’s future and revenue inventory.
Civilization, which had been released after the company’s high-ranking executives did not match the policy direction of the company, received no support. Publicity and marketing have also been thoroughly ignored by the team itself. At the end of the game development, the company did not mention anything. Sid Meier was not able to endure the developmental support at this time, so he did not want to be supported, so after marketing he was asked to support marketing, but this was also ignored.
However, even if the game called civilization was not promoted or marketed at the company level, the people who played the game once had to fall into the game of civilization. Various media and game evaluation institutes poured out a special masterpiece game that appeared every day, and this became rather a promotion, and more people came to the game called civilization. Once the game was played around, it was recommended around and through the rumors through the recommendations to the neighborhood around it, the game of civilization spread quickly.
The management of Microprose who watched this after the great game of civilization recognized their mistake, but it was already late regret. Other game projects that mobilized all development personnel were not able to meet the expectation of the civilization game project.
Especially when Sid Meier was developing a civilized game, the flight simulation arcade business, which had been devoted enough to devote the entire development workforce to ignore the requests of development personnel, was making a huge deficit. Microprose was on the verge of bankruptcy due to a failure in the field of military simulation games, which produced a lot of masterpieces and was their own garden. It was something that the business minds of management suited to the huge size of the organization.
Eventually, in 1993, Microprose was acquired by Spectrum Holovite, a competitor in the white market. Spectrum HoloByte is also a professional developer of military simulation games, and is famous for Falcon series such as Falcon 3.0 and Falcon 4.0 in Korea. Whether Microprose was acquired by Spectrum Holovite, a competitor, is somewhat understandable when it comes to the behavior of Microprose’s founder Bill Stall. Bill Stalli, who was a pilot of US Air Force fighter aircraft and who was closely involved with various military advisory roles and military organizations throughout the world, had a close relationship with Gilman Louie of Spectrum Holocaust.
Gilman Louie was doing a lot of work with Norman Augustine of Lockheed Martin, the largest US military company, and Jeffrey Smith, former CIA officer. Spectral Hollotte and Bill Stall, the founder and CEO of Microprose, the flagship of the flight simulation game, are in close contact with each other. For reference, the details of the Spectrum Hollister can be seen in previous game appendices. It would not have been a game based on the history of Sid Meier, but the way Gilman Louie of Spectrum Holbrook wanted it to be in line with the company’s direction that Bill Staley, the founder of Microprose in the first place, wanted to pursue.
But there was no “civilization” in this merger. It was only a move to become a more powerful and realistic military professional game company. At that time, the spectral holobite screamed ‘more reality’. Recalling extreme realism was an integral part of their combat flight simulation game, and agreed with Bill Stallier, founder of Microprose, an Air Force pilot.
Two military professional game developers joined together. Microprose was acquired by Spectrum Hollister in 1993, but the name of the combined company was Microprose. In consideration of the known name of the company, the company’s subject is Spectrum Hollister, but the name is changed to Microprose. In other words, it is the same thing and it changed the shell only. In the same vein, InfoGrams also used the name Atari after abandoning the name “InfoGRAMS” after acquiring Atari. (See previous game appendix)
In the meantime, the crisis was over, but I felt responsible for breaking the company by messing up the management of the company and eventually Bill Staley left the company in 1994. There is no way to know exactly, but it is said that the rumor was caused by a conflict in the policy part of the company with Sid Meier, who has already become a top game developer. I knew that the two companies would combine to create a huge synergy, but I did not take over the company that was doing well in the first place, but I took over a company in the swamp of deficits due to the failure of a large project. And will lay off a huge team of Microprose development teams that have already been acquired for the company’s survival.
How much financially worse, Microprose started a deficit of $ 4 million in 1993, and lost a whopping $ 58.4 million in 1994. The deficit of $ 18 million in 1995 and the deficit of $ 39.8 million in 1996, recorded a surplus of $ 7.9 million in 1997 due to the success of civilization 2. In the following year, the company made a deficit of more than $ 100 million in just five years, including a deficit of $ 33 million in 1998. (Currently over 100 billion won in money)
In the meantime, Bill Staley, who was the founder of Microprose, left the company and left Microprose’s development staff to co-founder Sid Meier. During the development of Civilization 2, it was hardly involved in the development of Civilization 2, which was originally a mission, and only endless management meetings with Spectrum Holobite’s management were carried out.
Sid Meier has been thinking dozens of times a day that it is not time to do this, but he could not help it for the team members left behind. As a result, Cydmeyer was able to build a Civilization 2 development team with Brian Reynolds, Douglas Caspian-Kaufman and Jeff Briggs, who believed and followed him at the time.
So civilization 2 became ‘civilization 2 of Sid Meier’ without Sid Meier. And the result was also a great success. Civilization 2 has made it possible for a much larger number of people to fall asleep than their previous counterparts with a scale and system that surpasses the previous work, and has become a disgrace for the world as a whole. However, even after developing such a masterpiece that would have been a part of history, Sid Meier and the Civilization 2 development team have been dismissed from the company.
