As the saying goes, “In the beginning, there was Microprose.”
In 1981, Sid Meier, a Detroit native interested in history and computer science, met John “Wild Bill” Stealey, a natural salesman who graduated from the Air Force Academy, while the two worked at electronics manufacturer General Instrument Corp. in Hunt Valley.
The entrepreneurial lightbulb glowed as they played an arcade game.
Meier, the designer, said to Stealey, the marketer, “I could write a better game in two weeks.”
Microprose Software — and video game development in Baltimore County — was born.
“We were just learning things as we went along,” said Meier, creator of “Sid Meier’s Civilization” and widely recognized as the “Father of Computer Gaming.”
“I was making games at the time, and Bill would sell them,” Meier said. “We’d put the floppy disks in baggies, and he’d drive up and down the East Coast, stopping at every electronics store trying to sell the games.”
Meier’s games — mostly flight simulators in Microprose’s early years — sold and sold as the video game industry itself began to take off.
“As sales increased, we were able to hire more people and begin to build the company,” Meier said.
They built the company in Hunt Valley. More than 25 years later, Meier still makes games in this Baltimore suburb, but he’s not alone. At least six gaming companies grew out of Microprose, and more than a dozen firms with more than 400 employees operate in the area today, making Baltimore County a major East Coast hub in the $9.5 billion U.S. video game industry.
“I call them ‘the children of Microprose,’ ” said Fronda Cohen of Baltimore County’s Department of Economic Development. “If you’re ever at video game expos across the country, everybody knows Hunt Valley.”
The Microprose connection
On this warm summer day, Steve Martin jokes that he “dressed up” for work, wearing a light-green polo shirt, khaki pants and sandals.
Pretty comfortable outfit for the president of a major video game company, but that’s just part of the culture among about 90 employees at the Hunt Valley offices of Firaxis Games — and most other gaming companies.
Video game artwork and posters hang on the walls, a game room includes a pool table, pingpong table and foosball, and a common room is home to a huge flat-screen television complete with a Nintendo Wii, a PlayStation 3 and an Xbox 360.
“Our motto is, ‘You have to have fun to make fun,’ ” Martin says as he walks past the pool table.
When Microprose’s run was nearing its end in 1996, Meier co-founded Firaxis with former Microprose employees Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds. Meier remains Firaxis’ director of creative development.
Martin was a business consultant to Firaxis for six years before joining full-time in 2002 as chief financial officer. He recently took over as president.
Martin also has ties to Microprose, having served as a division controller in the early 1990s. Before joining Firaxis, he founded Absolute Quality, a software-testing and consumer service center in Hunt Valley.
“It’s been very cool,” Martin says, sitting in his office. “I was just counting beans for all these companies. I’m definitely more of a gamer now than I was back then.”
Firaxis develops Meier’s famous simulation games, recently releasing “Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution” on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Meier’s games had for years been released for the PC.
One of the wall’s of Martin’s office is a large whiteboard, covered with notes and plans written in dry-erase marker. When asked to go over the “Microprose Family Tree,” Martin grabs a marker and heads over to the wall.
“Well, first there was Microprose,” Martin says as he writes “MPS” on the wall, before drawing two lines to the left and writing “ABC Sports” and “BreakAway.”
BreakAway’s roots date back to 1990, when Doug Whatley started working at Microprose as a producer. Whatley began developing sports video games in 1996, after ABC Sports entered a joint venture with Microprose. When Disney bought ABC in 1998, Whatley “broke away” from Microprose and founded BreakAway Games in Hunt Valley in 1998.
“Brian Reynolds [of Firaxis] and I both started at Microprose on the same day,” Whatley says. “We’ve all been through quite a few cycles of the gaming industry together.”
BreakAway has about 100 employees working at its Hunt Valley offices and has taken the lead in developing “serious games” that create platforms and simulations for incident training, medical procedures and military and defense operations.
“We’re all competitors, but we really do different styles of games,” Whatley said. “It’s definitely fun to see what people are working on next.”
Another branch of the tree follows Reynolds, who after his time with Meier at Firaxis, founded Big Huge Games in Hunt Valley in 2000. Reynolds started the company with fellow developers Tim Train, David Inscore and Jason Coleman.
Train, Big Huge Games’ president and chief operating officer, said everyone knows everyone in the Hunt Valley gaming community. At some point or another, employees have crossed paths with other employees, worked together or played each other’s games.
“We’re all gamers, and we love games,” Train said.
With about 100 employees of its own, Big Huge continues to develop real-time strategy games such as “Rise of Nations” and “Rise of Legends.” The studio thinks big and designs big, as its name states, Train said. “It’s a little bit self-promoting, but it’s also a challenge to live up to our name.”
Big Huge Games in January was acquired by THQ, one of the industry’s leading game developers and publishers. The company became a subsidiary of THQ.
Back to Martin at his whiteboard wall: He finishes mapping out the Microprose tree, including Absolute Quality, BreakAway, Firaxis, Big Huge and two other companies founded by Microprose employees in Hunt Valley — Day 1 Studios (created in 2001) and Digital Steamworks (founded in 2003).
Other companies, including ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks in Rockville, have brought studios to Hunt Valley.
The cap on his marker, Martin sits back down and admires his handiwork.
“That’s the family tree,” he says. “That’s pretty cool.”
‘The future is bright’
About six years ago, Baltimore County’s Department of Economic Development noticed its backyard was swarming with gamers. A meeting was arranged to learn more about the growing group.
“We needed to get a better handle on who they were, what they did and how we could help them,” Cohen said.
“There were about 35 people from the game industry in the room, and I asked what I thought was a pretty basic question,” Cohen said. “Why are you here and not someplace like Silicon Valley, Los Angeles or Seattle?”
They answered with two reasons. One was Microprose. The other was Baltimore County living.
“Maryland is a great place to live,” Meier said. “It offers wonderful communities, great cultural activities and a nice pace of live.”
Train pointed to Baltimore County’s central location on the East Coast between Boston and Richmond, its proximity to Baltimore and its relatively affordable cost of living.
“I definitely couldn’t afford a house in San Francisco,” Train said. “But who can?”
Baltimore County and the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development have made it a priority to market the Baltimore region as a destination for video game developers, designers and producers. The county and state spread the word at national gaming expos and conventions.
Along with doing national recruitment, the county and state have worked with the area’s colleges and universities to train the game designers of tomorrow.
Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll and Howard community colleges have established curricula for a “2+2” program that include courses and training for a liberal arts degree in simulation and digital entertainment. After two years at a community college, students take two years of study at the University of Baltimore.
The program has about 100 students, with 20 graduates per year, and most of the graduates have gained employment in the gaming industry in Hunt Valley, said Kathleen Harmeyer, director of the program for the University of Baltimore. Companies throughout the region have also recruited and hired designers and artists from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
As the industry grows, more colleges and universities are going to offer similar training and degrees for the video game industry, said Rich Taylor, senior vice president of research for the Washington-based Entertainment Software Association.
“The future is bright, and it’s because communities like Baltimore County are making the investment in training and developing future industry employees,” Taylor said. “It’s really helping the local economy — these are higher-paying jobs.”
How high? About $90,000 a year, on average, according to the ESA.
“It’s a payoff for being smart,” Harmeyer said. “It’s like ‘Revenge of the Nerds’! ”
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