Maxis
More info
- Creator
- Will Wright, Jeff Braun
- Released
- 1987
- Owner
- Electronic Arts (since 1997)
- Type
- Game developer
The studio behind SimCity and The Sims, which built an entire genre on games you can't win.
Will Wright and Jeff Braun founded Maxis in California in 1987. SimCity shipped in 1989 after several publishers had passed, reasoning that a game without a goal wouldn't sell. It sold millions and spawned a long line of Sim titles, from ant colonies to whole planets, each built around a simulation model the player could poke at to see what happened.
Electronic Arts bought Maxis in 1997. The Sims, released in 2000, became one of the best-selling PC games ever, but later years were rougher: the 2013 SimCity required an always-on connection, and the servers buckled at launch. In 2015 EA closed the original Emeryville studio. The name survives as a label on The Sims.