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Maxis
Summary
Maxis is an American video game developer and a division of Electronic Arts (EA). The studio was founded in 1987 by Will Wright and Jeff Braun, and acquired by Electronic Arts in 1997. Maxis is best known for its simulation games, including The Sims, Spore and SimCity.
In the late 2010s, Maxis suffered from a series of studio closures and layoffs. This included the shutdown of Maxis Emeryville in 2015, EA Salt Lake in 2017, and a wave of layoffs at Redwood Shores in 2018. With the remainder of Maxis reorganised under EA Mobile, and EA opening new studios under the label from 2019, some commentators have suggested that only the brand name from the original studio survives.
Maxis was founded in 1987 by Will Wright and Jeff Braun to help publish SimCity on home computers. Before then, the game was only available on a limited basis on the Commodore 64 due to few publishers showing any interest in porting a non-traditional game without definite "win" and "lose" conditions. The title went on to become one of the most popular and successful video games of all time. The SimCity series became a staple for the company and spawned multiple sequels and spin-offs. To name the company, Braun required that the name was "from 5-7 letters, mean nothing, be easy to remember and contain a x,z or q"; the name "Maxis" was presented by Braun's father. Following the broad success of SimCity 2000, Maxis moved from Orinda, California, to Walnut Creek in 1994.
One of the unintended successes of SimCity was recognition of the means to gamify the intersection of multiple real-world systems that could be used for planning and development, such as using SimCity-type simulations for urban planning. Around 1992, Maxis was approached by corporations and government agencies who wanted the company to use the same system simulation principles of SimCity to develop non-game simulations that they could manipulate for similar planning purposes.
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