Bruce Shelley

Bruce Shelley (2017)

Bruce Campbell Shelley is an American game designer who was involved in the development of Sid Meier's Civilization and Railroad Tycoon for MicroProse and, from 1997 onwards, for Ensemble Studios in their real-time strategy series Age of Empires .

Life

Bruce Shelley was in the United States in the state of Michigan and grew up in Baltimore on. He was at the same time at Syracuse University and at the College of Forestry of the State University of New York, where he received a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science and Forestry . Shelley then studied economics at the University of Virginia . Already during his school days he was interested in board games like Risk or Stratego and owns more than 500 according to his own account.

Shelley first considered making a living developing games in the 1970s. In 1980 he and some of his fellow students from the University of Virginia founded the game publisher Iron Crown Enterprises and were licensed to play games based on The Lord of the Rings , Shelley's first activity in the game industry. In Strategy & Tactics Magazine his first game was based on the in the early 1980s, the American Civil War published. In 1981 he worked briefly for Simulations Publications Inc (SPI). From 1982 he worked for Avalon Hill for six years , where he was involved in the development of 1830 , Titan and Britannia , among others .

Shelley left the board game industry in favor of computer games after he got from Sid Meier's Pirates! was impressed and joined MicroProse as a game designer. There he assisted Sid Meier in the development of Civilization , Covert Action and Railroad Tycoon . During his time at MicroProse he learned from Meier to look at game development scientifically. After five years there, however, he left MicroProse to initially work as a freelance writer.

In February 1995, he met his friend Tony Goodman , who had just recently founded his new development studio, Ensemble Studios, in Dallas , Texas . There he worked as a game designer for Age of Empires, which was published in 1997. Shelley was then involved in the expansions as well as all successors of the first Age of Empires, but this mostly in an advisory capacity. After the Ensemble Studios, which Microsoft had bought in the meantime, closed at the end of 2008, he was involved as a consultant in The Settlers 7 from Blue Byte .

In 1999 Shelley was named one of the "25 Game Gods" by PC Gamer Magazine and in 2002 by GameSpy as the eighth most influential game developer.

Between 2000 and 2006 he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences and was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences in 2009.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Moby Games - Bruce Campbell Shelley. Retrieved November 10, 2009.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} FROM BOARD GAMES TO VIDEO GAMES; VISIONARY BRUCE SHELLEY TO BE INDUCTED INTO HALL OF FAME OF THE ACADEMY OF INTERACTIVE ARTS & SCIENCES ( Memento July 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved November 10, 2009.
3. ↑ Bruce Shelley, Game Designer, Ensemble Studios at Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (English)
4. ↑ The PC Games Developer Lexicon: A Brief Portrait of the Most Influential Developers - Page 56: Bruce Shelley Retrieved November 10, 2009.
5. ↑ 4players: The Settlers 7 - They bustle again.Retrieved on November 10, 2009.
6. ↑ "30 Most Influential People in Gaming: # 8. Bruce Shelley, Ensemble Studios" ( Memento of the original from April 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 10, 2009.  

Web links

• Bruce Shelley in the game database BoardGameGeek (English)