19 Facts About Maxis

Maxis is an American video game developer and a division of Electronic Arts .

Maxis is best known for its simulation games, including The Sims, Spore and SimCity.

Maxis was founded in 1987 by Will Wright and Jeff Braun to help publish SimCity on home computers.

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.

In 1994, Maxis decided to let this division go on its own; MBS rebranded itself as Thinking Tools Inc and continued to produce similar simulation tools, but eventually closed down in 1998.

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In what Kotaku later referred to as the "era of scattergun experimentation", Maxis released numerous titles throughout the 1990s, including "sim" titles as well as some non-simulation titles, such as RoboSport and 3D Pinball for Windows, which was included as one of the standard system games in several Windows releases.

In 1997, Maxis agreed to be acquired by Electronic Arts by means of a stock swap which valued Maxis at $125 million.

Over 1998, Maxis was allowed to finish SimCity 3000 on its own time; following this, Wright's efforts were thrown into The Sims, at the time seen as a major gamble for the company, as the dollhouse game was not seen as a match for the video game market's demographics.

The Sims was released in February 2000 to widespread success, and would become one of Maxis' core focuses until a 2006 reorganisation shifted it away from their core team.

Maxis became one of four primary labels at EA, replacing the "EA Play" brand.

Development of The Sims continued, and Maxis branding returned in 2013 with the launch of The Sims 3: University Life, and SimCity.

Maxis would continue to support the game with patches, but it remained buggy even a year after launch.

Unlike the Texas office, Maxis Europe is a "distributed development team", composed of staff working remotely.

Maxis is regarded for its innovative simulation games, in which there is no specific goal to the player, making its games almost endless.

In 2013, Maxis Emeryville released a reboot, simply titled SimCity, to mixed reviews, due to technical issues at launch surrounding its mandatory online connectivity.

Maxis has developed seven expansion packs for the game, as well as an online spin-off titled The Sims Online.

Maxis released The Sims 2 in 2004, a sequel title that features a full 3D environment, as opposed to the original's dimetric engine.

From 2006 to 2013, all The Sims games and expansion packs were developed by The Sims Studio, and the Maxis logo was not included on The Sims game covers until 2013, with the release of The Sims 3: University Life.

Maxis developed The Sims Mobile, until development was transferred to Firemonkeys in February 2019.