Dr. Jeffery L. Briggs (born March 10, 1957, in Florence, Alabama) is founder and former President and CEO of Firaxis Games, a video game developer based in Hunt Valley, Maryland, United States. He was previously a game designer at MicroProse but left that company in 1996 along with Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds to form Firaxis Games.

Briggs holds a Doctorate in Musical Composition and Theory from the University of Illinois. His career began in New York City where he composed music for various events, including dance and theater groups. He took a job as Game Editor and Designer at West End Games where he worked until 1987. He then joined MicroProse Software, where he served as designer, writer, composer, producer, Executive Producer and, finally, Director of Product Development. He left in 1996 to co-found Firaxis Games. In a 2004 interview Jeff Brigs commented his decision to leave MicroProse:

He led the design of Civilization III and oversaw the expansion of the company into a major developer of strategy computer games.^{[citation needed]} Briggs also co-designed Colonization and Civilization II, as well as composing much of the original music in Civilization 4. In 1996 he was awarded US Patent 5,496,962 for a "System for Real-Time Music Composition and Synthesis" used in a product called "CPU Bach".

Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language and a belief in democratic socialism.

Considered perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler of English culture, Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is best known for the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945), which together have sold more copies than any two books by any other 20th-century author. His book Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, is widely acclaimed, as are his numerous essays on politics, literature, language and culture. In 2008, The Times ranked him second on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Orwell's influence on popular and political culture endures, and several of his neologisms, along with the term Orwellian—a byword for totalitarian or manipulative social practices—have entered the vernacular.

Sidney K. "Sid" Meier (born February 24, 1954) is a Canadian-American programmer and designer of several popular strategy video games and simulation video games, most notably Civilization. Meier co-founded MicroProse in 1982 and is a Director of Creative Development for computer game developer Firaxis Games, which he co-founded with Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds in 1996. He has won several prestigious accolades for his contributions to the computer games industry.

Sid Meier was born in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. He graduated from the University of Michigan.

Meier founded MicroProse together with Bill Stealey in 1982. MicroProse initially developed flight simulator video games, such as Silent Service and F-19 Stealth Fighter. In 1987, the company released Sid Meier's Pirates!, which also began a trend of placing Meier's name in the titles of his games. Meier later explained that the inclusion of his name was because of the dramatic departure in the design of Pirates! compared to the company's earlier games. Stealey decided that it would improve the company's branding, believing that it would make those who purchased the flight simulators more likely to play Pirates!. After the release of F-19 Stealth Fighter, Meier decided to focus on developing strategy games. He later said, "Everything I thought was cool about a flight simulator had gone into that game." Inspired by SimCity and Empire!, Meier created Railroad Tycoon and later the game series for which he is most widely recognized, Civilization, although he designed only the first installment. Meier eventually left MicroProse and in 1996 founded Firaxis Games along with veteran designer and gaming executive Jeff Briggs. Today Firaxis makes strategy games, many of which are follow-ups to Meier titles, such as Civilization V and Pirates!. In 1996 he was awarded US Patent 5,496,962 for a "System for Real-Time Music Composition and Synthesis" used in a product called "CPU Bach".

Soren Johnson is a video game designer and programmer. He was employed by Firaxis Games from 2000 to 2007, where he co-designed several of their most popular games. Prior to his work at Firaxis, he obtained a BA in history and a master's degree in computer science from Stanford University. Johnson has also been employed at Electronic Arts as part of an internship, where he worked on Knockout Kings 2000.

With Firaxis, Johnson helped in programming the popular video game Civilization III, also writing the entire artificial intelligence (AI). He was also the lead designer of Civilization IV, once again writing all of the AI. On April 17, 2007, it was announced that Johnson had left Firaxis to rejoin Electronic Arts to work on Spore. In an interview with gamesindustry international published on May 16, 2012, Johnson revealed that he left EA in September 2011 to join the social network game development company Zynga.

He is a bi-monthly design columnist for Game Developer Magazine and also on the Advisory Board of the Game Developer's Conference.