Michael R. Lawson

Michael Lawson has worked for Maxis for 3 years. Starting as a temp tester on Streets of SimCity (The worst game of 1997!), he quickly learned the ropes in testing working on SimSafari at the beginning of the next year. His substantial contribution to the tuning of SimCity 3000 allowed him to survive the great Maxis testing department purge of late 1998, and got him hired on full time as a Product Analyst.

Moving to 1999, Michael began work on a new game from the creator of SimCity, The Sims. Michael worked closely with the production, development and design teams to make The Sims one of the hotest mass-market games ever. Working closely with Assoc. Producer Chris Trottier, and Designer Will Wright, Michael did much of the tuning in the objects of The Sims.

Without much of a break (two hit titles in less than two years), Michael moved on to an upgrade to the SimCity franchise, SimCity 3000 Unlimited. Showing more of his developing technical skills, he again worked closely with the production and programming departments to ship this title.

Finally moving into the a career track that fit his technical interests and skills, Michael was promoted to Assistant Software Engineer. He wrote the installer for The Sims Livin' Large, an expansion pack to The Sims, and for many downloadable apps available on thesims.com.

Michael is now (Sept 2000) working on new games in The Sims franchise. He is learning how to write objects in Maxis' proprietary scripting system Edith. He hopes to continue learning and moving up as he gains new skills.