Max Design

Max Design was an Austrian game developer based in Schladming, which has brought about some games with cult status, especially in the German-speaking countries. The company presented its 2004 activities.

After closing in 2004, the founders took a break and have been since 2006 with the new, but legally or economically related businesses Red Monkeys back into the game industry active.

History

Max Design was founded in 1991 by brothers Albert Lasser and Martin Lasser together with Wilfried Reiter.

The company was known for its challenging economic simulations that up to now have a large fan base and, significantly influenced the image of the " typical German biz " as a separate game genre with its series Living history, coinciding with titles such as Patrician ( Ascaron ) in the 90s.

Max Design is known for the comprehensive instructions with background information on the actual game theme ( at Burntime eg with articles on climate change, at classic on the history of the automobile to the world economic crisis, and in 1869 included a historical summary of imperialism from 1854 to 1880 and a Encyclopedia seafaring terminology ).

The project initiated by Max Design and later published together with Sunflowers game Anno 1602 marked in two respects an important limit. On the one hand it was with 2 million copies sold for hitherto successful German / Austrian computer game ever, and it laid the foundations for the Anno series. On the other hand, Sunflowers secured under the collaboration first shares of the company Max Design. About a continued shift the balance of power towards Sunflowers under the collaboration has been speculation in the fan base with the release of Anno 1503.

After twelve years Max Design withdrew on 15 April 2004 from the games industry. According to the press release, these were an adaptation phase, the duration is uncertain. All employees up to the founding team have been terminated. In the same year, the company ceased its activities. The Anno series was continued by Sunflowers under cooperation with related designs.

In an interview, one of the company's founder, stated later, after a total of 12 years of development activity is the core team was " tired " and have time for a re-orientation required. Together with the result titles sold the company to 2006 a total of 4.2 million game copies.

Known Games

  • Think Cross ( 1991) - Puzzle
  • Cash ( 1991) - economic simulation
  • Osiris (1992 ) - Puzzle
  • The Hunt fonts ( 1992) - Puzzle
  • 1869 - Close to the Wind (1992 ) - economic simulation
  • Burn Time ( 1993) - Strategy Game
  • The Sting! (1994 ) - ( Amiga ECS / OCS, AGA, CD ³ ²) - Adventure game English Name The Clue!
  • English name Motor City

Others

For the game music of 1869 and Burntime was Hannes Seifert, one of the later founder and CEO of neo Software, responsible. For the success of the project Der Clou! Max Design also appeared as a publisher.

With Petko Max Design wanted to place the mid 90s also a title in the Adventure range. A playable demo has been released, the project was never completed.

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