This website is created and run by Phil Steinmeyer. Contact me at PSTEINMEYER A T CHARTER D 0 T NET.

Phil Steinmeyer Bio
I started my first game company, PopTop Software, in my living room in 1993. Initially it was going to be a brief sideline gig to teach myself C/C++ (I had been a Pascal/Cobol/Clipper programmer). My sideline project turned into a published game with New World Computing, and in the next three years I made several highly successful games with them – working solo on programming and design in conjunction with the rest of their team.

In 1997 I began to build PopTop into a ‘real company’, hiring a number of very talented artists. We began developing a railroad strategy game based on a personal favorite – Railroad Tycoon. Later, we were fortunate enough to acquire the rights to the Railroad Tycoon name from the original developer (MicroProse), and in late 1998, we released Railroad Tycoon 2 (RT2). RT2 was a success, and in 1999 and beyond, we released an expansion pack, a gold edition, a platinum edition, and various external companies licensed the game for ports to Playstation, Dreamcast, and Macintosh (our involvement in the ports was minimal).

In 1999 we began work on Tropico, a strategy simulation where you’re the ruler of a small island (a bit like SimCity on an island).

On the business-side, in 1998 we had been a founding member of a startup publisher called Gathering of Developers. Gathering published RT2 and a number of other titles, working with another publisher, Take-Two Interactive, as European publisher and U.S. distributor. In spring of 2000, Gathering was sold to Take-Two, and in summer of 2000, I sold PopTop to Take-Two, continuing on to run PopTop.

In 2001, we released Tropico to a good reception. Again, there were a number of follow-ups, primarily done by outsiders (an expansion pack, a sequel with a pirate theme, several bundle editions, and a Mac port that we did in-house).

After Tropico, we returned to the Railroad Tycoon series, developing Railroad Tycoon 3, our first full 3D game. RT3 was released in 2003, to strong reviews and steady sales.

PopTop took on a new multi-platform project in 2004 – its biggest project yet (currently announced, so I can’t divulge details). After a 12 year run at PopTop, I left late in the year to take a break from the crunch modes and explore some new fields.

In 2005, I created and released a casual game, Bonnie’s Bookstore. It’s a nice, simple, downloadable word game. You can find it at my new company’s site www.newcrayon.com. In 2007, I plan to release a new casual game – details forthcoming.

Going forward, I may continue to create more casual games, but I’ll also be keeping my eye open for opportunities in the edu-tainment field (i.e. software for kids), if that genre ever comes back to life, and in the Serious Games category (i.e. games for positive social impact, education and other purposes). Stay tuned…

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