Fritz Schäfer
Fritz Schäfer,
a German electrical engineer, game developer and entrepreneur in the computer games industry.
He studied electrical engineering at RWTH Aachen University, and started to develop a chess program called Boss on a Commodore PET 2001 as hobby project in the late 70s.
When Commodore released the VIC-20 in 1981,
Fritz Schäfer fulfilled his ambitions to commercialize the VIC-20 adapted Boss, and founded Kingsoft GmbH.
The Boss was renamed to Grandmaster for the international release covering the Commodore 64 [1].
After expansion due to distribution of third-party-developed games, and a long-term prosperous period, Kingsoft was acquired by Electronic Arts in 1995 [2],
while Schäfer left that company short after and continued his business in the computer games industry.
Selected Publications
- Fritz Schäfer (1986). Das große C-16 Buch. Kingsoft (German) [3]
- Fritz Schäfer (1986). Das große PLUS/4 Buch. Kingsoft (German) [4]