Briggs’s music first appeared in a 1989 MicroProse release Sword of the Samurai. Following that, most MicroProse games featured his work. Before working in software entertainment, Briggs’ music had already received performances by ensembles internationally in Paris’ Pompidou Centre (“Ecliptic”), New York City’s Avery Fisher Hall (“Comets”), and in the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Illinois (“Adjectives,” “Firaxis”, “Chimera,” “Aurora,” and others) as well as various smaller venues in New York and other cities throughout the United States. 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”.

Briggs left MicroProse in 1996 to co-found Firaxis Games. In a 2004 interview he commented his decision: “Civ II had just come out and MicroProse had been purchased by Spectrum HoloByte. […] Things had gotten pretty bad. By that time I was director of product development and they were asking me to do things and tell people things that I just didn’t like. I decided that I could do a lot better job running the company than they could, so I left.” Briggs then led the design of Civilization III and oversaw the expansion of the company into a major developer of strategy computer games. He also co-designed Colonization and Civilization II, as well as composing much of the original music in Civilization IV. He negotiated the acquisition of Firaxis Games by Take Two Interactive in 2005, became its Chairman in spring of 2006, and left Firaxis in November of that year.

In 2003, Briggs was named software “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Ernst & Young, and in 2004 he was named “CEO of the Year” by Baltimore SmartCEO magazine.

In 2009, the Westfield Symphony Orchestra presented the world premiere of his composition “Celebration for Orchestra”.