John Wilbur 'Wild Bill' Stealey Sr. (born 1947) is a retired United States Air Force Lt. Colonel and Command Pilot and is currently CEO of iEntertainment Network. He is also an Air Force Academy Graduate.
Stealey founded MicroProse together with Sid Meier in 1982, at a time when he was a major. Stealey was the marketing guy, financier, and one of the most enthusiastic game testers in the game industry. Under the MicroProse brand Stealey and Meier produced a number of popular games, including F-15 Strike Eagle, Pirates!, Railroad Tycoon, Civilization, Silent Service, Gunship, X-COM, and more. Stealey ran the company until it was sold to Spectrum Holobyte in 1993.
In 1995 he founded Interactive Magic which later became iEntertainment Network. He left in 1999 and was subsequently asked to return as CEO in 2002.
Since his return IENT has redone the WarBirds Software, won settlements on their Internet Gaming patent, and developed a Military Consulting Division.
Stealey is mostly a marketing and management guy and not a computer specialist. He is good at taking concepts and turning them, with a good development team, into good saleable products.
Stealey is working on a new first person shooter series of games with a famous author which was expected to be announced in September 2007.
Stealey is an avid pilot and piloted a North American T-28B for over 15 years including a number of years leading the T-28 formations at the Oshkosh Air Shows every July.
Stealey is a graduate United States Air Force Academy in Aeronautical Engineering (1970) and of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a Masters of Business Administration. He owned the Baltimore Spirit of the National Professional Soccer League from the franchise's inception in 1992 until he sold it to Edwin F. Hale, Sr. in 1998.[1][2]
In 2005, Stealey attended Wake Tech Community College Digital Game Expo as a guest speaker.
Stealey also runs the online game, WarBirds, of http://www.TotalSims.com which visitors can play a free trial.