Jon Shafer leaves Firaxis!

For me, they desperately need to move away from the superficial Civ Rev style approach (others can probably articulate that better, but you know what I mean).

Apart from the fact that I personally don't like it, the economics sucks.

Here we have one of the largest and most ardent fanbases of any game. I, like many others, would have paid 5x what I did for Civ 4 for quality DLC content additions and this would provide a massive revenue stream from core gamers. MY investment would probably work out really really cheap - since I have no problem spending £50 on a night out, this seems personally reasonable to spend the same amount on content which i can play regularly.

Instead, we have a series which was already towards the top of the popular charts attempt to be dumbed down in a 'populist' move which likely didn't really get too many more sales and also turned off the existing fanbase from paying for lots of additional content.

Firaxis/2k, if you are listening... get that deep playing feeling, 1 more turn feeling back, and you'll find that this is a better way to drive your revenues. £5, 5Euro, $7 or whatever is not alot of money to pay out many times over for content which is provided for a deep game that we love to play. However, 'casual' gamers do not want to pay for this stuff. And hardcore gamers refuse out of principle when the game is dumbed down.

I read somewhere that WoW gets most of its revenues from the 10% most harcore gamers. Whilst we'd obviously all prefer things to be free, most of us would happily pay more for a quality, deep 'hardcore' game, than have to put up with Civ Rev/dumb/whatever. This still works out as a cheap hobby... my girlfriend cost me over £100 on drinking, eating, going out last night. I could have every civ invented DLC for that, forever

First they fired some members in Firaxis & now Shafer leaves. Interesting...

I honestly wouldn't be suprised if this is because of the constant 'Gar I hate ciV!!!' Comments.

Trias said:

I just love how a lot of people assume that this is a good thing.

Somethings to note:

-If Jon was fired, that is more than likely a sign that firaxis (or 2k) has pulled the plug on the further development of civ5. Expect no major patches or expansion from here on. Stuff like MP, will never get fixed. You just might see some extra DLCs churned out for extra $$.

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After these last few months I'm already calmed down from the fact that I spent $50 to this game, now I'm waiting civ6 and I really don't care where this game goes.
I see this as an great opportunity for Firaxis to create something new and get an fresh start.


What is even more bothering is that now people feel pity for Jon and the Firaxis. They don't realize that is only the first step on a long road of punishment they should receive after the release of ciV. All the mistakes must be explained, and the perpetrators must be found and treat like they deserve.

fantsu said:

What is even more bothering is that now people feel pity for Jon and the Firaxis. They don't realize that is only the first step on a long road of punishment they should receive after the release of ciV. All the mistakes must be explained, and the perpetrators must be found and treat like they deserve.

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See, this is what I mean. You have absolutely no idea what was actually happening behind the scenes. For all any of us know, Jon was championing the cause of making the game better for all of us and was shot down at every turn. For all we know he grew tired of being handcuffed by the distributor and decided to leave.

SammyKhalifa said:

See, this is what I mean. You have absolutely no idea what was actually happening behind the scenes.

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Nah, no-one of us does.

Sometimes you need one turn of Anarchy!!! to get things go in the better way.

Trias said:

I just love how a lot of people assume that this is a good thing.

Somethings to note:

-If Jon was fired, that is more than likely a sign that firaxis (or 2k) has pulled the plug on the further development of civ5. Expect no major patches or expansion from here on. Stuff like MP, will never get fixed. You just might see some extra DLCs churned out for extra $$.

-Another possibility is that Jon Shafer left because of some internal conflict, which probably had to executive decisions from the top, like releasing the game in a state, that is best described as unfinished. In any such conflict, Jon was likely the one representing your interests, because like it or not, he was "one of us". Him leaving, again probably means that he won't be replaced, or be replaced by somebody who is more willing to dance to the tunes of the executive pipers.

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I have a buddy who is a computer programmer and around jon's age. I think that it's very likely that he had significant conflict with upper management and decided that he would take a very large reputation hit if he didn't leave. many here already complain about him, but in my experience it's much more likely that 2k was pushing him to adhere to an arbitrary time schedule and he was pushing to make the game "finished" or at least "more finished". I think that the patch has improved a lot of areas, I just hope that they don't radically change the game now that he's gone.

As long as we don't know who is taking over it's hard to say if this helps CiV to become what most expected it to be from the start.

However, this makes me feel hope again.

Pouakai said:

I honestly wouldn't be suprised if this is because of the constant 'Gar I hate ciV!!!' Comments.

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Really??

You honestly believe that a talented developer like Jon would toss over years of experience at a studio like Firaxis because some people on an Internet forum got mad about a video game??

Give the guy a bit more credit, and give your fellow Civ fans a little less credit. We're not THAT powerful..

SuperJay said:

First, yes, it is true. Shafer updated his own resume on LinkedIn; it's not like this is based on a rumor. He's also commented on it himself:



I'm personally not very surprised at his departure. Clearly Civ5 didn't have as positive a reception as 2K / Firaxis (and Jon himself) would have liked - and yes, before half of you get up in arms, I know the majority of the players enjoy it, but you can't deny the significant blowback from the fanbase. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Jon decided to leave of his own accord out of disagreements with the direction set by the producers and publishers. I don't think Jon's the bad guy and solely to blame for any flaws in the game, even though I'm not wild about Civ 5.

Either way, we can speculate til the cows come home (and I know we will!) but I don't think any of us will ever know "what really happened" so to speak. Maybe sometime in the future, Jon will talk about it a bit in interviews or on blogs or forums like Qt3, but for now we're likely to remain in the dark as to the "why."

I'm not too concerned about Jon's personal life either way. I'm more interested in knowing what this will mean for Civ 5 in the long-term. I fear that it's not a good sign.

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soren johnson left firaxis about 16 mos after cIV released, only 3 months before bts came out. this could be a very bad sign for ciV, unless they have somebody waiting in the wings to keep the ship moving in the current (better) direction we might not see many more changes/updates/patches/expansions/etc. only good thing for you naysayers (and of course the rest of us as well) is that they could already be starting on civ 6. I think I'll call it ciVI. or maybe cVI.

fantsu said:

They don't realize that is only the first step on a long road of punishment they should receive after the release of ciV. All the mistakes must be explained, and the perpetrators must be found and treat like they deserve.

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Dang, man, they didn't commit war crimes.

Well, thanks for the patch, Jon. Will definitely be interesting to see what direction the xpacs take, if there are to be any. And I hope there's at least one more "big patch" after this, but we'll see.

fantsu said:

Nah, no-one of us does.

Sometimes you need one turn of Anarchy!!! to get things go in the better way.

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Haha, maybe. I think there are some pretty cool ideas in CivV and I hope they don't just pull the plug and instead just build, improve, polish. We'll see I guess.

I'm sure someone will step up and replace him and they'll continue to work on Civ V. There's still too much to add to the game (and money to be made) for them to just end it now.

thbrown81 said:

Which means he was probably fired.

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The link the OP gave outright states that he left on his own.

hardcore_gamer said:

The link the OP gave outright states that he left on his own.

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Yes, but someone can say they chose to jump off a cliff, they don't mention the person holding a gun to their head.

fantsu said:

After these last few months I'm already calmed down from the fact that I spent $50 to this game, now I'm waiting civ6 and I really don't care where this game goes.
I see this as an great opportunity for Firaxis to create something new and get an fresh start.


What is even more bothering is that now people feel pity for Jon and the Firaxis. They don't realize that is only the first step on a long road of punishment they should receive after the release of ciV. All the mistakes must be explained, and the perpetrators must be found and treat like they deserve.

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maybe you could take them all out with a candlestick in the library Dr Holmes. fortunately for them, they are not graded on how much you like/dislike them, but rather on sales #'s. sales have been good in spite of all the hate, so they'll be fine.

I think I'll start a poll for who should be the lead for cVI.

bryanw1995 said:

only good thing for you naysayers

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This is a minor detail, but please don't refer to me as a "naysayer." Preferably not one of any homogenous, vague glob of players, either. Those don't exist, as much as we all love to categorize one another as "haters" or "fanboys".

Going back to the news about Jon's departure... again, I wish him well and I hope he finds a place where he'll be successful in the future. And again: I don't think we should be too concerned with the private details of Jon's personal life. We're here to discuss the game itself, and what (if any) impact Jon's departure could have on its future.

For better or worse, I think Jon's departure may be a setback to the ongoing development of Civ5. As much as he gets villified, his absence means having to fill the role of lead designer with another developer, one who (presumably) isn't as familiar with the design and development of Civ5 (as a software project) as Jon is. Whether you like Jon or not, I think it's hard to deny that his departure will leave a void that's going to be hard to fill with someone who has the same degree of understanding and familiarity with Civ5. In the long run, it could mean a new direction for Civ5, but in the short-term, it might mean a longer wait between patches or patches that are less robust. It may also mean AI fixes (to the degree those are even possible) take longer to get released.

I haven't been playing Civ nearly as long as some of you guys in the 'old guard', i started with IV. I enjoyed IV, and reading what I have about earlier installments let me say this;

I'm not going to comment on if this is good or bad, or the content of Jon's character. CiV tried something new, sometimes experiments don't work out and the old saying 'if it aint broke..." applies and in this case maybe it does. But how often can you go back to the well with the same product give or take a feature here and there? Would you really have bought civ5 if it was civ4 with cleaner graphics, and hexes instead of squares?

The lovely thing about not having to deliver is you can be right about which features need changing and not be responsible for them. At least we got a new experience and weren't milked for the faithful fanbase we are, sold the same goods with a new package.

Jmyrm

Three words: What the heck?

kaltorak said:

My guess is that Sid finally played civ5 and noticed the civ:revolution aspects, courtesy of Jan Shafer, so he decided to get rid of him and burn all the stuff that has been in contact with civrev development.

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I wish.