One Civ, Many Worlds

2K Games has sent over another excerpt from The Chronicles of Civilization, a 96-page book included within the recently released Sid Meier's Civilization Chronicles. This chapter is called "One Civ, Many Worlds" in which Civilization IV lead designer Soren Johnson writes about the Civilization community and its positive impact on the evolution of the game.

Soren starts by talking about his first experience with Civilization and how he got hired by Firaxis. Then he describes the many ways Civ games are being played in the community, such as succession games, Game of the Month, Hall of Fame, democracy games, MP ladders, NES, PBEM, and Pitboss. The last part of the article is about the modding community. Many of the popular mods are mentioned, including Double Your Pleasure, Fall from Heaven, BlueMarble, Ancient Mediterranean, Rhye’s of Civilization, and others.

From that point on, my most important source of information, my compass, so to speak, was always the online community. Game design, of course, always involves the iterative cycle of internal development and testing and refinement and more testing and so on. However, the topic of Civ was so broad, so all-encompassing, and so flexible that no one person could understand all the ways the game could be played or approached.

As I discovered more and more paths to Civ, I became a better game designer. If Civ IV succeeded in areas where Civ III failed, it is largely because our understanding of the Civ community increased so much over the intervening years. In fact, the 100-person private test group for Civ IV – critical to the game’s development – was culled from our personal interaction with the many different groups and sites that existed on the net.

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Thanks to Soren Johnson for writing this thorough article about the Civ community!

>> Read the article!

Thunderfall said:

Thanks to Soren Johnson for writing this thorough article about the Civ community!

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Absolutely! Though I hope they don't forget their core customers, the ones who simply buy the game and play it alone out of the box.

Incidentally, I am intrigued by this item in Johnson's article: "In fact, I found out directly from Apolyton that due to some internal turmoil at Firaxis during early 2000, the company was in need of programmers to work on Civ III." Has that something to do with Brian Reynolds' departure? Or shouldn't one ask?

Yes, you can read the news item about Brian Reynolds' departure here:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/075/075802p1.html

This was in February 2000.

Thunderfall said:

Yes, you can read the news item about Brian Reynolds' departure here:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/075/075802p1.html

This was in February 2000.

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Thank you! Though I'm not impressed by the article writer's command of the English language. Take this gem, for example: "It seems unlikely that losing designers as amazingly qualified as these four has got to be a major setback. " Ouch! indeed.

Looks to me he could use a ghost writer. Sheesh.

Does anyone know what the card game is like?

So what happened to that Dinos game?

No mention of SOE? Kinda suprised. It's the biggest mod out there. Long long turns through.

Well, I'd like to thank Soren for mentioning my mod in his article.