Brian Reynolds leaves Zynga

[The_J]

Joystiq reports that Civilization 2 and Alpha Centauri Designer Brian Reynolds has left the browser games developer Zynga.
Reynolds joined Zynga in 2009 and has been the responsible for the Facebook game FrontierVille.
Reynolds hasn't given any comment yet about what he plans to do in the future, but I guess the Civ community might have some hopes, and we sure wish him all the best .

The Zynga image is from broowaha.com, released under the Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.

Thanks to our member Thander for reporting this news item .

[ragan651]

Wonderful to hear. Now if we can just rescue Soren Johnson, all will be right again.

[MARDUK80]

(Hopefully) Good news for Civ and SMAC fans!

I think Brian Reynolds would be awesome choice as the lead designer of Civilization 6.

More about the news:
http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/29/zy...nolds-resigns/
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/29/chi...-leaves-zynga/


Top 100 Game Creators of All Time

[poom3619]

AC2, AC2, AC2 (Seriously, If I can decide, I would even offer him to do Brain Reynold's Alpha Centauri )

[Luckystrike77]

It's on time he stops wasting his talents. He is needed in Grand Strategy development.

[Drawmeus]

Before anyone gets too excited, remember that he was a guy who was excited to work on Zynga games. I don't think we're getting classic Alpha Centauri gameplay out of him; if you put him on that kind of project, you'd probably end up with a super casual disappointment instead.

[Civinator]

I have a very high opinion about Brian Reynolds and his philosophy of playing Civilization.

[T-hawk]

This is great news indeed. (But don't get excited about AC2, that's tied up in IP rights hell with Satan Electronic Arts.)

Reynolds was excited to join Zynga because he genuinely believed that mobile-social-freemium was the future of gaming. That actually was a reasonable prediction in 2009, and it's also reasonable for that opinion to fall by the wayside now.

[Frimlin]

Brian, how about Alpha Centauri II (or a game very much like it but named differently) created as a Kickstarter program?

Just putting it out there in case he reads this.

[dojoboy]

Originally Posted by Luckystrike77

It's on time he stops wasting his talents. He is needed in Grand Strategy development.

Agreed.

[Thander]

Originally Posted by T-hawk

This is great news indeed. (But don't get excited about AC2, that's tied up in IP rights hell with Satan Electronic Arts.)

That's true, but he could create the spiritual successor. It doesn't have to be called AC2 you know.

[Drawmeus]

Originally Posted by T-hawk

This is great news indeed. (But don't get excited about AC2, that's tied up in IP rights hell with Satan Electronic Arts.)

Reynolds was excited to join Zynga because he genuinely believed that mobile-social-freemium was the future of gaming. That actually was a reasonable prediction in 2009, and it's also reasonable for that opinion to fall by the wayside now.

Zynga is (not surprisingly) imploding. Reynolds' departure does not mean that his philosophy is changing again. And even if it is, there's no reason to think it's changing back towards Civ 2/AC.

It'd be nice if he did make another grand strategy game, of course!

[Pitboss]

Originally Posted by Frimlin

Brian, how about Alpha Centauri II (or a game very much like it but named differently) created as a Kickstarter program?

Just putting it out there in case he reads this.

I'ld love that, where can I contribute?

[Maniacal]

This is hardly relevant enough to CFC to warrant its own announcement. It is good he finally got tired of "designing" copy paste slot machine-like games though.

[SouljahAtWar]

Zynga was a terrible money-grabbing company anyways... like EA.
Only they make crappy Facebook games. You'll have to pay money to actually succeed in their games. Horrible concept indeed.

[Dale]

A chunk of the Civ team leave Firaxis in December........ Reynolds leaves Zynga in January.

Just two pieces of recent news.

[Selous]

Originally Posted by Maniacal

This is hardly relevant enough to CFC to warrant its own announcement.

one of the grandadies of the civ francise, i am interested in the professional moves that these guys make, and easy to see that i am not the only one

first thought was i hope he makes another AC, or another civ style game

[Maniacal]

Him leaving Zynga still has nothing to do with Civilization to warrent its own announcement.

[urzagc13]

Originally Posted by The_J

Reynolds hasn't given any comment yet about what he plans to do in the future

It appears he has now (http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/01/br...nd-the-future/) - emphasis is mine :

Originally Posted by Brian Reynolds

But after almost four years (and longer than I was ever at Firaxis, if you can believe it!), I’m ready to shift into a different gear. I miss getting to write code personally and make fun “with my own hands.” And suddenly, the tablet and mobile world look like they might be on the verge of a strategy games renaissance – hey, I used to be good at making those! – and free-to-play is leading the way. Not that Zynga isn’t willing and even eager to have me do that, but I even miss, in a funny way, the day to day panics of being somewhere small and new and vulnerable, and the excitement of owning a small company. I want to experiment more than might be appropriate for a publicly traded company, and I might want to do something that would be “off strategy” for Zynga or otherwise too risky.

So I’m getting that itch, and though I need some time to think about exactly what I want to do next. I suspect that “starting a little studio with a few wingmen” — for the fourth time in my career — is likely to be on the menu.

So, strategy games in tablets/phones it is. All in all it seems promising (if only 75% of that interview wasn't Reynolds praising Zynga, and he hadn't made that remark about "free-to-play" games, which may lead to too light/too casual strategy games for the tastes of most of us)

[Selous]

i guess AC2 is right out then ...