April Fools': Firaxis announces Civilization 2K23

[pokiehl]

Troll.

There's no way a company so focused on making a profit would abandon the characteristic nomenclature of their premier game franchise. Get Real.

It’s just a harmless joke, guys…it’s April Fool’s Day

 

[floydmcw]

In Civ 2K23, American leaders should be cool and have a mullet:

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

In Civ 2K23, American leaders should be cool and have a mullet:

Not gonna lie, that would make a pretty good base for Modern Abe.

 

[OzzyKP]

OK hear me out:

Test of Time-style multi-maps.

Yes! I'd love that.

 

[TreVor_ish]

Being published under 2k banner, Civilization series lack in micro-transaction field.
Perhaps not Meier-Coins but simply as Civ-Coins this might be of interest of 2k board members.

 

[Miserable Old Git]

I was expecting an April fool. And got it!

However, I've been expecting the real Civ 7 announcement to come shortly after NLP finished. So it wouldn't amaze me if it came in the next month or so.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

It’s just a harmless joke, guys…it’s April Fool’s Day

In my defense, the more realistic graphic of Gandhi is exactly what I want in the 'real' Civ VII portrayals - less of the blatant cartoonery and more detailed graphic representations of both characters and map features.

So I was really disappointed after a few seconds when I realized it was all Bald-R-Dash!

 

[Miserable Old Git]

It was the King John bit that gave it away. Here in England we still curse his name, and he's been over 800 years dead !

 

[Daniel Boone]

Man, I can’t wait to buy the civ pass. Will it include dance moves? I’d love to see Teddy Roosevelt hit the Griddy.

 

[vorlon_mi]

If you liked petting the dog in Civ6, wait until you see victorious units dance in Civ 2k23! If you pre-order the game on Apr 1st, you can get the exclusive "Spearman defeats Tank" dance, extended version!

I've heard that they will be expanding the zombie mode with an optional assassin's mode, with custom skins for John Wick, Jules from Pulp Fiction, and Quigley Down Under.

 

[civilizationfanatic2000]

civilization 2k23 should have even more giant robots

 

[Gedemon]

Some of the other "leaked" leaders concepts

edit for links

 

[AntSou]

@Gedemon links are broken.

 

[Laurana Kanan]

links are broken.

Seems fine to me.

 

[Gedemon]

@Gedemon links are broken.

and now ?

(I thought I had copied the images, but I think it was only the links to a private thread that were copied)

 

[ShadowWarrior]

Just allow some kind of unit stacking and I'll be happy. The next Civ game can look graphically appealing, but if I have to put up with one unit per hex again, I am not playing.

 

[Abaxial]

I am reading this on 2 April. Out of date April fools fool the fooler. Also that picture of Gandhi looks more like Terry Pratchett.

Incidentally, King John of England was basically good, but he was anti-clerical so he got a bad press in the medieval chronicles, which were written by monks.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Some of the other "leaked" leaders concepts

Incidentally, King John of England was basically good, but he was anti-clerical so he got a bad press in the medieval chronicles, which were written by monks.

When you're remembered as the supreme villain in the Robin Hood mythos even though you only hiked taxes to ransom your brother out of Austria because he spent 95% of his reign beating up Muslims in Palestine.

Moderator Action: Let's not get political please. The_J

 

[The_J]

Thanks everyone for playing along . As you figured, this was indeed an April Fools' joke, and we hope you enjoyed it.

At the end, it turns out to be not so easy to balance the part that it needs to be believable to a certain extent, but also somewhere it must be an obvious joke. I hope we kinda managed.

All joking aside, I'm starting to worry that their previous allusion to "the next civ game" might not be a much anticipated Civ 7 announcement, but rather just a setup for this April Fools joke. :

I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think this is our joke.

This was our joke, Firaxis was indeed not involved.
Last year I thought about asking to collaborate, but it turns out that organizing this is always... problematic, because we essentially forget about it too often.
e.g. this year Leif started the thread for some brainstorming already in the middle of February, and we had quite some good ideas, but at the end we still nearly forgot about it.

Which is why The_J handpicked them.

Yes, also that, but the credits go to the whole team . We had in total 14 moderators brainstorming and throwing in ideas. I put everything together at the end, Gedemon sent it once through chatGPT to enhance the writing, and we made some final edits afterwards. Gedemon also produced the pictures with MidJourney (I think).

Initially we first wanted to go with Civ8 (after the announcement someone joked about that on Twitter, and since Microsoft left out Windows 9...), then the suggestion was just Civ, then Civ Infinite (last version, long running support like WoW), just "Civilization", and Browd suggested at the end Civ2K23, which was probably the best choice .


EDIT:
In hindsight, maybe should have gone with the Lenin pictures.
I also notice that the Gandhi pictures have the same type of faulty chain as the puff-jacket pictures of the pope .

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

I enjoyed this. Lenin may change clothes but he keeps his signature glasses. AndI would wear Lincoln's clothes, assuming I could lose 30 pounds and get buff it would take to make them look good.