Confirmation that Civ 7 did not "steal" civilization-switching from Humankind

[pokiehl]

Check out this interview with the devs at Gamescom. Credit to @JNR13 as always for finding this!

Interview: Civilization 7 almost scrapped its iconic settler start, but the team couldn’t let it go

We sat down with Civilization 7's executive producer, Dennis Shirk, at Gamescom 2024 to speak about the upcoming strategy sensation.

videogames.si.com

Anyway, in this interview, they state that the team had begun the process of getting approval from 2K to make the game. Two days before their presentation to 2K, Humankind was announced at Gamescom 2019. So it was literally a coincidence! (Emphasis is mine)

I ask Shirk about the elephant in the room and he has a surprising answer for me.

“This is a tough one,” he says. “I’ll just give you a little bit of history on this whole thing. We had what’s called an ERB, where we go over and present 2K with what we’re doing and for this one it was for inception, showing what Ed proposed we do [for Civ 7], and literally two days before we traveled, Humankind had announced and said what they were doing.”

This was at Gamescom 2019, for those interested in the timeline.

I also like this bit where they explain how everyone came to decide the Civ 7 setup was different enough that they should still proceed with development despite the coincidence:

He continues: “We were like ‘There’s some similarities here.’ And it took Ed a while, but the more information we saw on this, there were some key reasons why what he’s doing is very different from what Humankind is doing, especially in the way we’re handling what Ages mean and what it means to switch to another civilization. What he’s simulating is something very unique based on something in the real world, and we think as players learn more about what we’re doing, those comparisons to what Humankind did are going to be starkly different.”

There's a lot of good stuff in this interview. They also go into the rationale for such a bold design choice in the first place.

“We didn’t want to make Civilization 6.5,” the producer explains. “People already have Civilization 6 and they play it a lot. They still play 5. They still play 4. Some of them are still playing 3. Ed [Ed Beach, creative director at Firaxis] wanted to do something new with this, because right now I think players have exhausted most of the creativity they can have in a game. In most of the games that we’ve put out, like Civ 6 and all the expansions afterwards, players usually know exactly how they’re going to play something when we show the let’s play, because they understand the strategies.

"So in this one Ed wanted to simulate something new on top of the world that Sid [Sid Meier, creator of the series] built. And in something new such as Ages, the same strategies will not work anymore. They might work in the microcosm within each Age, where you will have some sub-strategies that are familiar to players, but in terms of the long game players will need fresh eyes. They’re going to come in with a new challenge, they’re not just playing another version of Civ 6. It is a risk and we’re excited about it, but we also think that is a new direction that will give players something new to chew on.”

 

[TheGrayFox]

So... Humankind showcased the mechanic to the world first before any serious work began on Civilization 5 and then Firaxis decided to double down on it, even continuing after they saw the massive flop that was Humankind and its civ swapping gimmick

thanks for confirming

 

[AriochIV]

What would it matter even if they did? Humankind is chock full of ideas stolen from Civilization.

 

[pokiehl]

What would it matter even if they did? Humankind is chock full of ideas stolen from Civilization.

Well people keep speculating and I thought it was an interesting bit of info.

 

[Kwami]

So... Humankind showcased the mechanic to the world first before any serious work began on Civilization 5 and then Firaxis decided to double down on it, even continuing after they saw the massive flop that was Humankind and its civ swapping gimmick

thanks for confirming

No.

The two teams came up with a similar, but still quite different ideas of changing civilizations at various points in the game. Humankind was announced just as the Civilization VII team was going to present their designs to management. Humankind wouldn't be released for quite some time after that.

 

[ombak]

From the interview you quoted:

We had what’s called an ERB

Damn, 2K has their devs present in Epic Rap battles? I was in localization, not on a specific dev team, but I don't think it was like that where I worked.

 

[thecrazyscot]

What would it matter even if they did? Humankind is chock full of ideas stolen from Civilization.

I dunno, but there seems to be a narrative being pushed by some that this mechanic is doomed to failure and Civ "stealing" a failed "gimmick" is trotted out to support that ... opinion.

 

[ombak]

No.

The two teams came up with a similar, but still quite different ideas of changing civilizations at various points in the game. Humankind was announced just as the Civilization VII team was going to present their designs to management. Humankind wouldn't be released for quite some time after that.

I suppose it might be in the interview, but if anything, it would become an opportunity for them to see if they had too few or too many eras and to polish and iterate on that. Though, as I've said in other posts, the devs surely play tons of other games and would be polishing based on their own experience with other games. They just didn't know they would get that from HK when they came up with their own version of the idea.

 

[TheGrayFox]

No.

The two teams came up with a similar, but still quite different ideas of changing civilizations at various points in the game. Humankind was announced just as the Civilization VII team was going to present their designs to management. Humankind wouldn't be released for quite some time after that.

HK first showcased gameplay and its gimmick in 2019... it had been in devolopment prior to its showcase, which apparently was still 2 days before VII was even approved to begin production

 

[Kwami]

HK first showcased gameplay and its gimmick in 2019... it had been in devolopment prior to its showcase, which apparently was still 2 days before VII was even approved to begin production

And none of that contradicts what I already wrote.

 

[pokiehl]

HK first showcased gameplay and its gimmick in 2019... it had been in devolopment prior to its showcase, which apparently was still 2 days before VII was even approved to begin production

I don't think that's how game development works. I think there is extensive internal prototyping and testing to generate ideas and evolve upon them before a formal pitch to the publisher. Otherwise there's nothing to show.

 

[TheGrayFox]

And none of that contradicts what I already wrote.

You said no as if i said something wrong in my original post

so i was just reiterating again that Humankind showcased this gimmick in gameplay to the public before any serious production began on Civilization VII.

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[TheGrayFox]

I don't think that's how game development works. I think there is extensive internal prototyping and testing to generate ideas and evolve upon them before a formal pitch to the publisher. Otherwise there's nothing to show.

They literally say it right there in the interview, they didn't begin working on the game until 2k gave them permission... all they did was bring a pitch to a meeting and that pitch still happened days after Humankind showcased its gimmick and gameplay to public

 

[SupremacyKing2]

then Firaxis decided to double down on it, even continuing after they saw the massive flop that was Humankind and its civ swapping gimmick

I don't get this argument:
1) Yes, Humankind was a massive flop but the civ devs would not necessarily assume that it was due only to the civ switching idea since there were undoubtedly other factors that caused HK to flop. The civ devs could logically assume civ switching was not the reason for HK's flop or at least, not the main reason.
2) There are some key differences in how civ7 and HK do civ switching. The civ devs believed that their way of doing civ switching was better than how Humankind did it. They believed that the civ7 way of doing civ switching was a good idea.

 

[bv98132454]

I don't care where the idea came from, to do so is the genetic fallacy. What I care about is whether the idea is good. I believe it is an awful idea.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

It's so stupid arguing over who came up with the idea first. Like it makes any difference either way

 

[Kwami]

You said no as if i said something wrong in my original post

so i was just reiterating again that Humankind showcased this gimmick in gameplay to the public before any serious production began on Civilization VII.

But Humankind wasn't released when "serious production" began. It was only announced at about that time. Nobody knew how well the game would do for another two years.

 

[aieeegrunt]

At this point how many truly original ideas are there? You can kind of accuse pretty much anyone of this

Did Halo “steal” FPS mechanics from Goldeneye?

I think discussing how and why an implementation of a mechanic works or not might be a better use of time

 

[Olle Wernersson]

From the interview: Religion has been fairly absent from all the released material so far, but Shirk confirms that it’s there – in a simplified form. “Religion is in the game,” he tells me. “It’s not one of those things that made huge strides, we actually simplified it a little bit in Antiquity. You’re still going to get to push through the process and earn a pantheon, but you don’t go through as many steps to do it. In the Exploration Age, religion is a system that gets introduced. We’ve simplified it, we know that religion has a love-hate relationship with our fans, so we’ve tweaked and redesigned it to be something more interesting and valid in the Civilization 7 world.”

Religion is introduced during the Age of Exploration, and it is simpler yet more interesting than in Civilization VI.

 

[Zaarin]

Religion is introduced during the Age of Exploration, and it is simpler yet more interesting than in Civilization VI.

We already knew this, but it's good to have it confirmed. I hope it gets expanded back to the Antiquities Age (or pantheons get considerably enhanced in their interest) at a future date.