Firaxis hit by layoffs

[Kwami]

What would historians know about making a game?

 

[Naokaukodem]

Great things to do. At least if they have a bit of theorizing in mind. (for example if cities change number of population greatly over time to time up or down -and they did-, from what could it come from ? How to translate it in -interesting- gameplay ?)

Not to mention that Civ IS supposed to be 'a' History, that with the belief I have that the more realistic the game is, the better he might get, I see no other persons more capable.

 

[InsidiousMage]

that with the belief I have that the more realistic the game is, the better he might get, I see no other persons more capable.

A more realistic Civ would be a less fun game, not to mention more boring. History is fun to learn about, less fun to actually experience.

 

[pokiehl]

Great things to do. At least if they have a bit of theorizing in mind. (for example if cities change number of population greatly over time to time up or down -and they did-, from what could it come from ? How to translate it in -interesting- gameplay ?)

Not to mention that Civ IS supposed to be 'a' History, that with the belief I have that the more realistic the game is, the better he might get, I see no other persons more capable.

The easiest part of making a game is “theorizing.” Ideas are cheap. The skill to execute them isn’t.

In other words, Civ’s deviation from realism is not a matter of the developers not understanding history.

 

[Nikolai II]

Firaxis already has Andrew, though.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

What would historians know about making a game?

A question I often ask

 

[tedhebert]

A question I often ask

In this specific case, my answer is A LOT ;-) Hope all is well with you

 

[Kwami]

A question I often ask

I'd expect that you spend a lot of time researching, writing, and maybe teaching and not so much time designing the game. No?

 

[Linklite]

WRT ChatGPT replacing ciders...no. Not unless we're about to see Firaxis sink for good.

Don't get me wrong, such AIs are very impressive. Their ability to communicate in normal language is brilliant, as well as their ability to synthesise information. The word "intelligent" in their name is misleading. The other day, I had an argument with it over Picard's iconic beard that he spotted from season 3 on. I'm not even sure where it got that from. Obviously confused with Riker, but he had it from season 2, and who told it that? Bizarre.

I'm sure AI will replace coders, and it won't be long either.

Just not in 2023.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

I'd expect that you spend a lot of time researching, writing, and maybe teaching and not so much time designing the game. No?

I can (and would be happy to) talk (in general terms, and only about stuff already released) about what I do (and - this will be the only thing I'll say about the topic of workplace layoffs - I'm still employed at Firaxis)!
My own research and teaching does make up an important part of who I am as a person, but doesn't play into my work at Firaxis. To be technical about things, I'm a cultural anthropologist (with a concentration in Southeast Asian history) specializing in Lao-speaking parts of Thailand (areas, alas, not in Civ6). I teach and write on anthro theory, religion, labor migration, and rivers (the Mekong, specifically). But all this stuff is not stuff Firaxis pays me to do; I do this when Firaxis isn't open (weekends, nights), and have swung this in the past by teaching classes outside of the US, where I can hold class remotely or occasionally in person outside of Firaxis hours. Writing, of course, can happen in the dead of night, and for research I've mostly been pulling from ethnographic fieldwork (where a researcher lives in a community long-term) from before I joined Firaxis. None of these things are part of my job at Firaxis, though I like to think having someone actively publishing in the field is nice. A lot of - nearly all - the topics I write about aren't directly relevant to Civilization, the game.
For Firaxis, I might consult on design, answering decisions like who should be in the game, what languages the leaders should speak, what their abilities might look like, and what art might look like for them. I don't implement nor have the final say in these things - those decisions belong to the design team, you're right on that. But I sit in the same office with them. We're a team. So I might say "hey this is Sundiata Keita's story" and design would say "OK, we think this ability might be a good way to represent this" or "well what about this other aspect?" That Vietnam in NFP has a thanh is something I helped with (along with design), but what it does is far less me. I also write the Civilopedia and leader lines (since 2020). All of this fills up 8 hours a day pretty well. You can think of it like this - stuff for Civ6 involving non-technical text is me, stuff involving numbers and balance is the design team, and stuff blurring those lines (choices, art) I'm involved with, but don't have the final say (other than "this is a real problem for these historical reasons").
So, if by "design" you mean "gets into the numbers," no, that's not me. For me, I'm excited by games that let you take a peek into another way of life, whether that's another country or another time, and that, too, is what gets me excited by my research, so that's a nice synergy. I think having that perspective is important, because, knowingly or not, we're so colored by stereotypical ways of seeing things - Vietnam through the lens of what they call the American War, Persia through Greek sources, Mali as "that really rich guy" - that we miss more interesting or complex bits - Vietnam as an occasionally powerful medieval civilization trying to exist at the intersection of East and Southeast Asia, Persia as the crossroads of the world (or, for instance, non-Achamaenid Persia as also important), Mali as a West African kingdom (and not just a part of trans-Saharan trade routes). A historian can help to point out these so that we get a better understanding in popular culture about the world from these different vantage points.

 

[Naokaukodem]

A more realistic Civ would be a less fun game, not to mention more boring. History is fun to learn about, less fun to actually experience.

Not necessarily. Not only realism can bring more credibility hence more immersion, but can make you learn about historical theories that you didn't know before. Obviously, Firaxis may not want to enter into theories of all sort, I would say "commit into them", but if Civ was a game about Homo Sapiens and not civs, it could be interesting to base a part of the gameplay on Yuval Noah Harari book "Sapiens" for example.
As if this was not enough, reality is a fair craddle of facts or natural systems that can inspire for exciting ideas, as I did in the thread in my signature.
Don't get me wrong, that's not "realism at all costs", there's still a part of fantasy or theorizing (it's a video game), but rather "rationalized realism". You pick up only what's interesting in it.

The easiest part of making a game is “theorizing.” Ideas are cheap. The skill to execute them isn’t.

In other words, Civ’s deviation from realism is not a matter of the developers not understanding history.

I kind of disagree. A global vision of the game and what it can improve doesn't run the streets. Why ? Because it's just a game, and one couldn't find persons willing to involve in it as much as real History for example, which is an academic and reckognized discipline.
Additionnally, all the skill of the Earth will not allow you to do a great game. Nobody knows why Civ has so much success, except the "one more turn" thing but nobody knows why it is so. Lately I saw things like "it's because there is leaderheads", but that's quite laughable. The simpliest explanation is not gameplay, it's the name of the franchise : Civilization and what it inspires. If a young person fall in front of the game with its title, and maybe has appreciated some History lessons or watched some TV show about some historical stuff, it may be interested in purchasing the title, because it evocates the whole human History, and the more one will learn about it, like "living from huts to rockets" seen in the back of the box (or Steam description), it will be amazed yet more. You will answer that Humankind in akin, and hasn't had the same success, but a franchise isn't always a huge success since its first iteration. The young person may in fact have heard of Civ already.

As to understand History, nobody does, considering the different theories about this or that. I would even say that History as a discipline is not as much "understanding" as "describing". But a cunning vision about this or that could open up for brand new ideas and give the gameplay a new groundbreaking twist. Granted, not everyone may like it. Will it prevent sells ? As far as I'm concerned, my last Civ buy was Civ5 vanilla, because I wanted to play multiplayer, but after a huge disillusion I just stopped buying it. My best memories with the series is Civ2 that a mate in my classroom gave to me, when I was discovering the series with far better graphics than Civ1, and Civ3/4 multiplayer. It doesn't prevent me to play the game a little bit though. (I got the Civ6 vanilla free in Epic Game Store for example) But I'm not that much involved into Civ stuff as a consumer. So if Civ7 has, at last, some groundbreaking ideas based on History, I might buy it straight up.

 

[The_J]

Thanks @Andrew Johnson [FXS] , very interesting.

 

[UWHabs]

I can (and would be happy to) talk (in general terms, and only about stuff already released) about what I do (and - this will be the only thing I'll say about the topic of workplace layoffs - I'm still employed at Firaxis)!
My own research and teaching does make up an important part of who I am as a person, but doesn't play into my work at Firaxis. To be technical about things, I'm a cultural anthropologist (with a concentration in Southeast Asian history) specializing in Lao-speaking parts of Thailand (areas, alas, not in Civ6). I teach and write on anthro theory, religion, labor migration, and rivers (the Mekong, specifically). But all this stuff is not stuff Firaxis pays me to do; I do this when Firaxis isn't open (weekends, nights), and have swung this in the past by teaching classes outside of the US, where I can hold class remotely or occasionally in person outside of Firaxis hours. Writing, of course, can happen in the dead of night, and for research I've mostly been pulling from ethnographic fieldwork (where a researcher lives in a community long-term) from before I joined Firaxis. None of these things are part of my job at Firaxis, though I like to think having someone actively publishing in the field is nice. A lot of - nearly all - the topics I write about aren't directly relevant to Civilization, the game.
For Firaxis, I might consult on design, answering decisions like who should be in the game, what languages the leaders should speak, what their abilities might look like, and what art might look like for them. I don't implement nor have the final say in these things - those decisions belong to the design team, you're right on that. But I sit in the same office with them. We're a team. So I might say "hey this is Sundiata Keita's story" and design would say "OK, we think this ability might be a good way to represent this" or "well what about this other aspect?" That Vietnam in NFP has a thanh is something I helped with (along with design), but what it does is far less me. I also write the Civilopedia and leader lines (since 2020). All of this fills up 8 hours a day pretty well. You can think of it like this - stuff for Civ6 involving non-technical text is me, stuff involving numbers and balance is the design team, and stuff blurring those lines (choices, art) I'm involved with, but don't have the final say (other than "this is a real problem for these historical reasons").
So, if by "design" you mean "gets into the numbers," no, that's not me. For me, I'm excited by games that let you take a peek into another way of life, whether that's another country or another time, and that, too, is what gets me excited by my research, so that's a nice synergy. I think having that perspective is important, because, knowingly or not, we're so colored by stereotypical ways of seeing things - Vietnam through the lens of what they call the American War, Persia through Greek sources, Mali as "that really rich guy" - that we miss more interesting or complex bits - Vietnam as an occasionally powerful medieval civilization trying to exist at the intersection of East and Southeast Asia, Persia as the crossroads of the world (or, for instance, non-Achamaenid Persia as also important), Mali as a West African kingdom (and not just a part of trans-Saharan trade routes). A historian can help to point out these so that we get a better understanding in popular culture about the world from these different vantage points.

What I'm reading from this is Laos is confirmed for civ 7?

jk jk
It's definitely great hearing about your role within the team. It's absolutely great that Firaxis has someone with your skills on board helping to make it a better game!

 

[Linklite]

I can (and would be happy to) talk (in general terms, and only about stuff already released) about what I do (and - this will be the only thing I'll say about the topic of workplace layoffs - I'm still employed at Firaxis)!
My own research and teaching does make up an important part of who I am as a person, but doesn't play into my work at Firaxis. To be technical about things, I'm a cultural anthropologist (with a concentration in Southeast Asian history) specializing in Lao-speaking parts of Thailand (areas, alas, not in Civ6). I teach and write on anthro theory, religion, labor migration, and rivers (the Mekong, specifically). But all this stuff is not stuff Firaxis pays me to do; I do this when Firaxis isn't open (weekends, nights), and have swung this in the past by teaching classes outside of the US, where I can hold class remotely or occasionally in person outside of Firaxis hours. Writing, of course, can happen in the dead of night, and for research I've mostly been pulling from ethnographic fieldwork (where a researcher lives in a community long-term) from before I joined Firaxis. None of these things are part of my job at Firaxis, though I like to think having someone actively publishing in the field is nice. A lot of - nearly all - the topics I write about aren't directly relevant to Civilization, the game.
For Firaxis, I might consult on design, answering decisions like who should be in the game, what languages the leaders should speak, what their abilities might look like, and what art might look like for them. I don't implement nor have the final say in these things - those decisions belong to the design team, you're right on that. But I sit in the same office with them. We're a team. So I might say "hey this is Sundiata Keita's story" and design would say "OK, we think this ability might be a good way to represent this" or "well what about this other aspect?" That Vietnam in NFP has a thanh is something I helped with (along with design), but what it does is far less me. I also write the Civilopedia and leader lines (since 2020). All of this fills up 8 hours a day pretty well. You can think of it like this - stuff for Civ6 involving non-technical text is me, stuff involving numbers and balance is the design team, and stuff blurring those lines (choices, art) I'm involved with, but don't have the final say (other than "this is a real problem for these historical reasons").
So, if by "design" you mean "gets into the numbers," no, that's not me. For me, I'm excited by games that let you take a peek into another way of life, whether that's another country or another time, and that, too, is what gets me excited by my research, so that's a nice synergy. I think having that perspective is important, because, knowingly or not, we're so colored by stereotypical ways of seeing things - Vietnam through the lens of what they call the American War, Persia through Greek sources, Mali as "that really rich guy" - that we miss more interesting or complex bits - Vietnam as an occasionally powerful medieval civilization trying to exist at the intersection of East and Southeast Asia, Persia as the crossroads of the world (or, for instance, non-Achamaenid Persia as also important), Mali as a West African kingdom (and not just a part of trans-Saharan trade routes). A historian can help to point out these so that we get a better understanding in popular culture about the world from these different vantage points.

So, is that just you, and you do everything in the game related to that? Or are there several people with that kind of responsibility?

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

I’m the only one there with that particular role, though there are a few other PhDs in the humanities in the group!

 

[Solver]

Not to forget the multi-disciplinary guys - if I recall correctly, Ed not only has a computer science degree but also one in Russian literature!

 

[Casworon]

I do wonder if the gaming industry is going through a bit of a bubble. Which will eventually burst.

So many modern releases are seeming weirdly unfinished and pushed out the door. Redfall for example. Also sadly relic has also had to lay off a large number of employees after the less than stellar reception of Company of Heroes 3. Hearing about broken releases is so common, and now hearing about employees being let go is also becoming increasingly common.

 

[Solver]

The Relic thing hurts personally because CoH3 is pretty much what I've been waiting for since CoH1, an actual sequel to it as opposed to the disaster of CoH2.

I don't think there's a gaming bubble. The industry is doing great. There economy is in trouble globally so that of course puts companies under pressure and increases the likelihood of layoffs and such, but I am not seeing a specific crisis with regards to gaming.

 

[Dale]

In the corporate world, a project is envisioned, a project lead is selected, a project is sponsored and budgeted, a project team is created, a project is completed (or defunded, cancelled, shelved), the project team is disbanded.

In the gaming world, a game is envisioned, a game lead is selected, a game is sponsored and budgeted, a game team is created, a game is completed (or defunded, cancelled, shelved), the game team is disbanded.

I wouldn't worry so much about layoffs from gaming companies. In nearly all cases, I would say they are the disbanding of a game team (through various project/game end points). Firaxis has recently completed games, so it's most likely the disbanding of those game teams.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

Not to forget the multi-disciplinary guys - if I recall correctly, Ed not only has a computer science degree but also one in Russian literature!

The Carlbarian, despite the name, speaks Latin.