Technically, there's no formal "pre-production" phase of a new Civilization project. Dennis Shirk, executive producer on Sid Meier's Civilization VII, explains that once Firaxis initiates the next sequel in the series, the lead designer typically forms a small concepting team to nail down the game's design pillars. This team always has a sleek, reliable tool at its disposal to start prototyping ideas: the previous game's engine. As a result, concepts can become Civ-specific prototypes very quickly.
"Ed Beach, lead designer for Civilization VII, used our Civ 6 engine to prototype how several things might look like in Civ 7," says Shirk. Beach, of course, was very familiar with that engine, being lead designer on Civ VI as well. "Production provides technical support, if necessary," adds Shirk. "Bud mostly, it's not necessary, so we just stay out of the concept team's way in the early going."
Another reason to keep-clear, he adds, is that Sid Meier maxim of "finding the fun." As Shirk explains: "if it's not fun yet, why build any new tech? Let the concept team play with their concepts, let them discvoer what's fun or not fun. Once it feels good, we can green-light and start moving to full-engine work."
Getting Past Halfway
"We started working on Civ 7 even before we'd finished Civ 6," says Ed Beach. The new sequel's concept phase began right after the release of Civilization VI's Gathering Storm expansion but before work started in earnest on the New Frontier Pass. In fact, most of Civ VII's eventual dev team would continue working on Civ VI post-launch content for another year.
"But they [studio leadership] wanted me to figure out what the next big thing was going to be," says Beach. "How can we shake up the formula and not just produce a 6.1 or 6.2 or 6.5, but something innovative, worthy of having a full 7 in the title?" Full development would be a long-haul process, of course - in the end, Sid Meier's Civilization VII wouldn't release until a full five years after project kickoff. But no development could proceed without a new vision.
Beach came up with some initial thoughts, and put together a pitch deck. Its core proposal called for a return to the game's foundational basics. Some fans and Firaxis insiders (including Sid Meier) felt the series had veered a bit too far into "inflicted complexity" - drifting away from the original blueprint of a game with a single, easy-to-understand systems and mechanics designed to let players create complexity at their own pace. Thus, Beach wanted to reboot the franchise back to its roots.
"We thought we could reinvent certain things and present them in a simpler way," he says.
