ET: Welcome to the Civilization V Podcast Series. I’m Elizabeth Tobey, and over the next few months, I’ll be taking you inside the Firaxis studio, introducing you to the Civilization V development team, and weaving my way through the latest iteration of this addictive series.
Before we begin wading in to the actual game, however, there is a team that needs introducing.
JS: My name is Jon Shafer. I was originally part of the mod community and the Civilization forum community way back when for Civ II and Civ III and from there I made the jump to developer and have been working on Civ IV and then the expansions and then Civ V.
DS: Well being that this is Firaxis, we've obviously got a tremendous amount of Civilization veterans on the team that have been here since many versions past. One of the new additions we have to this team for instance, Brian Wade, lead engineer, sitting at the table here with us – he actually has been a long time Civilization fan and long time employee of other game studios making strategy games and we've got quite a few members on the team that are doing stuff like that.
BW: Yeah jumped ship a few years back to come here to work on Civ V and brought some people with me.
DS: Well that's what's great about the team. The team is made up of not just, you know, employees but there's a tremendous amount of fans in play here too that actually came to work here at the company just because they were a fan or they came from the fan community and they finally get to work on the game, and that's what makes Firaxis games particularly special. And I don't mean for this to sound like marketing jargon but this is true because if you're working on the game and you love the game and you believe in the franchise as a whole you're just gonna have a better game than somebody who's just here to do the work.
BW: Yeah passion makes a huge difference and anyone who's passionate about the job they're doing is going to do a better job at it.
DS: Yeah. We've got some other interesting characters on the team as well I mean we've got some like Brian Busotti, our lead modeler who's been working on Civilization games for a long long time. Chris Hickman, our lead animator, he had to have some adjustment because he came from the film and television industry. And he had to learn an entire new way to do things because now we're like, “no you can't do anything you want – you have to actually make it fit on the computer and have the computer run the animations.” So he had a period of adjustment where you had to adjust to the whole gaming philosophy. I'll let Dorian talk about that some more.
DN: Yeah I'll definitely talk – before we start talking about the specifics on the staff it was fun. As a group we decided to get – I share an office with Brian and Jon and it hasn't always been super easy, but it's been super efficient to solve problems. Because if people have a question about what we're doing in the game, if the designer, the engineer and the artist aren't aware of it we know it's probably not an important part of the game. And if it's an item that we need to solve we can problem solve almost instantaneously. So I think that was a really fun way to start off and we've been able to keep it like that for a while. And then in the art team we have a wide range of guys that are gonna see the first game that they've worked on hit the shelves, and we've had guys that have seen, you know, 5-10 titles come out in the past 10 years or so. And I've been really thrilled to see that wide range of people get along and be excited about working together because a lot of times there's generation gaps on projects and it seems like the older guys have gotten the young guys excited about the scope of what they're working on and the young guys have brought that nice energy level to it. For example our terrain artist, Steve Eggry, has done a fantastic job and he comes from a painting background and this is his first sort of industry gig and he's been doing a great job. And we have Greg Cunningham who's been working a lot on implementing the units and he's worked on a lot of Civ titles in the past and he's still learning new things and getting animations (inaudible) better so seeing that spectrum has been really exciting.
ET: As a hardcore Civ fan since a young age (I remember playing the original Civ long past my bedtime many nights in a row) the journey to Civilization V has been a long and winding road for me, as undoubtedly it has been for many dedicated fans listening to this recording. But Civ V is so much more than merely “the game that comes after Civ IV” and its dev team has a distinct and unique background, making them perfect for breathing new life and taking Civilization to new, unexplored places. Jon Shafer, Lead Designer for Civilization V, starts from the beginning – when designing the title began.
JS: The very beginning would probably be considered the summer of 2007. That was right after Beyond the Sword was finished and some of us had peeled off from that and started on early prototype work for Civ V. The first two people in the project were myself and Dorian and from that point we were starting to prototype some game concepts. The first thing we tackled was combat and Dorian was exploring the visuals as well.
DN: I spent a lot of time gathering research as to what would make a history game cool, looking a lot at film and classical paintings and we wanted to sort of re-imagine the scale that people were playing Civilization at, so we wanted to look at much larger battles and we did a lot of that by modifying the existing Civ IV game which was really fun.
ET: That’s Dorian Newcomb, the game’s Lead Artist, who also has quite the storied history with the franchise and has come from a background of many past Civilization games. But Civ V isn’t just for the hardcore addicts such as myself, or the modders-turned-lead-designers like Jon – Civ is the strategy game for PC, and is something everyone with a working computer should experience. But how to describe such an expansive experience that is Civ? I asked for an elevator pitch – perhaps ten or twelve floors, give or take a few.
JS: I think the main thing with any Civilization game really is the opportunity to live through history and guide it as you would - however you would like. So, you know, one example I've used in the past is people really like historical books or movies or maybe even other games. Civilization allows you to cover the entire gamut of human history and the ability to shape it and do whatever you want with that. You can be a warmonger, you can build great wonders of the world, you can be a diplomat, you can, you know, do whatever you want. And it's an opportunity to, you know, be the guy or the girl in charge and, you know, live history.
DS: That's what the best part of this game is, because often times you have games that really want you to play a certain way. You know how you're gonna start and they know how they want you to finish, but Civilization as a series in general, you get to start somewhere and you really have no idea where you're gonna end up by the time it comes around. We have no idea where players are gonna end up and I think that's what makes it so amazing.
BW: It very much depends on choices they make and there's so many they can make throughout one game of Civ.
ET: Brian Wade, Lead Programmer on Civilization V, brings up an excellent point: Choice guides Civilization V in a way that few games can rival. This makes for a never-ending experience, and for game play that varies drastically depending on the player (or even the player’s mood.) Choice, however, is an established tenant of the Civ franchise, and the design principles for Civilization V both play off the importance of choice and go far beyond to focus on important aspects of the game that haven’t been brought to the front in the past.
JS: The main design principles that we had going forward, there were a few big, big things. One that will stand out to anybody who knows anything about Civ V already is the fact that we wanted to enhance and improve combat – add more depth there. We wanted to mesh the idea of tactical combat with the whole grand strategic play of the game. So you build the armies, you decide where they go, and then you actually have them fight. So it covers the entire sequence of that part of history. For me, one big things was also to give players a lot of flexibility in terms of how they develop their empires. So happiness is a good example of that. Happiness is now empire-based instead of city-based and what that lets players do is expand a lot and have a lot of small cities or a few really big cities. Another example of that is gold. We tried to make gold more important in the game, you can do a lot more things with it. So that gives players the opportunity to do things that they haven't been able to do in previous games. It gives them freedom.
ET: Civilization V’s Producer, Dennis Shirk, helps give me insight into what the team wanted to accomplish in this new game. Design principles aside, there were some big ideas they needed to master.
DS: I think one of the things that I think Jon accomplished pretty well was to not make Civilization 4.5 or 4.7, but to do something completely new with the series – take it down a slightly different road without losing touch of the whole Civ series feel while still delivering something new to the player.
DN: One goal that I wanted to have is we have a world that's very dynamic and every time you play the game it can be a very different experience. I wanted to take an approach with the visuals for the terrain that made the landscape be very open, have a very epic feel, and have you have a sense of excitement about discovering new things. That was hard to feel in the older square-based Civ IV title and the play was scaled a bit more so mountain ranges felt enormous and instead of a small bit of trees you felt like you're traveling through forested hills. It was just the excitement of discovery that I wanted to push early on.
BW: As far as I'm concerned a lot of it was technically pulling off the stuff that Jon and Dorian had wanted. They had pretty good ideas of what they wanted before the programmers were brought onto the project. So a lot of what I had was, “well let's figure out how in fact we can do this.” And I won't say all of it was easy, some of it was actually kinda hard.
DS: And they really pull it off too. I mean the first time that you run into Elizabeth and she fills the screen and you're approaching her in the throne room, you just know that it's something different and new because it's not any longer somebody just kind of floating in a window. You're like there and you're talking to the person and they're angry and they're squinting at you – it's really really cool.
ET: Firaxis likes to do things themselves – and when they are reinventing a game, like they are doing with Civilization V, they need specific tools to accomplish the task. Civ V has been built, literally, from the ground up – engine and all.
BW: Well yeah there was a lot that we had to start from scratch on. We had realized the limitations of the previous code that we had and the previous tools and decided that if we wanted to pull this off we'd have to build new tools and a new engine. And we, especially for the terrain, that required a pretty much 100% new approach to how we were doing the graphics and trying to get the performance to a level that was needed to do the effect that was wanted. Since we were gonna add more units on the screen at once we had to find ways to be able to render more of them and to keep them animated without bogging the game down. And with the modding tools that we have we really wanted to push where we already had done successful stuff with Civ IV and take it to a new level, giving new tools like our new world builder that pretty much lets you build any scenario you want quickly. And it was an investment in technology. I mean it's stuff that we'll be using long term, but it's stuff that needed to be done.
DS: And we think people, once they see the game in action – we had a little bit of this when we showed the game at PAX – is that people are generally unbelieving that that's possibly a Civilization game because it just looks amazing. The graphics team with Dan Baker, and Josh Barczak, John Kloetzli – they just went all out with driving everything that they could into this game while still keeping it as working as possible on older machines which is what I think is the most surprising. We've got a few versions of the game. For instance we have something for DX9 and DX11, they're working on deploying the 64-bit version so we're looking at it scaling extremely well whether you're on bleeding edge or whether you're on something older.
ET: Civilization V looks different, the opposing civilizations play different and immerse you in the role of leader, and while all of this may seem very similar to a long-time Civ player, going in to the game with your Civ IV strategy-cap on will not yield you a victory. (Trust me, I know this from personal experience.) Likewise, as a newcomer to the franchise, there are some very simple new aspects of the game that sets Civ V apart from other strategy titles you may have played in the past – elements that you will need to master in order to succeed.
JS: I think a good example of that would be the city-states. They really change the diplomatic flavor of the game. In previous games it was very much a competition with every other player. You wanted to beat them all. None of them were on your side. The city-states are a big departure from that because they don't ever, you know, purposefully go and fight you, they're not trying to win the game, they're not gonna really go and expand and cut you off. They're there to be your friend in some ways. Or, you know, to have you conquer them. And that's something that's really new to the game and we think that's really going to shake up particularly on the diplomatic side of things how people play the Civ game.
DN: One thing that changes the way that I play the game is the way that I build up an army. It's very hard to hide the fact that you're building up an army unless you build it very close to the center of your capital. And when you send out an army it's very easy to see how big of a force you're bringing and whether you have catapults or not. And so the timing and the way that you maneuver around the battlefield and the way that you engage the enemy is radically different and it's very rewarding when you take someone out.
DS: Me personally? I have new features and game moments every day. Today's actually has been the feeling you get with (inaudible) of sweeping ahead of your armies with these gorgeous helicopter gunships and laying waste to everything, opening the way for your armor to drive in behind it and destroy everything else.
BW: Well I like the new tactical combat a lot. And I know that Dorian kind of was hinting at that but the fact that units have better roles and better defined roles than they may have in earlier Civs. An archer shoots from range. As long as there's space between him and his enemy he can safely lob arrows at that guy all day. Now if somebody gets close to him then he's probably dead. But it's a matter of how you position is every bit as important as just what you bring to the battlefield.
DS: And aside from cool stuff like gunships I'm normally a builder and a culture player, and the stuff that Jon's done with culture, it was probably, at least from my perspective, something that he really went to great lengths to make it right. Because we wanted to make culture really interesting and have a really big impact in the game and what he managed to accomplish with culture and the policy tree was really intriguing because now with culture you're actually unlocking all of these abilities all throughout time for your civilization as a whole. And the results of it means that you can have something completely different in terms of a civilization. Not just in terms of the units and the buildings that you have but of the way your whole kingdom works, all based on culture which is strikingly different from how it was before and an immense amount of fun.
DN: I'm also getting a kick out of how differently you play to beat the game from a different approach. The way that you would play culturally versus the way that you wanna play diplomatically. It's sort of been fun to hear new features that are being added in and playing through them and seeing how different of an experience it is. It makes me wanna, you know, as we're continuing to refine the game, it makes me wanna play through again the way I beat it a month ago to see all the other new little additions that have changed. I don't know, it's just very exciting. It feels new each time I boot it up and I have a different idea of how to approach it and I find that to be pretty exciting.
ET: Obviously, we’ve still only touched the tip of the iceberg in terms of all things Civilization V, however, we have many more podcasts to dig deeper into all of these topics (and more that we haven’t even touched on today.) Before I let the guys go, though, I did have one last question. The team, as you may know, is very in tune with their community – always reading the forums and getting feedback from fans. Since Civilization V’s announcement, they have already received a boatload of feedback, and reactions to new features have been nothing short of passionate. Looking forward, knowing all the other information that is yet to be revealed, I wanted to know how they expected people to receive the journey we were about to take them on.
DS: I fully expect people to be buying six to seven copies of the game in the first couple weeks.
JS: Or else... Yeah, obviously there are going to be some people that are really excited about the changes we made and there's gonna be other people that aren't quite as thrilled.
BW: Yeah the, “you've broken my favorite feature...”
JS: Yeah, sorry guys. But the main thing we really want to do with Civ V is to put forward something new and this is something Dennis was touching upon. We didn't wanna make Civ 4.5, you know. Civ IV has been made. It's an excellent game. It's not going anywhere. So we really wanna push the envelope and try new things and see, you know, what we could explore in the Civ universe and still make a Civ game but, you know, again try new things and make it real exciting and give a reason for people to come back to Civ and really want to play it and get excited about it again, even if they've been playing for the 20 years that the franchise has been around.
DS: There's always gonna be a mindset switch that's needed because if you've been playing Civilization IV for the last 4 years of your life and you suddenly have to switch to something new there's going to be a period where people are like, “this isn't familiar to me. What do I do? How do I do this?” And we've actually gone to great lengths to put systems in place in the game to kind of shepherd people from one of the other ones so they can understand what's going on and kinda jump in. And for those that never ever ever wanna change we've got a great suite of modding tools for Civilization V that will allow them to insert the functionality that they would like into the game as well.
DN: My hope from the art side is that as interesting or as challenging as the changes have been, after you play Civ V and you load up Civ IV you can't go back and you decide to say, “oh darn it I like how much this looks so much, let me give it another round.” And then you realize how great and deep the game is underneath there. And we spent a lot of time making sure that hopefully as you play nothing feels accidental. We're trying to give you an illustrated experience and that means we spent a lot more time making sure all the button art, all the wonders that you see in the game are sort of hand painted, they look hand crafted so you know that each part of the game was cared about. We just didn't fill in the blanks. We really wanted to make people feel rewarded at each level as they went and played through history.
ET: To end the session, Pete Murray, Firaxis’ Marketing Associate (who you don’t hear from directly in this recording, but I assure you will be around in time) asked what he called a “Fresh Air Question” – Everyone on the dev team came from a Civ background and, like myself, had strong emotions to be at the helm of such a history game. How did that feel? What was it like, to know you were going to be creating the game that would be called Civilization V?
DN: For me it was a mixed bag because having been around for a while you always take for granted, you know, the franchises that you have. And so I was both going, “oh no this is a really huge thing and I could really screw it up.” There's that fear. And the other side of me was like, “I wanna make whoever follows me in this role have a very hard time.” So I don't know if that's – I mean I was thrilled because, you know, being a fan you always have 3 or 4 things you'd love a chance to fix. And visually I was like, “well this is the – if I don't like these few things, this is the time to fix it.” And I'm given that responsibility. But it's very humbling to think about how many people play the game and see it and a lot of times Civ is a game that's loved by the game players and the art is secondary. And I definitely didn't wanna ruin a game by making the art get in the way of the game play and so I wanted to be very careful with that balancing act.
DS: Dorian pretty much touched on it in terms of thrilling and terrifying at the same time. Because you're taking on something as storied as Civilization, Sid Meier's greatest work, and saying we're gonna make Civilization V. It's the followup to Civilization IV considered, you know, best strategy game of all time. And you're gonna do something that's gonna be even cooler. So in that term it's an incredible challenge and you're like, “wow this is something that can be really amazing” and “holy crap I really hope we don't screw this up.” And now that we're where we're at – at this particular time we're, you know, halfway through alpha – it's right there and I think that we've really really pulled it off. But when you first start on this? Yeah it can be pretty terrifying knowing what you're working with.
JS: For me it was – when I first found out I was actually, from that point on I was very focused on the game and I kinda hit the ground running. At that point it was just Dorian and I and, you know, Dorian – I love the man but he can't program.
DN: Working on the AI these past few months has been great...
JS: Yeah we've moved the entire art team onto AI. You'll find out what the results of that are soon. But for me I was mainly – I was excited by the opportunity. As a long-time Civ fan there were a lot of things that I wanted to do and at that point the sky was the limit. We knew we wanted to do things differently. There was some things that we planned on changing. Hexes were something that came out really early. The combat system was something that came out really early. And just hit the ground running on those things and have just been plugging away ever since then on them.
DS: And when he says he's been plugging away since then he means that literally. He actually hasn't stopped to sleep or eat or go to see a movie, probably in the last two years or so.
JS: About three I think.
BW: Like Dorian and Dennis, it was a combination of being very excited at the opportunity and scared – terrified of, “god can we pull this off?”
ET: Thank you for joining me for the first episode of the Civilization V Podcast series. I’m Elizabeth Tobey, and we’ll be back next time for a more in-depth look at the latest iteration of this world-renowned series from Firaxis.