The initial reception was divisive among hardcore fans but the game was a critical and commercial success, and would become Firaxis’ best selling Civ game to date, though Civilization 6 is on track to surpass it. Shafer claims that Civilization 5 was (and still is) the biggest evolutionary leap in the franchise, and it’s hard to argue otherwise. "It’s a big job, a hard job, but so many talented people did it in the early days." "Firaxis has a tradition of trusting its lead designers completely, going all the way back to Microprose with Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds," says Shafer. We’re going with hexes, we’re changing combat, and the entire economy."įiraxis handed the Civ keys to Shafer, granting him, as he puts it, "dictatorial powers" over every aspect of the game. Civ 4 was so amazing but I didn't want to make Civ 4.5. "Civ games are huge undertakings and most people only have one of those in them," says Shafer. By the time work started on Colonization, though, Civ 4 lead designer Soren Johnson had left the company, and Firaxis needed someone to head Civilization 5.Ĭiv 5 marked some major changes for the series and is currently its most successful (opens in new tab) Jon Shafer's Civilization Shafer is credited for the original prototype. Shafer says he developed the entire espionage system that was introduced in Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword ("It sucked, espionage in Civ game are always terrible") as well as The Final Frontier space scenario.įiraxis then took his work on a Colonization mod and decided to turn it into a standalone expansion, which became Civilization 4: Colonization. During the development of the Civilization 4 expansion packs, Shafer was busy prototyping new systems and total conversion mods. I got involved with whatever I could get my hands on."įiraxis had a unique company culture that allowed Shafer’s seemingly boundless energy to flourish, provided he could work on new things that piqued his interest. I also wrote scenarios for Civilization 4, like a World War I scenario. I wrote a tool in Python so you could take images from a Google search, like a map of Europe, and convert them into a Civ map. ![]() "I wasn’t a professional engineer and nobody knew what to do with me. ![]() "My first project was Civilization 4, but honestly I wasn’t doing much," says Shafer. I never did buy Civ 2 but in the end I think I gave something back to the series. ![]() Eventually they agreed, and Shafer began his video game career in 2005. After Civilization 3 released, Shafer was studying programming and history at Colorado State and began bugging Firaxis for an internship. Shafer poured himself into Civilization, becoming a modder and joining online communities to run civilizations as real-world democracies.
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