Sid Meier‘s four-year-old grandson has a new favorite song and it’s one that is near and dear to fans of the legendary video game developer’s “Civilization” franchise.
“He is singing ‘Baba Yetu’ day and night. It’s like insane,” Meier tells Variety, noting the preschooler hasn’t actually played the turn-based strategy his grandfather is famous for, but is very familiar with its theme song. “I’m getting these videos of him singing ‘Baba Yetu’ along with the recording.”
While obviously a personal anecdote, Meier says it’s not far from what he’s heard from “Civ” players about how they are now interacting with the Firaxis-developed franchise more than three decades after the initial game’s release.
“What I’ve seen more recently is this intergenerational connection,” Meier says. “I’ll talk to a parent and they’ll say, I introduced my daughter or son to ‘Civ,’ and now we play together, and now they want to play. And it’s a community and we listen to them. We update the game with their ideas. We listen to their feedback. We expand the game as time goes on.”
“Civilization” is coming up on its 35th anniversary this September, just a few months after the Meier-founded video game studio, 2K’s Firaxis, celebrated its 30th birthday. And for a midsized developer, that’s quite an impressive run, especially given the fact it has remained largely focused on turned-based strategy games, including “Civilization” and “XCOM.”
“We’re kind of established in a way that many companies are not, and that’s a responsibility,” Meier says. “But that’s a wonderful place to be where people will say, yeah, I’ll take a look at that next game because I’ve enjoyed some of your games in the past. So what’s a little bit unique about Firaxis is the longevity of the company. The 30 years that we talk about — some people have been playing our games for 30 years, and that’s a real gift that we get to take advantage of.’”
Firaxis president and studio head Heather Hazen, who joined the company nearly six years ago, says the developer is in a unique position in a very crowded gaming industry, as it is often its own competition.
“The benefit that we have in the ‘Civilization’ ecosystem is that ‘Civ 6’ is the biggest competitor to ‘Civ 7.’ And it’s funny because you’re like, ‘Wow, is that a benefit? Is that a tough situation to be in?’ And the truth is, we want our fans to be playing ‘Civilization,’ regardless of which installment it is,” Hazen says. “So we do think about ‘Civilization’ as an ecosystem. How can you play ‘Civ’ when you have 30 minutes versus 30 hours?”
This leads the Firaxis team to the question they faced just a few years ago when they were preparing to launch “Civilization 7,” which debuted in 2025.
“We talk about those things a lot: when do we divest or stop working on a ‘Civ’ game? The answer to that is, whenever our fans tell us they want something else,” Hazen says. “We still have people that say ‘Civ 5’ is their favorite game and are installing that game, and ‘Civ 6’ is their favorite and installing that game. So I think we need to do a better job as game developers to make it easy for our fans to transition between their favorite ‘Civ’ experience. And we haven’t quite nailed that ecosystem effect yet, but it’s a thing that we talk a lot about.”
Meier says the rule of thumb for when Firaxis decides to make a new version of “Civ” is “each iteration had something interesting that really justified it being the next version.”
“There are usually 5-6-7-year intervals where we build upon the current game with additional civilizations and leaders and different ways of playing in scenarios and all that kind of stuff,” Meier says. “So there’s a cadence, but it’s a cadence that has a certain logic to it.”
Firaxis recently launched, “The Test of Time,” a major update to “Civilization 7″ following negative fan feedback about some of the changes made in the new game, including its “Ages” system. And that update only came out after three rounds of public play testing.
“The Ages system was controversial, and so we wanted to hear from fans about what was or wasn’t working in that system, and how we might adapt it to really deliver that sense of continuity and agency that players were used to in ‘Civ,’” Hazen says. “And I think we struck a really great balance with the changes that we made to Ages through ‘The Test of Time’ update.”
Meier says “Civilization” has been used to pivoting game features since before the original debuted in 1991, as that project started out as a very different title than the turned-based strategy game fans know today. In fact, it wasn’t turn-based when Meier, who had at that time just released “Railroad Tycoon,” first started on the concept with design partner Bruce Shelley.
“One of the ironies is Civ is now known as a classic turn-based game,” Meier says. “The original prototype was not turn-based; it was much more ‘SimCity’-ish, where you would zone areas. In this country, I wanted to be agriculture, and then you’d watch that happen. And then you go over here in this country, maybe they’re into production. It was very much hands off the way ‘SimCity’ is; you watch things. But about halfway through, we made the change to turn-based and actually moving things around and having to really pay attention to what you’re doing, and all of a sudden, your brain is totally engaged in terms of, what should I do next? What’s going to happen if I do this? And that really clicked, that whole idea of turn based where you get to make all important decisions and you have plenty of time.”
Upon the game’s release, the turn-based style went over great — but the initial lineup of 14 playable civilizations, including the Americans, Aztecs and Babylonians, left much to be desired by the rest of the world’s players.
“When we first made ‘Civ,’ we had no idea how seriously people would take it,” Meier says. “I mean, we got letters from Canadians like, ‘Why aren’t the Canadians in the game? Canadians are just as important as these people.’ And it’s like, oh, we weren’t trying to you define all the rubrics of history, this was just supposed to be a fun game. But we did gradually realize over time that there was this educational aspect of it, where people were learning about countries, about leaders, about history, and we needed to be a little more responsible about how we how we approached that. And there were communities that were underserved and countries that weren’t in the game that should be in the game, and there were concepts that weren’t in the game that we needed to add.”
For that, Meier says “mea culpa.”
“We made the original game in a year with three people, so there’s only so much we can do then,” Meier says. “But as the game has progressed, we’ve had the resources to add additional civilizations. And ‘Civ 7’ has done a lot with the Shawnee civilization, for example, and adding different leaders and a lot more diversity and inclusivity with all the different things that we can do now. Also, in terms of gameplay, the original was a little bit tilted toward the military, but now you can be peaceful, you can be scientific, you can be cultural, you can follow different paths. So, part of it is trying to be a little more responsible about the messages that the game gives you, and also be more inclusive. But I will say that global warming was part of the original ‘Civ 1,’ and I’m pretty proud of that.”
The “Civilization” and “XCOM” franchises remain the core of Firaxis’ business, but Hazen says the team is continuing to grow along with those IPs and figure out what they will become over the next 30 years.
“I think every game studio is going through an evolution now, especially given what we’ve seen happening industrywide over the last several years,” Hazen says. “And to have a studio that has a franchise like ‘Civ’ and a franchise like ‘XCOM’ to be able to build upon and continue to grow is just such an awesome opportunity for any studio. To be in a place where you’ve got 30 years of legacy that is the backbone of where you’re going for the future feels more stable than I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing in my 20-some-plus years in game development.”
And what the future looks like is uncertain, even the “Civilization” builder himself.
“When I finished ‘Civ One,’ as it’s now known, I thought it was done. I don’t have any more ideas. I put them all in this game,” Meier says. “And what’s been true over the years is each ‘Civ’ game has been really led by a different designer. Because once you do a ‘Civ’ game, your brain is fried and you’ve done everything you can. So I finished ‘Civ One,’ and I thought, that’s good!”
Meier’s next project was the 1994 music-generating game “C.P.U. Bach.”
“I want nothing to do with strategy, I want to do a music game — but then [‘Civilization 2’ designer] Brian Reynolds came along and said, ‘I’ve got these ideas for a new “Civ” game. It should be done in Windows,’” Meier says. “Wow, this Windows thing — you can actually change the size of the screen. OK, Brian, you go. And [he said], ‘I think it should be moddable.’ Moddable? Wait a minute, my game is perfect. There’s no reason to do a mod. He was right, and I was wrong. But that whole question of what does the next ‘Civ’ look like is a very interesting one.”
What Meier does know about “Civilization 8″ is it should follow Firaxis’ internal “1/3, 1/3, 1/3″ rule that they’ve used to make the franchise’s many sequels so far.
“It should be one-third just a classic mechanic, one-third improved versions of the things that we did last time, and one-third new stuff,” Meier says. “That’s kind of guided how we go from iteration to iteration. Once that one-third new bucket is filled up, we’ve got some good ideas that we’d like to try that we can’t really fit into the current version. So it might be time to do the next version. And each one has had some interesting worthwhile; upgrades or changes that have intrigued people. At one point, we went from squares to hexes. It doesn’t sound that exciting, but it was really really interesting.”
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