Civilization's Past and Future, As Told By Its Lead Designers
Sid Meier's Civilization turned 30 years old in 2021, which might make your bones hurt (it sure hurt mine). Every main entry in the series has had a new designer at the helm, starting with Sid himself all the way back in 1991, and we were fortunate enough to talk to four of them: Soren Johnson, who worked on Civilization 3 and headed up Civilization 4, Jon Shafer, who took the lead on Civilization 5, Ed Beach, the lead designer on Civilization 6, and Anton Strenger, who was in the driver's seat for Civ 6's Rise and Fall and New Frontier DLCs – and while we couldn't get a word out of him about it, seems like the heir apparent to take over for Civilization 7, whenever that might happen.
With its first-ever very direct competitor – Amplitude's Humankind – released last year, Civilization is in a position it's never been in before. Johnson and Shafer have each made their own, independent games recently that shake up the Civ formula with Old World and At the Gates. Games that take a more simulationist, less board game-like approach to history such as Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis from Paradox Interactive have stolen away hundreds of hours I would have spent playing Civ a decade ago. So what is Civ's place in modern strategy gaming, and how should it evolve to keep its throne?
Before any of these guys were Civilization designers, though, they were Civilization players like us. Their journeys with the series began at different points and they took different things from it, but all of them remembered their first experience leading a nation from the stone age to the space age.
Shafer: "I hadn't heard of Civ until a math teacher introduced it to me in 10th grade. He had a pirated copy of Civ 2 which he shared with his
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