Jon Shafer, the lead designer of Firaxis’s Civilization V and his personal technique sport At the Gates, is gone from technique specialists Paradox solely six months after becoming a member of. Paradox say neither that he ditched the corporate nor that they fired him, relatively that they’ve all “decided to part ways due to creative differences.” How enigmatic! We didn’t even know what he was engaged on.
“Jon is an ambitious person with a lot of drive and passion and he has led some good discussions in our teams over the past few months,” Mattias Lilja, Paradox’s govt vp of studios, stated in today’s announcement.
“However,” he continued (all the time a nevertheless!), “during the course of these discussions, it has become clear that we want different things creatively and we have therefore taken the mutual decision that it is best to part ways. We wish Jon the very best in the next part of his career and would like to thank him for his efforts during his time with us.”
Our Adam talked with Shafer after he joined Paradox in May, gabbing about his time on Civ, why he joined Paradox, and a few concepts he was fascinated about as doable paths for technique video games to discover. He wouldn’t inform us what particularly he was making at Paradox however it was a brand new undertaking and he was constructing a crew. Adam thought possibly a touch might come from a few of these concepts Shafer was mulling:
“I think one of the big opportunities for strategy games right now is to add more character. Both in the form of characters but also in the form of what I’ve talked about already – the variety in the world, the flavour of encounters. Sometimes things that you find in the world can be great, sometimes they can be disappointing, but they should always be unpredictable.”
Maybe that’ll bubble over into what he does subsequent, or possibly we’ll by no means know. Some of that spirit appears to be in At the Gates, which remains to be in improvement. Adam talked with Shafer about that too, so do have a read.
