Clippings: Firaxis February

Still alive! While this year has been busy (in a good way), I’d like to carve out bits of time for this site when I can.

This week’s highlight is Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s interview with Jake Solomon, lead designer of Firaxis’ XCOM games. It’s one of the best developer interviews I’ve read in some time, touching on issues such as:

  • What to do when theme and mechanics (in this case, XCOM2‘s controversial timer) clash;
  • Player psychology;
  • Elegance in strategy design – a topic where I agree with Solomon.

On the subject of Firaxis, the 25th anniversary of Civilization has seen the release of several interesting articles: an overview from a panel with Sid Meier, Brian Reynolds, and Soren Johnson; two interviews with Sid himself; and for a different perspective, an interview with Bruce Shelley.

Finally, Looking Glass fans might be interested in this interview with Warren Spector.

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