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Designer Notes 81: Jake Solomon - Part 2
new_cuc replied to Soren Johnson's topic in Designer Notes Episodes
Forgot to post the Polygon "Making of XCOM" article. The article formatted into the current template: https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/1/31/3928710/making-of-xcoms-jake-solomon-firaxis-sid-meier Original page design that can be hard to read: https://web.archive.org/web/20130203052002/https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/1/31/3928710/making-of-xcoms-jake-solomon-firaxis-sid-meier Article originally contained 3 embedded dev videos, hosted on the defunct Ooyala platform. I'm afraid these had been long lost. -
Designer Notes 81: Jake Solomon - Part 2
new_cuc replied to Soren Johnson's topic in Designer Notes Episodes
Notes: XCOM's world state mechanic was borrowed from Pandemic the board game wholesale. in XCOM, players know what actions they can do, don't know if they will succeed; Midnight Suns was opposite: players know their actions will succeed, don't know what actions will be available. 2h13m: Jake's mind was "drifting towards XCOM 3" when Marvel approached. XCOM 2 "way overshoot what a sequel should be, 'coz I don't know what a sequel should be". Solomon knew Levine "for a long time" since Levine's time making an XCOM game for 2K. XCOM 2's concept came from Levine, he called the idea "XCOM Lives". Jake had never done any expansion before War of the Chosen. it was packed full of content. 2h28m: XCOM has enough design space that Jake could see himself keep making it, unlike Civ, where once you present your solutions to the problems, you are done. [The above statements arent necessarily implying he originally planned to stay at Firaxis for XCOM 3. In a MinnMax interview, Jake made it clear that he was already planning to leave Firaxis and start his own project when making Midnight Suns.] 2h35m: Midnight Suns switched to card mechanics early (it solved problems), it was immediately controversial: it has baggage, devs were resistant. 2h41m: "Sometimes you don't need to make sense." (On infinite movement, which came about as a player-friendly feature). 2h57m: Drawing comparison to Slay the Spire, "every card game, the joy is breaking it" (but the boring optimal solution must be removed from Midnight Suns). 3h02m: when making XCOM2, Jake might be too caught up with people's comparison of XCOM to Dark Souls. playing it "sometimes stresses me out". he wanted to make a more lighthearted game. XCOM is "how can I survive", Midnight Suns is "how can I beat this level better". 3h04m: Soren: XCOM is a long game. if he were the XCOM designer, the big concern would be preventing unwinnable situations. Jake's solution: biggest boosts are from gear. "rookies must be viable to the last mission." only the "Big 4" techs to research to keep gear up. researching them are the games' turning points. "we have so many built-in things to protect the player". soldier deaths make it feel more threatening than actually is. -
Designer Notes 80: Jake Solomon - Part 1
new_cuc replied to Soren Johnson's topic in Designer Notes Episodes
EDGE's Jake interview covers similar grounds, and can be read together with the episode as a guide: https://www.gamesradar.com/jake-solomon-on-his-journey-from-underqualified-graphics-programmer-to-master-strategist/ Rest of my notes: The important part of the episode is the interviewer and interviewee's shared work experience at early 2000s Firaxis, giving it a school reunion vibe. Some moments that made me either smile or burst out laughing: 18m: An idiosyncratic staple of Sid's games is the option to retire. 21m: Sid seems to have a "boys' library from the 50s" on their favorite subjects, from which he picks his themes. (I think this may have inspired a PR story Bruce Shelley told about only using children's section in bookstores when doing research for Age of Empires, which is not the truth.) ~1h: Around 2000, Firaxis revolved around two designers - Sid and Brian Reynolds, and because Sid was a lone wolf, the dev team was essentially Brian's team. When Brian left Firaxis to found Big Huge Games, practically the whole team followed, leaving the programmer duties of Civ3 in the hands of "two kids" - them. (They returned to the topic of Brian's departure at 1h45m. Essentially, the whole Firaxis avidly played Age of Empires 2 together, and they never imagined the game would make Brian want to drop Civ3 and make an RTS.) Soren's companion tweet. 1h20m: The code of Alpha Centauri was very hard to read. This is because Firaxis deliberately made it obfuscated, in fear MicroProse would accuse them of stealing Civ2 code. 1h32m: The development of SimGolf. 2h6m: Discussion on Sid's strong intuition for game feel, and how it made the development of the Pirates! remake difficult in Firaxis's "dark age". 2h10m: CivRev and Jake Solomon's growth into a designer under Sid's mentorship, where he fulfilled a "Sid's sounding board" role similar to Bruce Shelley at MicroProse. -
Designer Notes 40: Brian Reynolds - Part 3
new_cuc replied to Soren Johnson's topic in Designer Notes Episodes
Kingdom of Amalur was mentioned, but we are still not getting any information on "God: The Game", nearly one decade later?