Great news! Jon Shafer is a brilliant and creative guy. His ideas for the Civilization series (Civ5) was the ones of a genious. Stardock really has a strong team now. Congrats to the Frog!

Edit: And me too agrees with WhiteElk alot. Still in all of this I enjoy Civ 5 alot, but of course it could have been even better. Still; gameplay wise the Civ vanilla game is the best in the series so far, in my opinion. Bugs, balance issues, and more features can be added later. A shame Shafer wont have his hands on the expansions, but at least I'm glad Stardock picked up his great talent.

I don't doubt that Jon was able to make some key decisions that some folks didn't like.  It will always be that some people will like something that others dislike.  There hasn't been a Civ game yet that there wasn't something I wish was different.  But the total ruination of a game is something else.  I don't see Jon's decisions for 1UPT or hexes or what? as having destroyed Civ.  I wouldn't have liked the embark feature but that wouldn't have ruined it for me.  But a decision to drastically dilute the games complexity in order to appeal to a broader crowd is absolutely something which ruins it for me.  And budget decisions which don't allow enough man hours to properly implement core features might also end up ruining it for me.  I think that which destroyed Civ5 was out of Jon's realm.  You can hold him accountable for unpopular features, but I think total ruination was all 2k. 

That said, when I first heard that Jon was leading Civ5 I had some serious misgivings.  The guys got skills, but I figured the development of the latest installment of the best TBS of all time, should be lead by someone with many more years of experience.  It seems to me that a lead dev should have worked under the tutelage of an experienced and proven talent long before striking out on their own.   But perhaps Firaxis is short on long time talent.  Maybe 2k, and/or other management concerns keeps driving them off.  I can only guess.

I have respect for Jon's talents, but think he's got a long way to go before being considered an industry guru.  I think the same of Soren Johnson (who's a little further along than Jon).  But I do see their skill sets as being of great value in the here and now.  With more experience, and more exposure to quality management, I think they have potential to become industry greats.  But for now, they are already highly skilled individuals who are valuable assets to a game development team.  This is just my unqualified opinion.

Lol that post was gold

I have to concur with Wintersong about the first line.  Atheists try their darned hardest to disavow themselves of any religion, but the fact of the matter is, atheism is a theology unto itself, and it has extremists.  So you're polytheistic, monotheistic, trinitarian, atheistic?   They're all different buckets under the same tree.

So... on to more interesting conversation.  I'm familiar with Python.  And I have to reluctantly admit, it is the right language for this application.  Is it too early to discuss everybody's vision for how Python would make Elemental et al. extensible?   Is it okay if Jon Shafer throws things around here, to the fanbase, before Stardock agrees on a direction?  

Would you make available an API and various virtual classes to the community for them to fill out?  Is that how it would work?   Or would you go even further and try to swig it into C code?  Python's very good at creating .py.c files before executing.

Here's an interesting cut-and-paste quote directly from the home page of python.org:

Mustafa Thamer is the coolest name ever.  Why couldn't I have been given a name like that?

GAME, MATCH, POINT

RPS: OK. So we’re nearly there! How did that end up becoming lead designer?

JS: Well the thing about design at Firaxis is that it’s fairly unique compared to design at other companies. Most companies have a lot of specialised designers, so for an RPG you’d have quest designers and narrative designers, and area designers and maybe a lead designer that organises them all. The way it works at Firaxis is that there is a designer, and he is also the gameplay programmer who programs all the gameplay rules, and he also programs all the AI.

RPS: Even for the more recent Civilizations? There’s one guy doing the core of the programming?

JS: Yeah. The thing is, that’s always how Sid Meier’s done it. Firaxis is his company, and that’s just the model that we use. The games have been successful, and it’s the only way that we know.

RPS: So one of the bigger reasons why you were made lead designer is because you know both sides. Programming and design.

JS: Yes. Which is becoming more common, but to be proficient enough in programming to handle all the gameplay rules, you have to be fairly experienced. We had other designers at Firaxis who were senior to me, but they weren’t programmers or they hadn’t played Civ. It’s such a specialised role. Our teams are getting bigger now, so on Civilization V I didn’t program all the AI. Only about half. We had a combat programmer doing combat AI, and a programmer doing the AI for the workers and explorers, but I programmed all the game rules and the diplomatic and economic AI.

Honestly, I think this is a big reason why a lot of games aren’t as good. The vision-holder isn’t working directly on the game, he’s just saying “Hey! Please do this and make it work like this.” And it works sometimes, and sometimes it doesn’t.

That is something... making fun of your own design decisions for Civ 5... why didn't you tell that to your former bosses before launching the disaster?

because you say so, fool? If you like to be fooled all the time, be my guest. If you wanna try to shut other people's voices up, go live to where you belong: the Third World. Or perhaps you are there already?

I'm very worried about the decision to hire this guy. It's like to hire Hiromichi Tanaka for your new MMO...

Civ5 was the biggest disappointment since MOO3. I was happy when Jon Shafer left Firaxis, I thought maybe someone else can fix this mess, it can't get any worse.