Civilization Revolution

After wrapping up core development a few months ago, Civilization Revolution (CivRev) is finally being released in the US this week on the Xbox 360, PS3, and Nintendo DS. I have been thrilled by the response to the demo on various message boards; CivRev is quite a different game than most console experiences and it was never completely clear to us how the public would respond. Thankfully, most have understood what we've tried to with the series and embrace it as its own thing rather than Civilization 5. I've been particularly proud of the responses of players who have never played a strategy game like this before. The sort of wide-eyed "there can be games like this?!" response makes me feel like we helped expand what people think of games by a little bit.

Developing CivRev was quite a challenge for me because it was the first time that I was a lead in charge of other developers, the first time I developed a console title, and the first time we used Scaleform's GFX (a flash interpreter) to process and render the interface. Any and all accolades were won by my great team: Brittany Steiner, our flash genius that carried one of the heaviest loads in the development on her first project, and Russell Vaccaro, who simply would not stop trying to make the interface look as great as possible. Without the herculean efforts of these two individuals, CivRev would have been a much poorer experience.

The success of the entire game can be credited to Sid Meier, who, among his many skills, can imbue all of his games with his unique charm and friendliness that makes them somehow more intimate and engaging than other designers. I particularly appreciate his patience with me; I'm sure he wanted to throttle me more than a few times during the project.

I hope you have a chance to play the game. (Demos are available online for the Xbox360 and the PS3.) CivRev is one of the best games I've had the opportunity to work on and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.