How I learned to Love Prototyping!

A few years after joining Firaxis, I was given a chance to work on a new game prototype with a small team and a new designer, Soren Johnson. This was an amazing experience, and shaped the way I approached working on games as an artist. The game that was developed is one of the best games I’ve ever played. Unfortunately, the game that the publisher was more excited about developing was Civilization IV. It’s understandable, and it really was a blast taking those lessons learned and applying them to a highly esteemed franchise.

My role on that project was as the animation lead. I focused exclusively on the “in-game” animations,  while the excellent Ed Lynch handled the leader characters. The first character I worked on was this early prototype for the warrior.

Plans for the units changed shortly after playing the land battle component of Pirates. Sid Meier included groups of units in the turn-based portion of his game, and we realized we could improve the battles in Civilization IV by doing likewise. These animations were developed to help visualize how the various match-ups could look, as well as handling some tricky combinations.

I continued animating the units, including the inevitable surprises that get added to make a good game great. The last few months of production were extreme in many ways. I was tired at the end, but it was an amazing experience seeing every prototype decision come to life during those last months of production!