[Originally written in 1997 - "Alpha Centauri" was released after this interview, and was a significant cult and critical hit, tho not quite as popular as the "Civilisation" series was. As of now (2001), Brian Reynolds has left Firaxis, and formed his own company called Big Huge Games, who've signed a deal with Microsoft - their first game is due in 2002.]

Having attempted all sorts of intricate and clever introductions for this interview (involving 'schools' of game designers, much like Renaissance painters, and this interview as a metaphor for cultural change in the 20th Century - well, ok, we never got quite as far as that one), we figured, ok, there's no need to be smart-ass for the sake of it.

So here's the simple version. This is, most assuredly, an interview with Brian Reynolds of Firaxis Games. He's most renowned as an associate of Sid Meier, and first came to prominence as the driving force behind "Civilisation 2" (which was, let's face it, rather groovy.) He's currently working at Firaxis, Sid Meier's new company, and the guys behind the recent item of class that is "Gettysburg". Brian himself is currently toiling away on "Alpha Centauri", which threatens to do for distant galaxies what "Civilisation" has done for Mother Earth. He be ascending to outer space, to find another place.

h0l: How did you manage to break into the games industry?

BR: Well, I was in graduate school at Berkeley, studying Philosophy, and I decided that graduate school wasn't for me. So, needing to come up with some alternative career I got some books on VGA and DOS interrupts (I am a self-taught programmer from way back), and threw together a quick demo of my graphic skills, modelled on several of the games current at the time (Populous, Ultima VI) to show that I could compete with the current state of the art. I sent the demo off as kind of an electronic resume to Origin and Microprose (I wanted to get as far away from California as possible) and Microprose answered first.

h0l: Your profile describes you as being 'addicted to strategy games'. Which ones have caught your eye recently, and why?

BR: Chess :-) No really, several of us at Firaxis have become moderately serious chess players. In terms of computer games, in recent years I've only had time for passing glances at other people's games to keep up with what's going on in the industry. Usually I'm pretty addicted to whatever game I'm working on at the time (I was thoroughly addicted to Gettysburg). Like Sid, I'm always trying to make a game that I would want to play, and assuming there are enough people like me in the world to want to buy it. So if we make a game that we get addicted to playing ourselves, that's a good sign.

h0l: Are you ever surprised there's not more overt Civilisation 'clones' out there?

BR: I was until the first time I tried my hand at writing one. It's a deep, complex, game system, and it takes a lot of work to put something like that together and still have it be fun. Much more difficult to clone than Warcraft/C&C, which is an elegant but fairly simple system by comparison. Also, those games have made their mark with multiplayer play, rather than AI.

h0l: Are you unhappy with being presented as Sid Meier's 'star pupil' when you're clearly a designer in your own right? Or is this becoming less of a problem?

BR: Have you been reading my bio again? :-) No, this hasn't been a problem. Clearly we've had a mentor relationship over the years, and I model my design techniques on the principles with which Sid has been so successful; I try to think about games and fun in the same ways Sid does. Being associated with Sid is clearly a great advantage for me in many ways, including the "public relations" value, and I try to return the favor by creating fun, successful games.

h0l: If you had to pick one historical era/event to make into a strategy title, it'd be?

BR: Subtle, very subtle. So far I've picked the Colonization of the New World, the history of the world, and the future history of humanity in space. My degrees are in Philosophy and European History, so that's a good starting point for guessing what I'll do next.

h0l: Are there advantages to using artificial intelligence as opposed to a set of human players to battle?

BR: Well, even in this day of internet multiplayer games, I think the majority of computer game players play games as a way of filling time when other people aren't around to interact with (or even as an escape from being social). So having a good single-player mode (which requires a good AI) is really important and people appreciate it. The quality of the single-player modes in our games is one of our preeminent selling points.

h0l: Are you surprised with what's being done to "Civ2" now it's out of your control? (There's new versions due out soon?)

BR: So far not very surprised or impressed. The products I've seen and the future ones I've seen announcements for just involve exploitation of the original engine-- new scenarios and art, editors to make the scenario creation which has always been part of the system more convenient and elegant. But no new AI or gameplay, no genuine evolution of the system-- you can play the Mars scenario and the landscape looks pretty cool in red, but then you walk into a goody hut and "a band of wandering nomads joins your tribe", if you see what I mean. The addition of multiplayer two years after the original release is also not in the end very surprising, since I argued for its inclusion in the original product or a timely update, and management's complete lack of interest in these ideas was one of the things which made me realize it was time to move on from Microprose.

The add-on strategy is a reasonable one for them in the short term, considering they found themselves no longer having Sid and me around to work on the engine, but in the end they're going to have to find someone capable of a deeper understanding of the game system, someone who can really evolve it to the next level as Civ2 evolved from Civ, if they're going to be able to compete with the games Sid and I are working on.

h0l: What's 'rock n roll' about strategy games? :)

BR: I think being in total control of an empire, making decisions that matter, and the pleasure of outwitting your opponents!

h0l: I note you're now working on "Alpha Centauri". Tell us a little about that. How is it going to go over and above previous games?

BR: Well it's a turn-based empire building game, so in that sense it will certainly be familiar to anyone who has played the Civ games. But it's a fresh start, a whole new engine, that we think represents a significant evolution of the genre. To mention a couple of gameplay elements I think players will find exciting-- whereas in previous games you chose a "government" off a menu, Alpha Centauri lets you construct your own society and try out your own vision of future utopia; you decide whether to be ruthless, moderate, or idealistic in each of eight areas... Liberty, Economy, Health-Care, Environment, Military Service, and so forth. Also we have a very rich terraforming game, and your actions can have a significant impact on rainfall patterns (to make crops grow), build land bridges between continents, mountain ranges large enough to affect wind patterns, and domed ocean cities.

h0l: "Mars Attacks" or "2001"? Where's the "Alpha Centauri" style going to be at?

BR: Certainly closer to the latter. Where so many science fiction games have been kind of tongue-in-cheek, we've tried to create a rich, plausible, future history. And we've put a lot of thought into future economic, social, and spiritual trends as well, so the technology tree is not just the physics-and-lasers-fest you see so often.

h0l: What's your favourite part of any of the games Revolution has done? without giving away any of the plot, of course. :)

BR: Now that I have a 2-year-old and a 2-month-old at home, I'm mostly stuck in "Blockbuster Video Hell", which does at least have the advantage that I can find out what movies are actually good before seeing them. I think the movie I've hated the most over the years was "Edward Scissorhands", which I thought was silly, super-saccharine sentimental, and really just plain awful, but all my friends thought it was so cool (!?) and I kept getting dragged to see it over and over again. And I went, of course, and paid, over and over again, which makes me the real idiot here.

h0l: Thanks!