In an interview with Ars Technica, Firaxis Co-lead Designer Will Miller talks about switching history books with science fiction comics, films, and novels for their latest entry in the Civilization series Civilization: Beyond Earth.
The title references a joke made during the game's unveiling at PAX East where the emcee said: "I like the idea of a bunch of trash cans at Firaxis filled with historical text books." Indeed, the past Civilization games focused on past eras in our time. This will be the first game in the series set in the future.
"Instead of the history books we're looking to the science fiction authors or films or comic books, things like that… We read the greats: Asimov, Heinlein, Orson Scott Card. Dan Simmons is a big influence, the Hyperion Cantos, we kind of lifted the ideas of 'The Great Mistake' from that- that's an homage to him," Miller spoke about the new sources of infuence the team is looking at now.
He even mentioned that there is one way to win a game and it is called Contact wherein players have to research a signal through a number of means. Another homage to science-fiction material that's from a Carl Sagan book or the movie of the same name.
While Firaxis is looking towards the future, Miller said that the joke wasn't completely accurate because history still plays a role in crafting the future. He talked about how the NASA and Russian space agency designs as inspiration for their aesthetic choices in the early space bound untils.History was also needed to help them write the course of human events between now and 25 years into the cataclysmic "Great Mistake" event.
The game was announced earlier this month followed by a leak of the game's existence.
Civilization: Beyond Earth is set for release on PC later this year.