We interview the development head behind the 4X indie game Old World, and two of his co-developers.
In 2020 Old World, the newest game from Mohawk Games, was released. The studio is headed by Soren Johnson, among other things known as the main designer of the classic Sid Meier’s Civilization IV. Old World is a 4X (eXpand, eXterminate, eXplore, eXploit) strategy game in the same vein as the Civilization series, but contrary to that series, which covers world history from 4000 BCE to our time and a little beyond, Old World covers just antiquity. Thus the name.
In the game, which we have covered earlier in a first impressions article and a gameplay diary (articles in Norwegian) your task is to bring your civilization to dominance in the ancient world. The game has among other things rich resource and technology systems, and has many similarities with its cousin Civilization. But you can just forget about dominating this game with the same strategies as in Civilization – then you will be rolled over by the AI and quickly fall behind.
We contacted Soren Johnson and two of his co-workers, Dale Kent and Daniels «Solver» Umanovskis, to get to know more about the game and the choices behind the development of the title.
Tell us a little about yourself and your role in the development of Old World.
Soren: My name is Soren Johnson, and I’ve been making video games since 2000, when I joined Firaxis to help design Civ 3. I was the lead designer of Civ 4, and I also worked on Spore at Electronic Arts. I founded Mohawk Games in 2013 and designed Offworld Trading Company and Old World. Btw, I am named after my great-grandfather Soren Colvett, who immigrated from Norway to the Midwest. (3 of my 4 grandparents are direct descendants of Norwegian immigrants, in fact.)
Dale: My name is Dale and I am a game developer living in Australia. Mohawk is a fully remote studio, allowing the opportunity for an international team to collaborate on exciting games. I got my first look at Old World (which was known as 10 Crowns back then) in 2018 when Soren invited me to test the game and give my feedback and impression of it. The game was very early in development. When Mohawk went fully remote in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic it opened the way for me to join officially as an employee. I have been working at Mohawk since.
My role on Old World began initially in Community Development and QA. Over time, I put my hand up for various tasks on Old World and now I am focused on Design and Programming within Mohawk. Of course the team at Mohawk is fantastic and the culture at the company is such that there are opportunities to explore all the different areas of game development. Whilst my focus may be on Design and Programming, I have been known to dabble in writing, UI/UX, and even some art at times.
Talking specifically about major features of Old World, I have been involved in the development of the Mod Browser, Modio and Steam Workshop integration, and development of the Learn to Play tutorials. I’ve sort of also become the Mohawk «custodian» if you will, of Egypt within the game, having sort-of learnt hieroglyphics and ancient Kemetan for the Pharaohs of the Nile DLC. Egypt is also my favourite nation to play.
Solver: Hi! I am Solver, a designer and programmer working with Old World. My name is also almost my job as I do a little of everything save for graphics. My artistic skills are so bad they are almost counted as crimes in many countries. Primarily I have worked with Old World’s historic campaigns about Carthage and Greece as well as events, of which we have about 5000 at this point.
Old World’s first historical campagn was named Rise of Carthage. I took over the development early on and finished the campaign with four scenarios. The campaign starts with the founding of Carthage, then as a Phoenican colony. The players takes their version of Carthage all the way from a small colony to the area’s richest and mightiest country. The second half of the campaign covers the Punic war between Carthage and the Roman Republic. Finally, the players get the chance to change the historical outcome and beat Rome. In the campaign one can for instance play as Hannibal and recreate his invasion of Italy, as well as meet some of the celebrities of Antiquity. Archimedes is really good at designing new weapons!
I have also designed some of the dynasties, which is our name for the non-default leader characters players can select. One of my favorites are the Persian Queen Parysatis who had a lot of political power during her husband’s (Dareios II) and son’s (Artaxerxes II) reigns. She ruled in the shadows and ended up in a hard power struggle agaisnt her own daughter-in-law. That power struggle can work out in some interesting ways in Old World. Another favorite is Ptolemaios, the first Greek king of Egypt. He wrote historical works about his campaigns together with Alexander and was interested in science. Players who choose Ptolemaios get to meet Euclid – it seems I really like mathematicians and engineers of Antiquity.
Outside of design, I’d like to add that I am responsible for the game’s Linux support. Old World has complete support for Linux, which I feel is particularly important now that it is harder than ever to control one’s own computer.
You made a choice to focus on antiquity instead of the whole history of civilization that, well, Civilization does. What were the main reasons for this, and how does it influence the game?
Soren: We focused on antiquity for a number of reasons, including that – as a small indie studio – we couldn’t afford to make a game (or, rather, to make the art) that spanned all of human history. More importantly, however, focusing on one time period allowed us to make the game at a human scale, so that the leaders could be real characters who could grow, age, and die – in contrast with the immortal god rulers of Civilization. The drama of real human relationships was only possible at that scale.
What lessons did you take from previous games into the development of Old World?
Solver: To our advantage, we have a lot of experience with 4X games on the team, primarily with Soren Johnson who is one of the leading developers in the genre, but several of us have been around previous games a lot. There are several points that I think were important for us and where we could succeed:
1. An hour of gameplay can provide more information than two days of discussion. Sometimes there are divided opinions on whether an idea would improve the game or not and it is easy to get stuck in long discussions about it. But if you can implement and test it, that path usually gives better answers. There is nothing wrong with implementing something and just throwing it away a few days later as long as we take the lessons with us.
2. There are many different types of players. Some are builders, others are warmongers. Someone wants to optimize every move while another wants to be able to tell a story. It is difficult to balance between the different groups and it pays to have a group of testers that have different tastes. We have a design meeting every week and the question of how we balance the preferences of the different groups comes up almost every time.
3. The thematic aspect is very important. Civilization has been strong for decades because there is something very special about playing through the entire history, from the Stone Age to spaceships. Rome: Total War was not only an excellent strategy game, it was important that R:TW let players meet Julius Caesar and play out some of the most famous battles in history. It matters a lot what things are called, and how they relate to people, places and events that players know.
4. Old, honest game manuals are still good to have. Old World has a big, thick manual containing over 200 pages. It describes the game mechanics, has pictures of the different maps, reference tables, tips on strategy and more. Just like games had in the 90s. It definitely takes time to keep the manual up to date but we have received so much great feedback about the manual.
Dale: I’m going to answer this question, more like a «what advice do you have for others», rather than what lessons I took into development. Because at its core, this advice is what has formed how I approach development:
1. Try your ideas, and get feedback from others – make a quick prototype of your idea, inside an existing game, in an isolated prototype project, on paper with cutouts and dice, even an Excel spreasheet, and get other people to play your idea and tell you what they think of it. If it doesn’t work, move onto the next idea. If it works, then iterate on it to improve it and then seek more feedback. Repeat! Do not be scared of talking about your ideas to others. People don’t steal ideas, they steal success.
2. Seek HONEST feedback – this is linked to 1 above. Don’t send your prototype or idea to mum, as she will ALWAYS say, «oh that’s nice dear, such a great idea!» No, you need fast, honest feedback. You need to know if your idea sucks or not. I’d rather you tell me right now to my face my idea is bad, than to be gaslit and work for months on something to have it scrapped later, or worse, impact player’s enjoyment of the game after release.
3. Fail FAST! – this one is linked to 1 & 2 above. If an idea is going to fail, you want it to fail quickly so you can move onto the next one. This is why a prototype and sending it to others for absolute honest feedback is critical. Be brutal. Not working? NEXT! You can always come up with new ideas. And the more ideas you try, the higher your chances of finding the next gaming gold nugget.
4. Respect the player – your players are who you are actually making the game for. Therefore, listen to them and look into their feedback, requests, issues. Don’t write off any player comment as impossible, stupid, or otherwise. Also, if you look into what the players are saying, you are able to respond with a properly informed decision.
5. Have fun – this is what I consider the most important piece of advice, or lesson if you will, and equally applies for all people in any job. Whatever you do, enjoy it, have fun with it.
What features and such from older games in the genre (like Civ) did you consider essential to bring along when designing Old World?
Soren: There are a few essential aspects to Civilization that we carried forward – namely, discrete tiles, turn-based gameplay, and a technology tree. Everything else was up for debate!
And were there any features often considered standard that you rejected (and if so, why)?
Soren: The biggest thing we rejected is the idea that every unit moves every turn, which is such a core mechanic for most 4X games that most people don’t even think of it as a design choice. Instead, for Old World, we introduced the Orders system, which gives the player a certain number of moves each turn that can be distributed between their units however they prefer. This greatly expands the number of possible moves each turn and also reduces the number of necessary but uninteresting moves, such as doing something with a worker just because there is no reason not to do so.
You once were behind much of the development of Civilization IV. Old World feels like a deeper expansion of the early parts of a Civ campaign. Is Old World what you dreamt of Civilization IV to become? If so, is there any plans or dreams about a follow up to Old World, set in the exploration era or modern, industrial world, to make a (3 part?) complete, yet deeper world history campaign in the vein of Civilization?
Soren: I think modern, or even medieval, history is harder to map onto a 4X because they don’t have the same plausible «empty map» starting point that the ancient history era has. There is a reason that «modern» 4X games often look to a sci-fi setting to solve this problem.
Before Old World, you did Offworld Trading Company – a very different kind of strategy game. Did that game influence the design direction of Old World in any way?
Soren: Certainly, the lessons from all my games influence my future work. We borrowed the market mechanic from Offworld for the food/iron/stone/wood market in Old World, which allowed us to give players more extreme starting locations (so that they still had a path to wood, for example, even if not starting near forests). The market is not as central to Old World, however, so we made the important change of making the buy price double the sell price, to add some friction to the market. (Offworld originally had that same ratio, but it was more fun to make the prices the same in that game, to encourage frequent trading.)
What would be your «sales pitch» to a typical Civilization player?
Soren: Imagine Civilization, but your leader is a real person, who will grow, have kids, age, and then pass on the throne to your heir, who you hopefully have raised to surpass you!
Before launching on Steam, you partnered with Hooded Horse to publish the game. What made you move away from self-publishing, and how has this partnership worked for you?
Soren: We are a small independent developer, so we don’t have in-house publishing expertise. We did self-publish when we launched on Epic, so it is not that hard to do, but Hooded Horse’s pitch to us made it clear that they had the type of expertise relevant to the strategy game market on Steam that could act as a multiplier to our sales. We’ve been very happy with our partnership with them, and it’s been fun to see them succeed. (Excluding a couple Early Access titles, Old World was their first official release.)
You’re still working on the game, releasing new updates and content. How long do you see yourself doing that?
Soren: We will keep working on the game as long as there is an active, growing community, positive feedback to our gameplay changes, and demand for more DLC.
And where do you see the genre moving in the next few years? What’s the big challenges to tackle?
Soren: The biggest challenge for 4X games is making games that have the depth their players expect but also respect their time. No one wants to play a game that is many hours longer than it needs to be, which has been a traditional weakness for 4X games.
Big, complex strategy games have had this weird evolution where they were once quite mainstream, then became somewhat of a niche genre, and now seem very popular again. What is working within this genre like?
Soren: I’m not sure I would describe it that way. 4X games were «mainstream» because the PC gaming audience in the late 90s or early 00s was an inherently hardcore audience. People weren’t accidentally playing games like Civilization. They only became «niche» because the overall gaming audience grew in orders of magnitude since then. However, the 4X audience, led by the Civ franchise and the Paradox grand strategy games, has consistently grown by a healthy rate since then so seeing 4X games sell millions of copies is not unusual anymore.
What feature in Old World are you most pleased with? Is there anything you wish you did differently?
Soren: I am very happy with the Orders system as it makes every turn more interesting at the most basic level – letting you focus on what you actually want to do each turn. I am also very proud of the event system, but it was clearly an example of building a plane while also flying it, so there are many ways we would have built it differently if we had the chance to do so again.
Old World has a large narrative element in the form of events that shape the gameplay experience and actual characters that are born and die during the game, unlike many of its competitors. What made you choose this strategy? And what feedback have you received from fans regarding this gameplay element? We notice that the game has an option to turn off events completely in the game’s advanced setup, it must be difficult to balance two such completely different setups?
Soren: Players love to be able to connect with the characters in their games, and the event system is a very important way to enable that. Many fans love it, but we were also worried about players who care more about how randomness affects their games (not to mention just how much time it can take to process all the events each turn). Throughout my career, I have consistently been in favor of giving players the ability to use options to tune their game as they see fit, so letting players turn them off is in keeping with that. (We even have a way to play without characters at all!) It’s certainly a challenge to maintain, but I don’t like to assume that I know what’s best for every player.
Civilization VII and Amplitude’s Endless Legends/Space games, as well as Paradox’s strategy games, have varying degrees of events and narratives, to name a few. It seems like (4X) strategy games have been getting more of this in recent years. What are Mohawk’s design goals when it comes to emergent storytelling?
Soren: Ideally, we aren’t trying to tell a specific story but instead are creating a bunch of independent story beats (Emily Short popularized the term «storylets» to describe these) that combine together to create a unique story for each playthrough. We would love for every player to be able to describe their own unique story after playing Old World.
The grand old man of the genre, Civilization, has always had immortal leaders at the top of civilizations, something most other games that have come since have also included. Old World instead has leaders who are born and die, and even has a setting for no characters at all. What made you go this route? Is it about a desire for realism, or is there something else behind the design?
Soren: We didn’t add mortal leaders for the sake of realism. Instead, we went that route because it was more interesting. Mortal leaders can change and die – and the event system would be a lot less interesting if that wasn’t possible. Most great human drama revolves are characters’ weaknesses and flaws, and that’s a lot easier to do if there are real consequences to the game’s events.
The Old World team has developers all over the world, from the US to Sweden to Australia, to name just the three of you. You had this structure already before Covid, as far as we understand. What is the experience with such a decentralized company structure? Do you think it is the future?
Soren: Actually, we didn’t have that structure before COVID. We were a mostly local studio (with a few remote contractors helping out with art and audio) centered around the same Hunt Valley hub that houses Firaxis. When Covid hit, we took our machines home… and then employees started to drift away, either to new locations or new jobs. At the same time, as we were still hiring, we then realized that we could open our applications to the whole world, which allowed us to hire people like Dale from Australia and Solver from Sweden.
You were lucky enough to have Christopher Tin as your composer for Old World, legendary for being the first to win a Grammy for game music with the game music for Civilization IV. What does music in games mean for a strategy game like Old World? How did you go about finding pieces of music that players would play for hundreds, maybe thousands of hours? And what was the «order» you sent Tin? How much freedom did you give him?
Soren: It’s been wonderful working with Chris on Civilization 4, Offworld Trading Company, and Old World. Of course, we go back farther than that, all the way to college as we were roommates at Oxford. As for the Old World soundtrack, Leyla actually was more involved than I was in terms of direction from Mohawk. She helped guide the type of sound we wanted and the structure of the pieces. We were all very happy when we learned that Chris’s soundtrack was nominated for a Grammy, an amazing honor for a small studio like ours. I spent my time picking out the licensed music we used as extra background music during play, which includes everything from Bulgarian choir music to Moroccan folk music to Byzantine choral works to contemporary classic compositions to Aramaic chants by a Georgian monk.
What or who is your biggest inspiration as a game developer?
Dale: I find that History is my greatest inspiration. There are an infinite number of game idea seeds, embedded within history.
Solver: First, I have to mention Brian Reynolds and Soren Johnson, two developers who have created several of my favorite games. There are many ways to make strategy games and it is clear to me that Brian and Soren’s way of developing such games suits my tastes best. I also look up to Sid Meier’s incredible understanding of what makes a game fun. He is a fairly minimalist developer but manages to capture the «fun factor» like no other.
Ken Levine and Warren Spector are my role models for how story-driven games should handle player choices. Spector’s Deus Ex is a fairly old game now but still exemplary in how it handles choices, partly because it is not just explicit choices. Players are even rewarded for thinking for themselves and sometimes ignoring instructions given by characters. Ken Levine has taken the fact that freedom is always limited in a computer game and made it a very unexpected part of the story in Bioshock.
In addition to the aforementioned and many other great game developers, I have seen many times that history is a great source of inspiration. There is so much that people have done and experienced. In my work on Old World, I have used the writings of Herodotus, ancient Iranian myths, political scandals from the Roman Empire, stories from the Bible and more. There is always more to learn.
What is your dream game to make if you had all the resources available?
Solver: Finally, an easy question! By many measures, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is, in my opinion, the best game ever. It had top-level Civilization-like gameplay with an incredibly good atmosphere and game world. The characters were interesting and memorable even if they didn’t really even have much dialogue. I love 4X games and am an avid sci-fi reader, for me the dream game is of course a very good sequel to SMAC. Mechanically, such games have developed quite a bit since 1999 and I would really like to create a game that is based on the same ideas but renews the mechanics with what we have learned since then, and has the same high quality of the story. SMAC didn’t just have a story that you could say is «good for a game», it was really good sci-fi that could just as easily have been in a different form.
Now I don’t know if I have the ability to ever create a game that could be compared to SMAC, but if you want an interview with me where I just talk about why it was a fantastic game, we can probably arrange that.
Dale: My dream game, if I had all the resources, would be a modernised take on the classic historical strategy games from the 1990s. If you are thinking of a mash-up of Civilization, Colonization, Conquest of the New World, Imperialism 1&2, HOMM, the early Anno games, then you’re getting the picture.
Was there anything you had to cut from the game before launch that you wished you had included?
Dale: Old World as it shipped, was a complete game out of the box. We have added more, improved lots, and expanded the game with our many regular updates and in the game’s DLC. Sure, during development ideas were tried and cut, but that’s the nature of game development. In its shipped form, Old World was a complete game as envisioned by the team.
Solver: I’m proud that our team made Old World a complete game that was good from the start. But there’s one thing I experimented with and hoped to get more out of. We have historical campaigns that I’m working on, first it was the Carthage campaign that I mentioned at the beginning. I wanted to save more information about what the player did in each scenario so that the player’s choices could affect later parts of the campaign. It’s pretty typical in RTS games, for example – if you have more units that survived one scenario, they show up in the next, etc. In 4X, on the other hand, it’s unusual and I wanted to go a long way in creating the best historical campaigns in our genre. But the thing about saving things between the four parts I never managed to get to work well. When we released Old World, some parts of it were actually still there but it was just confusing, players noticed that for example some buildings were saved but not others. It just never worked out as planned. In the end, I removed almost everything we had built for this, although a few traces remain and the most observant players may notice some choices that the campaign remembers.
Our thanks to Soren,Dale and Solver for their time! Old World is still in active development and as late as last month a new DLC came out, focusing on India and adding three new civilizations, a new tribe (think barbarians or city states from the Civilization series), two new religions and four new wonders of the world, and more.
Read more about Old World on their official home page.
Despite being a Norwegian site, we have a lot more content in English here at Spillhistorie.no. Some of it is older, most is newer. You can find it all here.
Of particular interest to strategy game fans, we have among other things:
- The Sumerian Game: The ancestor of modern city builders
- Q&A with Michael Haire, former art director at MicroProse
- The story of Ports of Call
- Interview with Derek «Kael» Paxton on his Civilization IV mod Fall from Heaven II
- Interview with Joel Billings of SSI and 2by3 Games
- And finally, how about an interview with Sid Meier from 2004?