Announcing Midsummer Studios, from the belly of Firaxis' old offices.
The games industry is in a worrying state of flux right now.
But XCOM and Marvel’s Midnight Suns designer Jake Solomon is used to dealing with chance and probabilities.
“This building we’re in, these are actually the old Firaxis offices,” he says.
And his first hire?
The son of his former mentor, Sid Meier.
We’re just telling ourselves what to do as we work on this prototype."
As such, even the codename has to remain a mystery for now.
Specifically, modern life in a small town setting.
For Solomon, small towns are “very rich storytelling environments” due to their naturally close-knit communities.
So if you do something here, it’s going to come back to you here."
Or I’m trying to succeed at business, but I’m also estranged from my family."
Or maybe they’re your business rival instead, or they don’t even know you exist.
Crucially, though, you won’t be locked in that starting setup.
That’s the real engine powering this new life sim, he tells me.
“You want Smallville?”
Solomon throws out as an example.
You’ll have the power to create “whatever town you want”.
Midsummer isn’t stopping at simply giving players a small town sandbox to play in, either.
Maybe you’d rather have nothing to do with him at all.
Specifically, a game about dating, he goes on to say.
Unfortunately, those kind of ramifications just didn’t fit with Midnight Suns' fixed story.
In a life sim setting, though?
Those kinds of storylines can really start to run wild.
“There’s this weird push and pull that we haven’t solved yet,” he says.
It’s very difficult to do."
We’ll attempt to continue to add storylines and continue to play."
That’s partly because not all storylines will necessarily revolve around your central character.
The hope is that it feels very, very different every time."
“[Soap operas] generate a lot of story on very little budget,” he says.
It has to be interpersonal drama.
Soap operas have also been instrumental in other ways, too.
It’s like there’s four sets, you know?
And they tell a billion stories in them."
“It’s a piece of cake, Katharine, thanks for asking,” he jests.
What’s interesting about ‘the day is perfect and everyone’s happy’?
That’s tougher."
“I don’t know,” is the short answer he gives me.
“What we’re trying to figure out is how generic the text can be.”
“What we really want is the game to delight the player,” says Solomon.
But Solomon isn’t too worried about what this means for his own game.
Partly because he’s seen this kind of thing before when XCOM: Enemy Unknown came out.
“We had metres and needs and characters moving around”, he says.
I say to myself, what the hell are you talking about?
This will be the one where it’s like, finally, finally…
It’s almost a sense of relief.
With a little luck, that day won’t come for a good while yet.
Here’s hoping the rest of its story will be one for the ages.
