Designer Notes 81: Jake Solomon - Part 2

[Soren Johnson]

Designer Notes 81:

Jake Solomon - Part 2
In this episode, Soren interviews veteran game developer Jake Solomon, best known for the XCOM reboot and Midnight Suns. They discuss his first, failed attempt at XCOM, why 75% does not mean 75%, and how many copies of XCOM he sold at Power Gamer in Glen Burnie, MD. This episode was recorded on April 26, 2023.

Games discussed: Civilization Revolution, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Rocket League, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, Marvel’s Midnight Suns, Old World, the Civilization series, XCOM 2, Slay the Spire, Offworld Trading Company, Into the Breach, Pandemic, Covert Action

 

• Listen on the Episode Page
• Listen on Soundcloud
• Listen in iTunes

[new_cuc]

Notes:

XCOM's world state mechanic was borrowed from Pandemic the board game wholesale.

 

in XCOM, players know what actions they can do, don't know if they will succeed; Midnight Suns was opposite: players know their actions will succeed, don't know what actions will be available.

 

2h13m: Jake's mind was "drifting towards XCOM 3" when Marvel approached.

XCOM 2 "way overshoot what a sequel should be, 'coz I don't know what a sequel should be".

 

Solomon knew Levine "for a long time" since Levine's time making an XCOM game for 2K.
XCOM 2's concept came from Levine, he called the idea "XCOM Lives".
Jake had never done any expansion before War of the Chosen. it was packed full of content.

 

2h28m: XCOM has enough design space that Jake could see himself keep making it, unlike Civ, where once you present your solutions to the problems, you are done.

 

[The above statements arent necessarily implying he originally planned to stay at Firaxis for XCOM 3.

In a MinnMax interview, Jake made it clear that he was already planning to leave Firaxis and start his own project when making Midnight Suns.]

 

2h35m: Midnight Suns switched to card mechanics early (it solved problems), it was immediately controversial: it has baggage, devs were resistant.

2h41m: "Sometimes you don't need to make sense." (On infinite movement, which came about as a player-friendly feature).

 

2h57m: Drawing comparison to Slay the Spire, "every card game, the joy is breaking it" (but the boring optimal solution must be removed from Midnight Suns).

 

3h02m: when making XCOM2, Jake might be too caught up with people's comparison of XCOM to Dark Souls. playing it "sometimes stresses me out".

he wanted to make a more lighthearted game. XCOM is "how can I survive", Midnight Suns is "how can I beat this level better".

 

3h04m: Soren: XCOM is a long game. if he were the XCOM designer, the big concern would be preventing unwinnable situations.
Jake's solution: biggest boosts are from gear. "rookies must be viable to the last mission." only the "Big 4" techs to research to keep gear up. researching them are the games' turning points.
"we have so many built-in things to protect the player". soldier deaths make it feel more threatening than actually is.

[new_cuc]

Forgot to post the Polygon "Making of XCOM" article.

 

The article formatted into the current template:

https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/1/31/3928710/making-of-xcoms-jake-solomon-firaxis-sid-meier

 

Original page design that can be hard to read:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130203052002/https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/1/31/3928710/making-of-xcoms-jake-solomon-firaxis-sid-meier

 

Article originally contained 3 embedded dev videos, hosted on the defunct Ooyala platform. I'm afraid these had been long lost.