14 DAY TRIAL // Jon Shafer, a former leading designer at Firaxis and the man who lead the creation process on Civilization V, has announced that he has signed with developer and publisher Stardock and will now work on their Elemental: War of Magic video game.
Shafer has left Firaxis about two weeks ago and both him and the company said that the separation was mutually agreed on.
The designer has worked both on the current Civilization and on expansion for the previous game in the series.
Shafer told Gamasutra that, “Stardock is a company I've always been a big fan of. The thing that really attracted me to Stardock is really the personality of the company, how Brad approaches making games, how he approaches the PC platform, how he approaches his community.”
He also said that he planned the move to Stardock for a while and that one of the main reasons for the switch in companies was the increased level of flexibility and creative freedom that the smaller Stardock delivered.
Stardock leader Brad Wardell has expressed plans to continue working on Elemental: War of Magic, with the future set to witness the delivery of at least two expansions for the game, set to fundamentally change the experience it offers to gamers.
The game, which was hyped up as a sort of spiritual successor to Master of Magic, has been released in August of 2010 to great expectations but has failed to deliver a coherent gaming experience.
The developers have acknowledged the issues that the game has and have said that all those who have bought it on launch will be entitled to have access to two free expansions in order to get real value out of the purchase.
Stardock has also hired Derek Paxton, the creator of the Fall of Heaven 2 mod for Civilization IV, to work on Elemental: War of Magic and a new writer, Dave Stern, has been brought in to oversee the evolution of the lore of the game world.