"That’s always the most exciting part of the game. We do that throughout the first year of development, the Leaders and the Civ choices, and everybody has their favorite. We have community feedback from the past game for people that we know that they’d like to see return. We’ve got criteria to make sure that we have representation around the globe for finding new leaders, digging deep into history, and saying, look at this person, this is awesome, we want to represent them," says Dennis Shirk, executive producer of Civilization VII.
Indeed, the Sid Meier's Civilization VII roster features some new, unusual characters from different parts of the world. For example, the warrior queen Amina from the city-state of Zazza (Nigeria). Or the American abolitionist, feminist, suffragette, and social reformer Harriet Tubman, one of the leaders of the legendary Underground Railroad. Or the female pharaoh Hatshepsut, who led ancient Egypt to economic prosperity. Or the heroes of three revolutions, the Marquis de Lafayette, who participated in the American War of Independence, the French Revolution, and the July Revolution of 1830. Or Tecumseh, the leader of the Shawnee people and the Indian tribal union known as the Tecumseh Confederacy.
"The process is really involved. We have all of the 2K local teams on speed dial to make sure that we can constantly talk to them about who would be really good representatives for certain parts of the world. Our in-house historians are making recommendations for not just Civilizations and Leaders that we think are going to be really popular, but also for ones that are underrepresented that we want to represent. So, it’s just a big bucket of discovery. It’s just a lot of discussion, a lot of back and forth, but it’s a really exciting process," Shirk adds.
At a time when Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine on a daily basis, Firaxis has managed to endow Catherine the Great, who, we recall, is not actually a Russian, but a German Sophia-Augusta-Frederica of Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg, with cultural and scientific bonuses and the Dusha perk. This tale of the "mysterious Russian soul" is literally a repetition of a well-known internet meme. And it's disgusting, Firaxis.
When Ukrainians began to express dissatisfaction with this choice of the studio, the company began to delete comments and ban users. So much for the vaunted Western "representation".
We're not calling for a boycott of Sid Meier's Civilization VII, as it's likely to be a good game. The presence of the Russian leader in it can even be considered a bonus, because you have to drop nuclear bombs on someone. But the hypocrisy and shortsightedness of the leading Western game developers is truly astounding. I'm sorry, Firaxis and 2K, but groveling before the Russian market is as pathetic as it gets.