If you think of what a NASA employee would find exciting, your mind likely goes to shuttle launches and discovering new planets. As it turns out, having your work featured in a Civilization game is pretty high up on that list, as Civ 7‘s creative director once discovered.
Ed Beach has been at Civ developer Firaxis Games for 17 years, working on Civ 5, 6, and now 7. But before helping to develop the legendary strategy franchise, he spent a decade as a contractor at NASA, working on, among other things, the Hubble Space Telescope. In an interview in Edge issue 405, Beach discusses how this influenced his work on Civ 5 and the hoopla he inadvertently caused at NASA.
“When we got to Brave New World in Civilization 5, we needed a wonder that was going to help you towards the science victory”, Breach explains. “I was like ‘let’s put the Hubble Space Telescope in the game’.” Both the Firaxis studio and Telescope Space Institute, which operates Hubble, are located in Baltimore, Maryland, not too far from one another, making it an ideal local inclusion for the Civ 5 team.
In a rather predictable turn of events, there’s quite a big overlap between NASA employees and Civ players, with Breach later learning that the Telescope’s inclusion has proven especially popular. “We connected with them later and found out that the day that they saw that Hubble was going into Civilization, there was a roar across the building because so many of them play it.”
Sadly for them, the Hubble Space Telescope did not make its way into Civ 6. But with Civ 7 just over the horizon, there’s hope yet for NASA’s iconic bit of kit to reclaim its place among the game’s wonders.
While you wait for Civ 7, be sure to check out the best strategy games around.