The journey from underqualified graphics programmer to master strategist

By Jeremy Peel

CIVILIZATION III

Developer Firaxis Games Publisher Infogrames Format PC Release 2001

SID MEIER’S SIM GOLF

Developer Firaxis Games Publisher Electronic Arts Format PC Release 2002

SID MEIER’S PIRATES

Developer Firaxis Games Publisher Atari Format PC Release 2004

XCOM PROTOTYPE

Developer Firaxis Games

CIVILIZATION REVOLUTION

Developer Firaxis Games Publisher 2K Games Format 360, DS, iOS, PS3, Windows Phone Release 2008

XCOM: ENEMY UNKNOWN

Developer Firaxis Games Publisher 2K Games Format 360, Android, iOS, PC, PS3, Vita Release 2012

XCOM 2

Developer Firaxis Games Publisher 2K Games Format Android, iOS, PC, PS4, Xbox One Release 2016

MARVEL’S MIDNIGHT SUNS

Developer Firaxis Games Publisher 2K Games Format PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series Release March 2022

XCOM soldiers bounce from cover to cover, clinching victory against superior odds through constant reassessment of the field. They remain forever alive to the possibility that a more advantageous position may lie just beyond the horizon. You do wonder, however, whether all that relocation might have been unnecessary, given that XCOM designer Jake Solomon has achieved so much by staying put. This May will mark his 22nd year at Firaxis Games, where he is currently directing the forthcoming Marvel adaptation Midnight Suns.

“I’ve been married for 21 and a half years,” he says. “My truck is 12 years old. Luckily, I don’t have that bug of having to see the other side of the hill – I’m like: ‘This side of the hill is great. Let’s just stay here. There could be wolves over there –I don’t know.’”

Solomon’s studio loyalty is owed to X-COM: Enemy Defense (aka Enemy Unknown), which was published and co-developed by Sid Meier’s Microprose. When Meier left to form Firaxis with Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds, Solomon was one of many fans who transferred his allegiance to the new company. It was the only studio he ever applied to work at, and Meier has since become his mentor – even though, by his own admission, Solomon’s never been a “huge Civ guy”.

Instead, the designer has only ever had eyes for X-COM, which won him over with its cold, cruel simulation. “It was the first game I’d ever played where it felt like the engine would just go on running forever, like it didn’t care if the player was still there,” he says. “It had its own rules that to me were inscrutable, but the deal was that it was a real world.”

In the early days, he had dreamed of continuing X-COM’s legacy. Instead, he ended up expanding it. Solomon has been the man to bring turn-based tactics to a mainstream western audience for the first time. He has done so through a commitment to clarity, and an ability to identify and double down on discrete, binary choices amid a mass of granular systems. “It’s almost memeable now, but I loved in the Telltale games when they were like, ‘So-and-so will remember that,’” he says. “That’s fantastic. Put that shit onscreen. That’s the kind of guy I am.”