Firaxis Games
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Documents about Firaxis Games
Article
"It's Just a Hoax": Climate Change Denial in Civilization VI's Reddit Communities
This paper examines climate change denial within online communities surrounding Civilization VI: Gathering Storm, focusing on Reddit discussions that respond to the game's modelling of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions and their consequences.
- The study analysed 32,612 Reddit comments posted between 2013 and 2026 across three Civilization-related subreddits and one general Civ thread, using semantic network analysis and inductive thematic analysis.
- Climate change denial in these communities is strongly polarised, with dominant frames treating climate change as a hoax or conspiracy linked to taxation and institutional control, and contrasting anthropogenic explanations with natural-cycle accounts.
- A prominent cluster of distrust draws on the 2009 "Climategate" episode and alleged data manipulation by climate scientists to undermine the credibility of climate science.
DiGRAJun 2026
Article
"Shut Up, I'm Having a Mental Break!": The Strange Design Space of Characters You Command but Don't Control
This essay argues that video game characters such as RimWorld's colonists, XCOM's soldiers, and Baldur's Gate 3's companions occupy a distinct design category that sits between player characters and non-player characters.
- The essay proposes "crew characters" as a distinct design category: entities the player directs and develops but does not fully control, sitting between NPCs (differing in gameplay role) and player characters (differing in autonomy and individuality).
- Crew characters are placed on a spectrum running from bots and avatars through NPCs and crew to fully independent player characters, illustrated with examples such as Kratos, GLaDOS, and Doomguy.
- Designing for a community of characters rather than a single scripted protagonist creates a fundamentally different challenge, and the author argues designers who recognize crew-character properties can build stronger emotional bonds with them.
Breda University of Applied SciencesMar 2026
Article
The Evolution of Liberalism in the XCOM Franchise Reboot
This paper examines the XCOM franchise reboot, comprising XCOM: Enemy Unknown (2012), XCOM 2 (2016), and XCOM: Chimera Squad (2020), as a case study in how games engage international relations theory, with particular attention to liberal internationalism.
- The paper argues the XCOM reboot trilogy (Enemy Unknown 2012, XCOM 2 2016, Chimera Squad 2020) traces a liberal arc: global cooperation against an external threat, collapse into authoritarian rule, liberation, and then domestic vigilance for a pluralist society.
- Using John Mearsheimer's distinction between liberal optimism and realist pessimism as its theoretical frame, the study contends the franchise departs from the realist logic its turn-based strategy mechanics might suggest.
- Enemy Unknown depicts sixteen major powers uniting under a council against an alien invasion, substituting generalized global threats such as climate change for the colonial anxieties common in alien-invasion fiction.
DiGRAJun 2025
