If you think about what a Agency employee would find exciting, your mind probably goes to shuttle launches and the discovery of new planets. It turns out that having your work featured in a Civilization game ranks pretty high 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 develop the legendary strategy franchise, he spent a decade as a contractor at Agency, working, 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 ruckus he inadvertently caused at Agency.
“When we came to Brave New World in Civilization 5, we needed a wonder to help us achieve scientific victory,” explains Breach. “I thought, 'let's put the Hubble Space Telescope in the game.'” Both the Firaxis studio and the Telescope Space Institute, which operates Hubble, are located in Baltimore, Maryland, not far from each other, making it an ideal local inclusion for the Civ 5 team.
In a fairly predictable turn of events, there's a lot of overlap between Agency employees and Civ players, and Breach later learned that the inclusion of the Telescope has proven especially popular. “We connected with them later and found out that the day they saw that Hubble was going to Civilization, there was a roar throughout the building because so many of them were playing it.”
Unfortunately for them, the Hubble Space Telescope didn't make it to Civ 6. But with Civ 7 just on the horizon, there's still hope for Agency's iconic piece of equipment to regain its place among the gaming wonders.
While you wait for Civ 7, be sure to check out the best strategy games around.