Civ 5's lead designer joins Paradox to develop a new grand strategy game

Jon Shafer, lead designer of Civilization 5, has joined Paradox Development Studio to work on a new grand strategy game. The news was announced at PDXCon today in Stockholm, Sweden, though we were not told the name of the game Shafer is working on, nor any other details about it.

“I’ve been a fan of Paradox’s games for years now, and moving onto the team behind some of my favorite titles is an exhilarating moment for me,” said Shafer, whose new title at Paradox Development Studio is Game Director.

Shafer's former projects include the Beyond the Sword and Warlords expansions for Civ 4, and he's also currently working on At the Gates, a strategy game he funded on Kickstarter and will continue to develop alongside his work with Paradox.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.