Elemental Forums
Or was asked to leave...
How does this guy keep getting high level positions with game companies? What happened. Is anyone actually gonna give him a third chance with at the gates?
He didn't "quit" in the way you are inferring. We moved him to a consulting position so that he could try his hand at starting his own studio. Stardockians are helping in their off-hours.
Jon's work at Stardock has been extremely helpful. It'll only be with the passage of time that people get to see just how much positive impact he has had.
And BTW, his Kickstarter succeeded in like 2 days. If you or anyone else has some issue with Jon, please take it elsewhere. As someone who has been the target of uninformed forum users for years, I take it somewhat personally when people make personal attacks on Jon regarding Civilization V, especially since they have no idea what they're talking about.
Sorry didn't mean to pile on. In my business people who move from job to job so fast usually are asked to move on, but then I am in a very different business. I guess it happens in software. I am glad it was amicable. In the end I'd rather see Stardock as a whole stay strong rather than any one person. I love TBS so I will watch his new project and certainly hope he is successful. I like Civ5, he was too hard on himself about it. Hopefully there is no lasting damage done.
I applaud Stardock and Frogboy for supporting an employee with a dream. It isn't easy to let talented people go, but to see them stretch out and try to fly on their own, while maintaining a working relationship with the company strikes me as a win-win situation. I wish Jon all the best and success in his new venture. (At the very least he should get a better appreciation for all the things that Frogboy deals with on a daily basis besides programming).
My general view is that if you have a passion to run your own business and you're young, single, no kids, there's no better time to at least try it. If it fails, at least you never look back wondering "what might have been".
And in our industry, business relationships are much more flexible. Jon's just a Skype window away for me to ping him on any number of things (from music composition to medieval history to game design to birds).
It's one of the great things about our industry is that we enjoy what we do. It's not commonly known but Derek (Kael) isn't natively from Michigan. So while he looked for a house, he lived with me -- for over a year. Talk about having a blast. Game geekouts.
And that is before you even get into the inter-company talking. There's so much cross pollination in ideas, talk, etc. It's amazing. The FE music was done by the same guy who did the Civ V music (for example). Soren (Civ IV) and Jon and I and Derek talk regularly about all manner of stuff from how to do rivers in strategy games to economic systems.
People in our industry are constantly working together. The GalCiv II music was done by the same guy who did the Age of Wonders music. And speaking of Age of Wonders, me and Lennart (Triumph co-founder) worked together on getting Age of Wonders 1/2 ready for digital distribution. And I won't even go into the blurry lines between Stardock and Ironclad where I couldn't tell you who did what because the integration was so complete.
The point being, we make games, we like what we do and unlike in most industries, there is little concept of a "competitor". Hence, the lead artist on Legendary Heroes is the same person doing the art for At the Gates.
Hence, Jon didn't leave Firaxis on bad terms. He's still on great terms with everyone there that I know of. He just didn't want to keep making Civ games. So he came here and helped us on game design issues (creating a better way for game design to get done -- Stardock is traditionally an engineering company) and helped team us up with lots of new people. Working with him has and continues to be a pleasure.
Came for the lurid headline, stayed for the industry insight. And the game looks kinda cool too, will see if I can chip in a few bucks.
Very interesting post!
Sounds like all the TBS-Guys are one big family! 
Me likes what me sees
I would love such concept of empire building in galciv universe though...
I think people sometime forgot how the gaming industry doesn't exactly follow normal business conventions. Personally I am a massive fan of civ V, what with it being my most played game in history (600 Hours)
Ah, see I was curious and confused about this.. so Jon Shafer is still playing an active role in Fallen Enchantress?
In the software industry it is fairly common for the best people to move around and switch companies every 2-5 years. Moving every 1.5 years is usually seen as strange and staying at the same company for 8+ is also strange to see on a resume, barring things like working for your own company or working for one of the companies known to pay very well.
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