SorenJohnsonMohawk

I was a history/computer science double major in college, so Civ was the perfect game for me.

Music is a big passion of mine, so I am unbelievably happy that Baba Yetu became such a phenomenon and won a Grammy and was written by my college roommate/buddy Chris Tin. It's just unbelievable, really. (I am also very happy that the first video game Grammy went to a STRATEGY GAME! Take that, rest of the industry!)

Sid is awesome. First of all, unlike a lot of well-known veteran developers, Sid prefers to keep his hands dirty and spends most his time doing what he has always done - writing code. He was always very supportive of my work when I was at Firaxis and is just a very nice person overall... BUT I should say that he also has a wicked sense of humor that doesn't necessarily come out too often (he's just too nice) but I've seen glimpses of over the years. A lot of that humor goes into his games, I think.

I am very glad they tried it as it was certainly on my short-list of ideas for Civ that hadn't been done yet. Obviously, 1UPT creates some serious AI challenges, so I think your opinion about the mechanic is largely colored by how important a competitive AI is to you. (A lot of Civ players just want to walk their way through history and don't even like fighting wars.) I will say that I am very curious about what happens to the mechanic in future iterations of the series.

So, I lost a bet back in college, and the cost was that I had to shave my head. Naturally, since I had to shave my head anyway, I thought it might be fun to try a mohawk for a few days.

Years later, I needed a picture on my Twitter account (https://twitter.com/SorenJohnson), so I used one from shortly after cut. Over time, people started to associate that image with me, so much so that they would ask me at GDC where was my mohawk?!?

Once it was time to name the company, we considered a lot of options, but Mohawk seemed like a great name because I already had that association and - more importantly - it also just seemed like a great name for a game company. One top of that, Dorian Newcomb, our VP and Art Director is part Mohawk by ancestry, so that sort of sealed the deal.