Q&A: Filipina ‘Civ VII’ game designer Nell Raban on creating narrative, Rizal as leader

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There was certainly a sense of pride when national hero Jose Rizal broke through the roster of the long-running strategy game, Civilization, in the latest iteration, Civilization VII. For Filipino fans, it was a moment of satisfaction to see Rizal, in all his animated glory and Filipino voice lines, leading a civilization in the game.

Rizal isn’t the only Filipino writer associated with the game though that has made an impact. The game’s senior narrative designer, Filipina Nell Raban, was key in providing writing for the game, and guiding junior writers in creating an in-game “sandbox” that allows players to immerse themselves in the version of history that they are creating for themselves.

Locally, Raban has been featured before in GMA where she talked about the tabletop RPG that she designed, “Home Again,” which “centers around a fictional group of people known as the “Tao,” who find themselves in a world that often sees them as strangers.”

While working on tabletop games, Raban — who has a theater background — eventually found herself working at a tech company, where she gained experience in software development. This love for games, and her software experience would eventually lead to her work at Firaxis Games, the Civ guys.

We talk to her about that, the challenges in designing a narrative for a type of game that doesn’t necessarily have a straightforward one like a typical RPG or adventure title, and of course, how Rizal came into the picture.

1. Hi Nell,talk about your career — how did you get into the games industry, eventually landing on Firaxis and working on Civilization VII? Was Civilization something that you also grew up playing?

I was trained in college as a playwright and dramaturg for theatre, but rediscovered my passion for video games during graduate school. When I decided I’d like to actually make games, I started working as a freelance writer for tabletop games.

At the same time, I found a job at a tech company where I gained a lot of useful experience in software development. From there, it was a matter of making connections with other game devs on the back of my work and keeping that momentum up.

At some point, my reputation was strong enough that people thought of me when they heard about full-time opportunities in narrative design. When the chance to work at Firaxis came up, I jumped at it — I had been a fan of their games for a long time, not only Civ, but XCOM, too.

I grew up playing games like Ocarina of Time and Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64 and have fond memories of button-mashing my way through Street Fighter II matches at friends’ houses.

My first Civ game was Civ V. I remember being intimidated initially by the complexity of the game, but I became enamored with the playfulness of its portrayal of history, especially in the leader scenes.

2. Talk about your creative process. What is the work of a senior narrative designer, and how did you approach the challenge of crafting the narrative for Civilization VII?

Narrative design can be a lot of things, but it always comes down to ensuring that all aspects of the game — art, gameplay, text, etc. — weave together its narrative in a consistent and satisfying way.

For us, that can range from collaborating with artists on what a leader should wear to writing events that integrate with gameplay and fit the established tone of the Civ series.

As a senior narrative designer, I’m often charged with guiding certain overall efforts, like writing Discovery events. In that case, it meant writing some of those events myself, but also coaching less senior writers through their writing.

The overall direction for the narrative of Civ VII came from game director Ed Beach and narrative director Cat Manning. Civ VI had some narrative elements like recording your civ’s historic moments and showing the gossip about other civs’ actions, but Ed and Cat wanted to take things a step further.

Ed and Cat focused on the idea that “history comes in layers,” which is one of the main pillars of Civ VII’s design. In Civ VII, those layers are formed over time by the different actions a player takes in the game, and our challenge was to craft narrative events that respond to those actions and help create a history that is as deep as it is long.

3. Is it challenging to craft a narrative for a genre of games that doesn’t exactly have a straightforward narrative like an adventure or an RPG game does?

It can certainly be a challenge to design the narrative for a strategy game, but the reality is that every game, regardless of genre, requires its own set of solutions.

We don’t normally consider chess as having a narrative, but the names and moves of the different chess pieces all work together to convey the theme of medieval war.

Chess has just as much narrative as it needs, and no more. It’s the same with Civ VII — what is the right amount, and how does it come through?

The Civ series has always been a sandbox in which players can create their own stories from what happens in their games, and we wanted our system to respect that, and build on it.

We decided that the way to do that was to zoom in on the map, explore the consequences of certain gameplay moments in nuanced and unexpected ways, and feed that back into the larger loop.

It’s less about imposing a narrative onto the game and more about enabling the player to flesh out the story they’re already creating.

4. There’s a really big change in that you don’t stick to one civilization throughout the entire game. From the viewpoint of a narrative designer, what was the challenge there in creating a compelling narrative for the Civilization gamer who through games 1 to 6 have been so used to sticking to just 1 civilization? 

Civ-switching is another feature that comes from the “history comes in layers” pillar, and it’s allowed the narrative team to do a lot of things that wouldn’t be possible if the game had you play the same civ all the way through.

With the game broken up into multiple discrete age-specific civs, we can build the narrative of the game layer by layer, creating a historical record that is completely unique to each playthrough.

Someone in your Roman empire in Antiquity creates a curse tablet, but then in the Modern Age one of your archaeologists finds the same tablet, and now it’s an artifact. Even if at that point, you’re Siam or Buganda, there is still something of Rome embedded in your DNA. That kind of modularity can enable some really powerful storytelling.

There is still a throughline for the whole game in that your leader is the same throughout the ages. But even then, the narrative system allows us to explore how your leader adapts to each age. Is your José Rizal the same leader in the Exploration Age that he was in Antiquity? That’s up to you to decide.

5. Of course, Civ VII is a big moment for Filipino gamers with national hero Jose Rizal now onboard. Can you talk about the design process for Rizal?

   Of course, if you were to add a Filipino leader, Jose Rizal would seem to be the first choice right away, right? Was he the first choice? Were there other Filipino icons considered? 

As a Filipina in the diaspora, it’s been really gratifying to have Rizal as a playable leader in Civ VII. The Philippines has no shortage of national heroes, but Rizal was always the first and only choice. Given his lasting impact on the Philippines and its people, it’s difficult to imagine anyone other than him becoming the first Filipino leader in a Civ game.

6. Talking to Dennis Shirk, he talked about Andrew Johnson, the game’s senior historian, who “championed” the story of Jose Rizal. Can you talk more about how Johnson kind of sold Rizal to the team? 

While the Philippines is such a major power in Southeast Asia, there would be some difficulty in portraying it as a civ in the traditional sense of the game.

But Civ VII breaks some of those rules, like separating leaders from civs. Because of that, Andrew felt that Rizal would be the perfect vessel for representing the Philippines.

Rizal also exemplifies the kind of non-traditional leader we wanted to have more of — leaders that weren’t just heads of state, but were still culturally important, like Confucius or Machiavelli. Between those two arguments, Andrew was able to convince the team that Rizal was a great fit for the kind of game we wanted to make.

As someone who joined the team after Rizal was chosen, I’m elated that it worked out this way.

7. What was it like choosing the special abilities of Rizal and traits? And speaking of that, can you give us a glimpse of the process when you’re crafting a character, and you guys are all just in a room, I assume, and you’re trying to debate, argue, and create their in-game abilities based on real life legacy? 

Creating leaders for the game largely comes in two phases. At first, the final roster of leaders is narrowed down from a long list of potential candidates. Deciding who makes the cut can come down to any number of reasons, but ultimately the team has to be confident that each leader could have good gameplay and that the whole roster was balanced.

Leaders are selected for their general thematic qualities, which for Rizal would have been a relationship to narrative. Friedrich the Great, to give another example, was deemed “militaristic” generally.

The art department needed a lot of lead time to work on character models, but the actual gameplay designs came quite late in development. This was by necessity, since many of the game’s systems, which special abilities rely on, were still being built.

Content designer Carl Harrison knew that Rizal was going to be narrative-focused, but didn’t really know how until the narrative system started to come together. Rizal is also Happiness-focused, and while the Happiness yield had been in the game for some time, Celebrations, which are fueled by Happiness, went through a number of redesigns.

In many cases, final leader designs were in fact the result of everyone getting into a room and having discussions — when so many different elements need to be balanced, it’s important to have a lot of different perspectives.

We’re never going to be able to depict a leader in all their humanity and complexity, and that’s really not the point anyway. Instead, we try to boil them down to their essence and highlight what makes them important to history and culture. For Rizal, it’s that words and ideas can be powerful catalysts for change.

Ideally, we give players enough of a hook to want to learn more about these people. As pleased as I am that those already familiar with Rizal get to see him in the game, I’m equally excited for a whole new audience to learn about, and maybe even be inspired by, his legacy. – Rappler.com

Special thanks to Rappler contributor Matthew Arcilla, our reviewer for Civilization VII, for the hat-tip on Raban’s role in the making the game.