34 Facts About Soren Johnson

Soren Johnson was born on May 23,1976 and is an American businessman, game programmer, and video game designer.

Soren Johnson is best known for his work as a lead designer on Civilization IV, Offworld Trading Company, and Old World.

Soren Johnson worked as a co-lead designer on Civilization III.

In 2013, Soren Johnson founded Mohawk Games, an indie studio in the suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland.

Soren Johnson is known as one of the earliest developers who involved the internet gaming community in game design, testing, and discussion.

Soren Johnson was born in Olympia, Washington to Kenneth and Ruth Johnson.

Soren Johnson grew up in Centralia, Washington with his one sibling, Bjorn Johnson, and his cousins Kjell, Erik, and Sonja.

At age 13, Soren Johnson was offered the opportunity to attend college early, but his parents thought he would benefit more from being around friends.

Soren Johnson's first ever notable gaming platform was a Commodore 64, which his parents bought for the family when he was 7 years old.

Soren Johnson grew up on mid-80s games and electronic card games of the period, playing various game genres, ranging from board games to strategy to shooter games and racing.

Soren Johnson did not play many games in college, choosing to fully embrace the college experience.

Soren Johnson returned to school for a semester at Oxford with his college roommate Christopher Tin.

Soren Johnson played the cello in the Stanford Orchestra and, at one point, traveled to China to perform with his fellow Stanford musicians.

The bet required Soren Johnson to shave his head to give himself a mohawk.

Soren Johnson cites this as proving that while he might lose some challenges, he will honor his word.

Soren Johnson followed the Civilization III development externally and jumped at the chance to join his idol Sid Meier.

Soren Johnson considered the exodus an opportunity to help Meier and save the franchise from collapse.

Soren Johnson joined Firaxis in April 2000 and, along with Jake Solomon, started mid-development on Civilization III with director Sid Meier and designer Jeff Briggs.

Soren Johnson was offered his lowest salary to date but persevered to use the experience to launch his career.

Soren Johnson had a lot of freedom to work on Civilization III and rewrote much of the code from scratch, even with only 16 months left to complete the work before launch.

Soren Johnson simplified Civilization IIIs code base so that many new mechanics could be added without having to keep building on top of the previous game.

Rather than leaving these poorly received mechanics untouched however, Soren Johnson headed one of the earliest examples of post release support in gaming, using the feedback from the gaming community to further update the game post release.

Soren Johnson further highlighted his community support by making the game modder friendly, designing the AI to adapt and continue to function with changes to game design, even during community modding post-game release.

Soren Johnson provided updates and patches to Civilization III for a year after the initial release, spending plenty of time immersed in the game's community, judging and absorbing feedback.

For Civ IV Soren Johnson brought in Civilization fans and gaming community members to test the game ahead of release, which proved highly effective in making the game stable and balanced before release.

Soren Johnson had a considerable role in the development of the main theme music, Baba Yetu, by working with his old classmate and composer, Christopher Tin.

Tin and Soren Johnson wanted to capture the essence of the view of Earth from outer space with a musical piece that layered a deeper feeling to the song with extra lyrical meaning.

Soren Johnson was hired to help with the 4th stage: "Civilization," which saw the player's procedural-generated organism begin a primitive civilization on its home world.

Soren Johnson later attributed its failure to a lack of a clear binding vision across all the teams and the lack of outside player feedback.

At EA, Soren Johnson worked on the design of Dragon Age Legends, a Flash game released for Facebook and Google+ in March 2011.

Soren Johnson left EA in September 2011 to join the social network game development company Zynga on an unnamed project that was never published.

In 2013, Soren Johnson co-founded his game development studio, Mohawk Games, in the suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland.

Soren Johnson was a bi-monthly design columnist for Game Developer and is on the advisory board of the Game Developers Conference.

Soren Johnson is married to Leyla Soren Johnson, who works with him at Mohawk Games in various senior roles.