XCOM's Jake Solomon is swapping turn-based tactics for life sims, and he's not coming back

When I meet Jake Solomon at GDC, it's his third day of unemployment. The XCOM and Marvel's Midnight Suns director and designer announced he was leaving Firaxis back in February, but his final day at the studio where he made his name and worked for more than twenty years was still very fresh in his memory. "It's surreal," he says. "For probably the next ten years, I'll refer to it as 'we' when we talk about Firaxis, and it's sad to think it's not the right pronoun anymore. It's exciting, but a little terrifying."

On the face of it, that panic might seem unfounded. Over the last decade, Solomon has become one of the most revered names in turn-based strategy games. Having cut his teeth on many of Sid Meier's Civilization games in his early years at Firaxis, he went on to become the designer who spearheaded the revival of XCOM with Enemy Unknown in 2012, before going on to direct its even more beloved sequel XCOM 2 and its War Of The Chosen expansion a few years later. Most recently, he was creative director on Marvel's Midnight Suns, which allowed him to marry his life-long love of Marvel comic books with the thrilling tactical combat he's so well known for.

Solomon's next adventure, though, won't have the certainty of Midnight Suns' supercharged attack cards, or even the tease of an XCOM hit percentage backing him up. For not only is it Solomon's third day of unemployment when we speak; it's also the day after he revealed his plans to leave turn-based tactics games behind altogether. Instead, his sights are now set on the life simulation genre, a move that, at first glance, seems at odds with his career as a strategy designer. But over the course of our hour-long chat, it becomes increasingly clear that life sims have been a life-long obsession for Solomon, and he might have even made one by now had the development of XCOM 2 gone a little differently.

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