Firaxis Games' Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds in mystery deal with Microprose

Hasbro Interactive are promising a big announcement at this week's E3 show: "the reunion of the original Civilization dream team." The original Civilization team - many of whom are now at Firaxis Games - will be at a special reception with representatives from Hasbro and Microprose (now a Hasbro division) to reveal what is believed to be a new development deal between the companies.

Civilization is one of the most prominent brands in the computer gaming industry, and was the object of a large legal fight between Activision and Microprose over the last year or so. The result of this fight was that Activision would license the Civilization name for one game - Call to Power - while Microprose would retain the full rights to the name. When Hasbro bought out Microprose, it acquired the Civilization name as well, and obviously has plans to keep the franchise going.

But acquiring Microprose didn't actually give Hasbro the development talent - Sid Meier, Brian Reynolds, and others - who had created the original Civilization game in the first place. Those designers had already left Microprose and founded a new game company, Firaxis. Firaxis signed up for a multi-title deal with Electronic Arts, and so far have had two games published under the EA name - Sid Meier's Gettysburg and Alpha Centauri, an "unofficial sequel" to Civilization.

So it will be interesting to see what this new alliance between Firaxis and Hasbro will mean - a new Civilization? A sequel to Alpha Centauri? Something else altogether?

Courtesy of IGN