Anno 117

He also taught extensively, particularly at the Ashmolean Museum.

In 2021, he moved to Germany to join Ubisoft Mainz to work on Anno 1800 and Anno 117.

In 2023, he returned to the UK to begin work as narrative lead at Capture Age to work on content across the Age of Empires franchise and beyond.

In today's episode, he discusses how he shifted focus from face of battle analysis to morale psychology and the Roman Army social networks, formative teaching at the Ashmolean Museum through object handling in the Crassus program, collaborative imagination sparking pedagogy, and he argues games best inspire interest rather than directly educate.

I mean, have you ever felt like trying to go into the game industry as a-- with a background in academia, like, do people kind of worry you're gonna be the, like, the history police or the...

So, you know, just the, these, these things that I guess maybe wouldn't always come up if you don't have a colleague who has such a strong, uh, academic background in history.

Well, I, I can't, uh, say that my, my degree hasn't benefited me because, you know, I got my first job working at Ubisoft Mainz because they were in pre-production for Anno 117, recently released, set in the Roman world.

So I think very clearly the fact that I was doing a DPhil in ancient Roman history helped me get that one, and then Capture Age, for whom I work now, were planning this series of ancient DLCs, so again, I do think that background helped me in.

But basically, I just put up my first preview, my first article on the site, of which I'll probably have like eight or so coming in the coming days.

For Anno 117, a city builder game.

Specifically, they're in their end of the year update and they're adding Egypt as a big expansion.

And this is where I'll be outed as someone who does not know history that much.