At an age when most children are still learning to read, Soren Johnson was already writing his first computer programs. It was 1982, he was 6, and his father had just bought a Timex Sinclair 1000.
By the time Johnson, ’98, MS ’00, arrived on the Farm, he had already won local programming competitions in his native Washington state. He’d also developed a passion for board and video games. So it was only fitting that for his senior thesis Johnson—a history major who co-termed in computer science—created a video game simulating the lives of 17th- and 18th-century Oxford shopkeepers.
After graduation, he began working on the acclaimed Civilization video game series, eventually becoming lead designer for Civ IV, an empire-building strategy game that sold 3 million copies.
Last spring, Johnson became a senior designer and programmer for Spore, the highly anticipated “god game” from Sims creator Will Wright. In the game, players guide the evolution of creatures from single-cell organisms to advanced species with enough technology to explore the universe. Johnson is responsible for coding the rules and artificial intelligence of the “civilization” level of the game, which Wright has likened to the board game Risk.
When the company released a portion of the game in June, players created 1 million creatures in nine days. For Johnson the appeal of Spore is the same as his own reason for becoming a video game designer: “The only thing that can limit you is your imagination.”
