After working in the shadows for so long it is great to finally be able to announce a game and hear that you are as excited as we are for Galactic Civilizations IV. We have an amazingly talented team here and I wanted to introduce them as you may be chatting with as we go through early access and release.

== DESIGN & PRODUCTION ==

Brad Wardell - Creative Director

There is no Galactic Civilizations without Brad. He is the Creative Director for the game, which means he is the game's first player. He plays, offers feedback, works on design to address issues that have plagued prior versions (how to avoid being overwhelmed in micro tasks without sacrificing managing a massive empire, etc). He created Galactic Civilizations two decades ago and no one knows the game better.

Derek Paxton - Lead Designer

The main responsibility is to make sure the game is fun. This varies from balancing production costs and research rates to making up new abilities for various factions.

Chad LaForce - Producer/Cat Herder

The producer has three main roles, to build the schedule, communicate the schedule, and deal with roadblocks that come up along the way.

== PROGRAMMING ==

Cari Begle - Lead Developer

Cari has been with Galactic Civilizations since Brad decided to make the first version of Galactic Civilizations for Windows. She has the heavy burden of making sure the game runs smoothly while design tries to do all kinds of crazy things. Her favorite civilization is the Mimot and she also makes sure they get special attention.

Sarah Trombley - Developer

Sarah started as an intern on Galactic Civilizations II. For Galactic Civilizations IV she has been hard at work on various systems including a lot of time on the Leaders system which has gone through a lot of revision. We keep playing with it and thinking "This is cool, we should do more with it". We could do a whole dev journal on how Leaders started with fixed classes and traits to having traits, stats, histories, and being able to be used and switched around as you want.

Jesse Brindle - Graphics Programmer

Galactic Civilizations IV has a completely new lighting and rendering engine. Metal looks like metal, environmental lights from the nebulas are reflected on your ships, etc.  Jesse joined Stardock during the development of Galactic Civilizations II.

Jason Balazovich - Developer

A veteran of Galactic Civilizations III, Jay typically implements new features and screens for Galactic Civilizations IV. There are so many screens in Galactic Civilizations...

Christopher McLaughlin - Developer

Christopher is new to Stardock and hired specifically for Galactic Civilizations IV. His life is implementing features and fixing bugs.

== ART ==

Paul Boyer - Art Lead

Galactic Civilizations is a huge game and there is a lot of art tasks that have to be done to make it work. From designing UI, to creating all the Terran Alliance ships, to working with the developers to get the new lighting and rendering engine just right he stays very busy.

Chaminda Nissanka - Cinematic Artist

If you have seen the announcement trailer you have seen Chaminda's work. We work with some great outsourcing companies for art because Chaminda is just one man, but the most important parts always go to him, including the new civilization leaders.

Jared Harris - 3D Artist

Jared came from the Sins of the Prophet mod team and is responsible for creating many of the new 3d assets you see in the game.

Leo Li - 2d Artist

If you have seen the key art for Galactic Civilizations IV you have seen Leo's work. He is a painter and produced many of the 2d assets you see in the game.

== WRITING ==

Chris Bucholz - Writer

From making sure that the Festron's opening greeting feels right, to providing a lore entry on an obscure future technology Chris makes sure that everything you read is interesting and matches the tone of the game.

== MUSIC ==

Mason Fisher - Composer

Mason created the theme of the game, the ambient tracks as you play and many of the sound effects. His job is to make sure the game sounds great.

Riku Nuottajarvi - Composer

Riku wrote most of the music for Star Control 2 and most recently on Star Control: Origins where he composed the themes for many of the alien races in that game. Now we are lucky to have him doing the same for Galactic Civilizations IV.

== AND BEYOND ==

Scott Tykoski - Mad Scientist

Scott was the other intern Brad started the first windows version of Galactic Civilizations with. He is a programmer and an artist and often jumps on tasks that combine the two disciplines.

Omnibus and Airmaster - Ship Designers

Omnibus and Airmaster are talented and prolific ship designers from the Galactic Civilizations III community. For the past few months, they have been designing ships for Galactic Civilizations IV so that you have a wide variety of cool ships to play with, and against.

There is a large team of QA, marketing, community managers, etc beyond this list. As well as talented contractors and companies that allow us to stay small while still having access to top-level talent and assets.

And we have you, the community we are excited to get feedback from. Early Access has been an important part of Stardock's development process for decades and this won't be any different.