So, in a Friday weekend tease post, Brad Wardell, Stardock CEO, announced that they hired Soren Johnson (Sid Meier’s Civilization 4 lead designer) to oversee the design of all their games, “at least for awhile”, says Brad.

“There’s a lot of game projects floating around here and as I’ve said many times in the past, I don’t like designing games and Kael [Derek Paxton] has crazy amounts on his plate and Jon [Shafer] is full-time on At the Gates. So we’ve gotten some help…”, wrote Brad.

So, now look at this. Stardock has Derek Paxton, the developer of the famous Fall from Heaven mod for Civ4, apparently running the show as senior designer and producer; Soren Johnson (Civ4 lead designer) is now on-board; Jon Shafer (Civ5 lead designer) was there and still seems to be in a way; Brad Wardell himself is the designer of Galactic Civilizations 2: Dread Lords. So, now, you tell me what sort of games do you think these fine gentleman are working on? 4X games of course! They must be. And they seem to have a lot on their plate.

“Right now, we have a lot of titles in pre-production in various places and Derek apparently wants to be able to go home once in awhile and Soren, having recently left Zynga, gave us an opportunity to work together for the next few months and so here we are.” ~Brad Wardell.

So, in summary.

Stardock hired Civ4′s lead designer: Soren Johnson. Jon Shafer worked on Fallen Enchantress and on another game (that hasn’t been announced yet!). They say to have “a lot of titles in pre-production in various places” and they also say to have used “a lot of the money from the sale of Impulse back in 2011 to create a fund to help launch new start-ups” and to have “a lot of game projects floating around”.

Ok, I know, besides Soren’s hiring (which is still big news in my view) there’s nothing concrete here, but I would prepare for announcements. Maybe in Stardock’s annual report we’ll see something, which is “coming out soon”. That or in PAX East this month. Could it be GalCiv3 maybe? Sins 2 perhaps? Could they be using some of that Impulse money to go after Homeworld’s IP and Homeworld3 maybe? I believe we’ll see soon enough.

You Sly devil you, what up in those frog sleeves....