FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Contact: Wouter Snijders, WePlayCiv administrator, info@weplayciv.com

Three long-time veterans of the Sid Meier's Civilization online community are launching a new website that will be driven by fan involvement and dedicated entirely to serving the fans' needs.

Hengelo, The Netherlands - April 30, 2009 - Dale "Dale" Kent, Wouter "Locutus" Snijders and Daniels "Solver" Umanovskis have announced that after many years of working for Apolyton Civilization Site, they are forming a new fan site dedicated to the Sid Meier's Civilization series and other games of the genre. This new venture, WePlayCiv (http://www.weplayciv.com), will focus on facilitating community involvement in playing and improving the Civilization series of games. The site will provide many features tailored towards mods, user-generated content, information sharing, competitive and cooperative play and other community activities.

WePlayCiv will be a place where everyone who has an active interest in Civilization games can feel at home; it will host a community where members can find friends to play or mod with, where they can learn from each other and share ideas and content with one another. WePlayCiv will provide full coverage of the Sid Meier's Civilization series: news, reviews, downloads, forums, information, galleries, strategies, modding, tournaments, strategy courses, podcasts and more. The site will also cover Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and Activision's Call to Power series, as well as "indie" strategy games.

WePlayCiv is based on the belief that the key to a lively community lies in a lively site, so it will aim to offer fresh Civilization-related content every single day. This content will come from a combination of different sources: in-house development, community, content partners and syndicated content from other Civilization-related resources and communities on the Internet.

Special emphasis for WePlayCiv will be placed on fostering and hosting user-generated content, in particular mods. To counter the scattering of the hosting of Civilization mods, artwork, modding tools and other modding resources over many different places on the Web, WePlayCiv will offer free, unlimited, on-site hosting space and profiles to any modders and modding groups to host their Civilization-related projects, without adding roadblocks for users who want to download these files.

WePlayCiv co-founder Wouter Snijders said: "We strongly believe in cooperation and camaraderie between all who love Civilization and will actively work to create and maintain bonds of friendship between any individuals, groups and organizations who share our passion for the game. We will strive to bring together as many different fans, players, developers, publishers, advertisers, teachers, reporters and others from all over the world in as many different ways as possible. We extend an open invitation to anyone with a love for Civilization to join our new community today."

About Dale "Dale" Kent
Australian Dale Kent has been building and maintaining websites since 1993, ranging from corporate websites and e-commerce platforms to NationStates region's sites. He was a staff member of Apolyton CS from 2007-2009 as news and content editor, moderator and programmer. Kent has had ties with game development studios since 2005, having been play-tester/developer for Firaxis on Civilization IV and expansions as well as Civilization IV: Colonization, and playtester on FireFly Studio's CivCity: Rome and Breakaway's Arabian Lords. He is the creator of the Apolyton Pack (CtP2), The Road to War (Civ4) and Age of Discovery II (C4C) mods, has been a programmer on many indie games projects from GameDev.net, Apolyton and others, and currently works as a games producer for a large Australian entertainment company.

About Wouter "Locutus" Snijders
Wouter Snijders from the Netherlands has had experience with running web communities dating back to 2001 when he joined Apolyton's staff, serving as news and content editor, database and community manager and podcast host, and becoming an administrator and co-owner of the site in 2006. Snijders's ties with game studios go back to 2000, having worked on Activision's Call to Power II as playtester, script coder and liaison for the release of the game's source code; he was also an inaugural member of the Firaxis playtest group for Civilization IV and expansions, functioning as playtester, scenario designer and researcher, and worked as playtester on CivCity: Rome. Snijders was lead programmer for the Medieval Mod series (C:CtP/CtP2), project lead on the CtP2 Source Code Project and created the Python API reference (Civ4).

About Daniels "Solver" Umanovskis
Living in Latvia, Daniels Umanovskis has been a community manager, tournament/ladder organiser and content editor on Apolyton since 2001, becoming an administrator for the site in 2007. He was also the webmaster of AoE2.com for two years and has written reviews, previews and interviews for a number of gaming sites such as Apolyton, AoE2.com, GamePlasma and Gamez.lv. Umanovskis has had ties with the game industry since 2002, as a playtester for Ensemble Studios on Age of Mythology as well as later for Firaxis on Civilization IV and expansions and Civilization IV: Colonization. He is the creator of the Unofficial Patches (v3.03 and v3.17) for Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword and is currently a programmer for the indie strategy game Candle'Bre.

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