6 ms·

Interview with Sid Meier

77 points by aaronbrethorst 11y ago

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Is associating games with their designers a quirk of simulation games? I associate Sid Meier and Will Wright heavily with their games, but I don't really have this same association for other genres.
- wodenokoto 11y ago
  You don't associate Doom with John Carmack? Or Monkey Island and Full Throttle with Tim Schafer? Or Leisure Suit Larry with Al Lowe?
  - toyg 11y ago
    In fact, i associate Monkey Island to Ron Gilbert.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    No, I do. Maybe it's just one genre I can think of more than one name in.
  - smacktoward 11y ago
    Sure, but it's one thing for people to associate Carmack with Doom and another thing for Id to market the game as John Carmack's Doom.
    - mrec 11y ago
      How soon they forget: http://kotaku.com/5541406/john-romero-is-so-sorry-about-trying-to-make-you-his-bitch http://kotaku.com/5541406/john-romero-is-so-sorry-about-tryi...
- aaronbrethorst 11y ago
  I don't think so: Metal Gear and Hideo Kojima Final Fantasy and Hironobu Sakaguchi Mega Man and Keiji Inafune The Unreal and Gears of War series and Cliff Bleszinski John Carmack and Doom Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, etc. and Shigeru Miyamoto Assassin's Creed and Jade Raymond
  - Retra 11y ago
    What is this list and what does it prove?
  - anexprogrammer 11y ago
    But I can't recall any of those being released as Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear etc in the same way it's been Sid Meier's Civilization. Same with reviews, it does seem this genre that that was first, and most consistent, mentioning the designer behind the game.
    - aaronbrethorst 11y ago
      https://vgboxart.com/boxes/PS2/15821-metal-gear-solid-2-sons-of-liberty.png https://vgboxart.com/boxes/PS2/15821-metal-gear-solid-2-sons... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b3/Mgs3box.jpg/250px-Mgs3box.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b3/Mgs3box... http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/9/0/5/65905_front.jpg http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/9/0/5/65905_front.jpg And, notably, regarding the latest iteration: "Latest Metal Gear Solid 5 box art drops Hideo Kojima's name" - http://www.videogamer.com/ps4/metal_gear_solid_5_the_phantom_pain/news/latest_metal_gear_solid_5_box_art_drops_hideo_kojimas_name.html http://www.videogamer.com/ps4/metal_gear_solid_5_the_phantom...
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - vacri 11y ago
      I remember American McGee from the release of "American McGee's Alice"... fitting, really, that someone with such a surreal name should leave their stamp on Alice in Wonderland.
  - 11y ago
- echelon 11y ago
  Smash Bros and Masahiro Sakurai.
- qu4z-2 11y ago
  On a somewhat related note: http://chrishecker.com/images/f/fc/Wspector2-small.png http://chrishecker.com/images/f/fc/Wspector2-small.png
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    Pretty efficient one.
wodenokoto 11y ago
> Concerned that this style of game was a significant > departure for the brand, Stealey suggested adding > Meier's name to the game's title, in order to get > his fans on board. While I get it was a marketing ploy, I still don't get the logic. Was Meyer famous at the time? If so, why was his name needed when they departed from their normal style, and not for the normal flight simulators?
- sgift 11y ago
  He came to be famous for making military sims/flight sims. When they ventured into a new genre with "Pirates" they wanted to get the people who only knew their military sims on board, so they added "Sid Meiers" to the name and this seems to have helped in getting people to consider a game in a completely different genre, because they thought of him as someone who built good games (and rightfully so, I may add).
- michaelcampbell 11y ago
  Quite. I remember someone saying not long after this that they could come out with "Sid Meier's Huge Bag of Crap", and it'd sell like hotcakes.
- orionblastar 11y ago
  Sid had a reputation. He played Red Barron against an Air Force Pilot and beat the Pilot's high score. He did so by memorizing the algorithms of the enemy air ships so he could avoid their shots and shoot them down. http://kotaku.com/the-father-of-civilization-584568276 http://kotaku.com/the-father-of-civilization-584568276 He made airplane simulators after that and war simulators. Before he worked on Civilization he already had a reputation in video games.
- smacktoward 11y ago
  > Was Meier famous at the time? Not, like, Kardashian-famous, but definitely well known among people who played simulation games at the time. (Source: I was one.) > Why was his name needed when they departed from their normal style, and not for the normal flight simulators? By that point MicroProse didn't need any help marketing itself as a maker of flight simulators, because it was a company that had built its brand making excellent flight simulators. "MicroProse" and "flight simulation" were joined at the hip. (And their marketing reinforced this -- when it focused on any of the behind-the-scenes personnel it focused on Stealey, whose background as a USAF pilot reinforced the connection.) When they decided to branch out into different types of games all that flight sim street cred wasn't going to do them much good, though; and Stealey's military background wouldn't help sell a pirate game the way it helped sell F-15 Strike Eagle. They needed a new angle to market their games around, and bringing Meier forward as a public personality provided that.
guard-of-terra 11y ago
I think that Alpha Centaury is one of the best games and it also beats Civ with all due respect (Disclaimer: never played recent Civ games, has dislike for history and fan of Science Fiction). It is very atmospheric. From all kinds of blurbs and cinematic linked to scientific breakthroughts, buildings, projects and factions you assemble puzzle in your mind which makes towards an awesome SF plot of dystopian future on hostile planet with distinct characters, ups and downs, secrets and revelations. And the gameplay is awesome too, spent many months on it. Many things in this game are configurable via text configs. Graphics are available for tinkering too. UPD: Having said all that, Master of Magic, non-Sid Meyer game, is still more potent than everything he made. A true jewel, perhaps underappreciated. It has turned 20 and I play it every few years and it never gets old. And I know nothing about people who made it.
- orionblastar 11y ago
  Master of Magic was about the best and I think they used the Civ engine as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Magic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Magic Many attempts to remake the game failed. It is like the Bard's Tale series, hard to remake. The Bard's Tale remake was not as good as the original series for MS-DOS, Amiga, Apple //gs, Atari ST etc.
  - Razengan 11y ago
    And if anyone was a fan of the Master of Orion series (as they should be), it's getting a new game: http://www.gog.com/game/master_of_orion http://www.gog.com/game/master_of_orion
    - adwf 11y ago
      I'm wary of it, but looking forward to it at the same time. I'm hoping for something like the XCom revival, but... On the other hand, I recently started playing MOO2 again and it's just as fantastic as ever. Brilliantly balanced, quick to play, lots of different strategies, etc. I haven't found a 4X game since that really quite got all of the things right.
hutzlibu 11y ago
"People remember the big incidents. They have memories of the time they had this great big battle and finally captured that city, or Gandhi nuked them or whatever" I remember that I had to choose between curing cancer(which would have made my people happier) and some cool military technology for my next invasion ... Well, my people were allready quite happy :)
devonkim 11y ago
Another important note is how Sid Meier was involved with the newest XCOM games as a co-designer and mentor to Jake Solomon. The marketing and promo for the games are centered a lot around Solomon as the figurehead for the game to the point that people commonly complain about the numerous (not game-breaking normally) bugs with "Jake, fix your game." Nobody really ever had that attitude with the Alpha Centauri, Civilization, etc. games to my memory.
- Alphasite_ 11y ago
  Is this XCOM1 or 2?
  - eru 11y ago
    "Newest XCOM games" very likely means 1 and 2 of the reboot.
Negative1 11y ago
The greatest thing I learned working with Sid was "Games are a series of interesting choices" (not verbatim). So is life, and that's what makes his games so great; they mirror the kinds of choices we make every day. His games have gravity and it's this that makes you want to keep playing.

Is associating games with their designers a quirk of simulation games? I associate Sid Meier and Will Wright heavily with their games, but I don't really have this same association for other genres.

wodenokoto 11y ago
You don't associate Doom with John Carmack? Or Monkey Island and Full Throttle with Tim Schafer? Or Leisure Suit Larry with Al Lowe?
- toyg 11y ago
  In fact, i associate Monkey Island to Ron Gilbert.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  No, I do. Maybe it's just one genre I can think of more than one name in.
- smacktoward 11y ago
  Sure, but it's one thing for people to associate Carmack with Doom and another thing for Id to market the game as John Carmack's Doom.
  - mrec 11y ago
    How soon they forget: http://kotaku.com/5541406/john-romero-is-so-sorry-about-trying-to-make-you-his-bitch http://kotaku.com/5541406/john-romero-is-so-sorry-about-tryi...
aaronbrethorst 11y ago
I don't think so: Metal Gear and Hideo Kojima Final Fantasy and Hironobu Sakaguchi Mega Man and Keiji Inafune The Unreal and Gears of War series and Cliff Bleszinski John Carmack and Doom Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, etc. and Shigeru Miyamoto Assassin's Creed and Jade Raymond
- Retra 11y ago
  What is this list and what does it prove?
- anexprogrammer 11y ago
  But I can't recall any of those being released as Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear etc in the same way it's been Sid Meier's Civilization. Same with reviews, it does seem this genre that that was first, and most consistent, mentioning the designer behind the game.
  - aaronbrethorst 11y ago
    https://vgboxart.com/boxes/PS2/15821-metal-gear-solid-2-sons-of-liberty.png https://vgboxart.com/boxes/PS2/15821-metal-gear-solid-2-sons... https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b3/Mgs3box.jpg/250px-Mgs3box.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b3/Mgs3box... http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/9/0/5/65905_front.jpg http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/9/0/5/65905_front.jpg And, notably, regarding the latest iteration: "Latest Metal Gear Solid 5 box art drops Hideo Kojima's name" - http://www.videogamer.com/ps4/metal_gear_solid_5_the_phantom_pain/news/latest_metal_gear_solid_5_box_art_drops_hideo_kojimas_name.html http://www.videogamer.com/ps4/metal_gear_solid_5_the_phantom...
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - vacri 11y ago
    I remember American McGee from the release of "American McGee's Alice"... fitting, really, that someone with such a surreal name should leave their stamp on Alice in Wonderland.
- 11y ago
echelon 11y ago
Smash Bros and Masahiro Sakurai.
qu4z-2 11y ago
On a somewhat related note: http://chrishecker.com/images/f/fc/Wspector2-small.png http://chrishecker.com/images/f/fc/Wspector2-small.png
- agumonkey 11y ago
  Pretty efficient one.

wodenokoto 11y ago

> Concerned that this style of game was a significant > departure for the brand, Stealey suggested adding > Meier's name to the game's title, in order to get > his fans on board. While I get it was a marketing ploy, I still don't get the logic. Was Meyer famous at the time? If so, why was his name needed when they departed from their normal style, and not for the normal flight simulators?

sgift 11y ago
He came to be famous for making military sims/flight sims. When they ventured into a new genre with "Pirates" they wanted to get the people who only knew their military sims on board, so they added "Sid Meiers" to the name and this seems to have helped in getting people to consider a game in a completely different genre, because they thought of him as someone who built good games (and rightfully so, I may add).
michaelcampbell 11y ago
Quite. I remember someone saying not long after this that they could come out with "Sid Meier's Huge Bag of Crap", and it'd sell like hotcakes.
orionblastar 11y ago
Sid had a reputation. He played Red Barron against an Air Force Pilot and beat the Pilot's high score. He did so by memorizing the algorithms of the enemy air ships so he could avoid their shots and shoot them down. http://kotaku.com/the-father-of-civilization-584568276 http://kotaku.com/the-father-of-civilization-584568276 He made airplane simulators after that and war simulators. Before he worked on Civilization he already had a reputation in video games.
smacktoward 11y ago
> Was Meier famous at the time? Not, like, Kardashian-famous, but definitely well known among people who played simulation games at the time. (Source: I was one.) > Why was his name needed when they departed from their normal style, and not for the normal flight simulators? By that point MicroProse didn't need any help marketing itself as a maker of flight simulators, because it was a company that had built its brand making excellent flight simulators. "MicroProse" and "flight simulation" were joined at the hip. (And their marketing reinforced this -- when it focused on any of the behind-the-scenes personnel it focused on Stealey, whose background as a USAF pilot reinforced the connection.) When they decided to branch out into different types of games all that flight sim street cred wasn't going to do them much good, though; and Stealey's military background wouldn't help sell a pirate game the way it helped sell F-15 Strike Eagle. They needed a new angle to market their games around, and bringing Meier forward as a public personality provided that.

guard-of-terra 11y ago

I think that Alpha Centaury is one of the best games and it also beats Civ with all due respect (Disclaimer: never played recent Civ games, has dislike for history and fan of Science Fiction). It is very atmospheric. From all kinds of blurbs and cinematic linked to scientific breakthroughts, buildings, projects and factions you assemble puzzle in your mind which makes towards an awesome SF plot of dystopian future on hostile planet with distinct characters, ups and downs, secrets and revelations. And the gameplay is awesome too, spent many months on it. Many things in this game are configurable via text configs. Graphics are available for tinkering too. UPD: Having said all that, Master of Magic, non-Sid Meyer game, is still more potent than everything he made. A true jewel, perhaps underappreciated. It has turned 20 and I play it every few years and it never gets old. And I know nothing about people who made it.

orionblastar 11y ago
Master of Magic was about the best and I think they used the Civ engine as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Magic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Magic Many attempts to remake the game failed. It is like the Bard's Tale series, hard to remake. The Bard's Tale remake was not as good as the original series for MS-DOS, Amiga, Apple //gs, Atari ST etc.
- Razengan 11y ago
  And if anyone was a fan of the Master of Orion series (as they should be), it's getting a new game: http://www.gog.com/game/master_of_orion http://www.gog.com/game/master_of_orion
  - adwf 11y ago
    I'm wary of it, but looking forward to it at the same time. I'm hoping for something like the XCom revival, but... On the other hand, I recently started playing MOO2 again and it's just as fantastic as ever. Brilliantly balanced, quick to play, lots of different strategies, etc. I haven't found a 4X game since that really quite got all of the things right.

hutzlibu 11y ago

"People remember the big incidents. They have memories of the time they had this great big battle and finally captured that city, or Gandhi nuked them or whatever" I remember that I had to choose between curing cancer(which would have made my people happier) and some cool military technology for my next invasion ... Well, my people were allready quite happy :)

devonkim 11y ago

Another important note is how Sid Meier was involved with the newest XCOM games as a co-designer and mentor to Jake Solomon. The marketing and promo for the games are centered a lot around Solomon as the figurehead for the game to the point that people commonly complain about the numerous (not game-breaking normally) bugs with "Jake, fix your game." Nobody really ever had that attitude with the Alpha Centauri, Civilization, etc. games to my memory.

Alphasite_ 11y ago
Is this XCOM1 or 2?
- eru 11y ago
  "Newest XCOM games" very likely means 1 and 2 of the reboot.

Negative1 11y ago

The greatest thing I learned working with Sid was "Games are a series of interesting choices" (not verbatim). So is life, and that's what makes his games so great; they mirror the kinds of choices we make every day. His games have gravity and it's this that makes you want to keep playing.