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Really enjoyed this book! He's a little braggy, but I guess deserves to be. I think about this philosophy a lot (quote from https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/

Really enjoyed this book! He's a little braggy, but I guess deserves to be. I think about this philosophy a lot (quote from https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/10/the-road-to-civilization-a-conversation-with-sid-meier/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/10/the-road-to-civilizat...): > Meier said Firaxis has adopted a "rule of thirds" for new Civilization entries: "one-third traditional gameplay, one-third is improved from the last version, and one-third is brand new." But the team also has to be careful with everything they add. "We're now at the point where for every new feature we put in we have to take something out, because it's very easy to overwhelm the player with complexity or detail or things like that."

acheron 3y ago
I feel like he honestly tries to be humble about everything, but with everything he's done it's awfully difficult. One thing about the book, it's very much "a life in computer games" as the title says, and not a full autobiography. Events outside of the games don't come up much. I think he meets his wife and gets married within the space of a paragraph.
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  >Events outside of the games don't come up much This is the way like my biogrpahies because, let's face it, there's no reason to think there's anything interesting about his personal life.
  - acheron 3y ago
    Ha, and I'm sure that's how he thought of it too.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    Given that billions of people have not put out anything remotely close to Sid Meier's oeuvre, what makes him different is of great interest to me. Was he just born that way? Did he go to elementary school and get hit in the head with board games until computer games came out? After the success of the first few games, why not just rest on his laurels and pump out Civilization 16 with barely any changes since Civ II? Was his wife the one to support them financially so he could work on video games before he was so immensely successful? The history of the games themselves are less interesting to me because I played them. What made them happen, where his personal life plays a component, might be of interest to fans of his, at least more than a paragraph saying oh yeah he got married at some point.
    - jvanderbot 3y ago
      Think of it this way, someone had to be best. It's like saying a book is obviously best because it's been handed down for generations, or a song is great because everyone knows it. There will always be a best selling version of something, and you may not need anything special about it other than a coincidence of luck, skill, and inspiration, of which only luck accelerates the first success so that the subsequent ones have the opportunity to succeed. In this respect, the ancillary factors are always quite boring because they don't influence the making of great games - they don't slow anything down. Others may have had a sick day at the wrong time or a hopeless addiction to reading the paper in the morning, or mild depression, or a vibrant social life that distracted them, or something equally mundane. If the book avoids personal details, it's probably because they weren't differential factors, and we'll never know about the second or third best version of him because games (and life) are not a double blind process. Success breeds opportunities.
      - fragmede 3y ago
        > the ancillary factors are always quite boring to you. I gave reasons I find them interesting. You don't have to find them interesting.
        jvanderbot 3y ago
        Yes, of course. IMHO only.
- MavisBacon 3y ago
  Definitely a very humble and nice guy. I was friends with his son when we were kids back in the 90s. He drove some cheap sedan and lived in modest digs in the suburbs of a Baltimore. Went out of his way and meet and autograph something for my older cousin who idolized him.
samstave 3y ago
I am currently attempting to build in Farthest Frontier early access - and My village starves to death quite quickly. The complexity granularity of control resources (down to managing soil quality for fields yield) management appears to be deep in this game, but I cant live long enough to find out yet. Sid deserves one of the top seats in the Video Game Hall of Fame. Carmack, Sid, Garriott, and (press) F for others. Video games built my career, and then in my career I helped several of these studios build out so they could build more! Video games are the fabric of modern computing's woven tapestry history. (A tapestry by the old wire weavers would be amazing)
- Animats 3y ago
  > My village starves to death quite quickly. You need two screens. One for the game, and one for the spreadsheet.
  - samstave 3y ago
    haha. When "Masters of Orion" came out in the early 90s - and advanced... I had gotten the latest version of the time and lost interest quickly - and a friend asked why I didnt like it - and i replied "I don't like playing a spreadsheet" So there was an article back a few years ago, there was an article about a guy who lived in the mission in SF and he was basically the accountant to a guild on EVE and he did NOT play the game - he made 100K $USD Real IRL money being paid to manage the finances of some huge Eve guild's in game assets.... He said all he does all day is build spread sheets. Wait until someone make the GPT assistant or agents for these games. Jarvis and "Computer" will be real soon for in game massive fleet management. -- Wait until we connect a game to IRL infra - and you can design an workflow with a factorio-like interface powered by a GPT mortar to managing the actual execution and api connects.
    - bjelkeman-again 3y ago
      As to your last comment. Factory design, at the cutting edge, still seem very complex, with surprisingly many parameters. The designs I have been involved with (not that many) have a depth of complexity at the minute detail, that something like Factorio does not reflect. Everything is assumed to be interchangeable parts, but IRL they aren’t and often a lot of effort has to be spent just sourcing the right components, which then aren’t available and you get alternate components with slightly different specs. Fun!

acheron 3y ago

I feel like he honestly tries to be humble about everything, but with everything he's done it's awfully difficult. One thing about the book, it's very much "a life in computer games" as the title says, and not a full autobiography. Events outside of the games don't come up much. I think he meets his wife and gets married within the space of a paragraph.

itsoktocry 3y ago
>Events outside of the games don't come up much This is the way like my biogrpahies because, let's face it, there's no reason to think there's anything interesting about his personal life.
- acheron 3y ago
  Ha, and I'm sure that's how he thought of it too.
- fragmede 3y ago
  Given that billions of people have not put out anything remotely close to Sid Meier's oeuvre, what makes him different is of great interest to me. Was he just born that way? Did he go to elementary school and get hit in the head with board games until computer games came out? After the success of the first few games, why not just rest on his laurels and pump out Civilization 16 with barely any changes since Civ II? Was his wife the one to support them financially so he could work on video games before he was so immensely successful? The history of the games themselves are less interesting to me because I played them. What made them happen, where his personal life plays a component, might be of interest to fans of his, at least more than a paragraph saying oh yeah he got married at some point.
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    Think of it this way, someone had to be best. It's like saying a book is obviously best because it's been handed down for generations, or a song is great because everyone knows it. There will always be a best selling version of something, and you may not need anything special about it other than a coincidence of luck, skill, and inspiration, of which only luck accelerates the first success so that the subsequent ones have the opportunity to succeed. In this respect, the ancillary factors are always quite boring because they don't influence the making of great games - they don't slow anything down. Others may have had a sick day at the wrong time or a hopeless addiction to reading the paper in the morning, or mild depression, or a vibrant social life that distracted them, or something equally mundane. If the book avoids personal details, it's probably because they weren't differential factors, and we'll never know about the second or third best version of him because games (and life) are not a double blind process. Success breeds opportunities.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      > the ancillary factors are always quite boring to you. I gave reasons I find them interesting. You don't have to find them interesting.
      - jvanderbot 3y ago
        Yes, of course. IMHO only.
MavisBacon 3y ago
Definitely a very humble and nice guy. I was friends with his son when we were kids back in the 90s. He drove some cheap sedan and lived in modest digs in the suburbs of a Baltimore. Went out of his way and meet and autograph something for my older cousin who idolized him.

samstave 3y ago

I am currently attempting to build in Farthest Frontier early access - and My village starves to death quite quickly. The complexity granularity of control resources (down to managing soil quality for fields yield) management appears to be deep in this game, but I cant live long enough to find out yet. Sid deserves one of the top seats in the Video Game Hall of Fame. Carmack, Sid, Garriott, and (press) F for others. Video games built my career, and then in my career I helped several of these studios build out so they could build more! Video games are the fabric of modern computing's woven tapestry history. (A tapestry by the old wire weavers would be amazing)

Animats 3y ago
> My village starves to death quite quickly. You need two screens. One for the game, and one for the spreadsheet.
- samstave 3y ago
  haha. When "Masters of Orion" came out in the early 90s - and advanced... I had gotten the latest version of the time and lost interest quickly - and a friend asked why I didnt like it - and i replied "I don't like playing a spreadsheet" So there was an article back a few years ago, there was an article about a guy who lived in the mission in SF and he was basically the accountant to a guild on EVE and he did NOT play the game - he made 100K $USD Real IRL money being paid to manage the finances of some huge Eve guild's in game assets.... He said all he does all day is build spread sheets. Wait until someone make the GPT assistant or agents for these games. Jarvis and "Computer" will be real soon for in game massive fleet management. -- Wait until we connect a game to IRL infra - and you can design an workflow with a factorio-like interface powered by a GPT mortar to managing the actual execution and api connects.
  - bjelkeman-again 3y ago
    As to your last comment. Factory design, at the cutting edge, still seem very complex, with surprisingly many parameters. The designs I have been involved with (not that many) have a depth of complexity at the minute detail, that something like Factorio does not reflect. Everything is assumed to be interchangeable parts, but IRL they aren’t and often a lot of effort has to be spent just sourcing the right components, which then aren’t available and you get alternate components with slightly different specs. Fun!