Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games

by Sid Meier

Addiction is a problem, but it can happen with any type of escapism—leisure, substance, behavior, food, even social approval—and it should be addressed through individual circumstances, not the banning of excellence. We shouldn’t fear the things that enthrall us, but instead acknowledge our responsibility to harness them as a tool, and determine what good can be accomplished with them.

When escapism is done right, it creates a community of escapees that never existed before. The only alternative would be to knowingly create something less powerful, to deliberately dial back that human connection out of fear. That’s madness. We’re stronger together, and the more universal and effective our games are, the more knowledge, empathy, and ambition we can inspire.

I gave up all pretense of realism and invented a dinosaur that could spit poison. As a friendly nod to our producer at EA, Bing Gordon, I named my new species the Bingosaur. Probably I would have had to change it by the time the game shipped, but I cleverly avoided that by never finishing the game.

Highly realistic AI gets accused of cheating even more often than its dishonest brethren, because on some level, all players are unnerved by the idea that a computer could outsmart them.

A designer who’s only interested in games will find it very hard to bring anything original to the table, and I’m sure this is true in other fields, too. Whatever it is you want to be good at, you have to make sure you continue to read, and learn, and seek joy elsewhere, because you never know where inspiration will strike.

Beautiful is nice, if you can swing it, but we don’t need to look any further than Minecraft to prove the modern-day value of gameplay independent from graphics.

Scholars talk about us, and critique us, because they know us. Gamers didn’t magically gain credibility with academics; they grew up and became academics. We created our own watchdogs, and when they complain, I know it’s only evidence of how much they care.

When games are done right, players don’t even realize they’re learning. Of course one could also argue that when teaching is done right, students don’t realize how much fun they’re having, either. As Marshall McLuhan famously quipped, “Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either.”

This unrealistic but pro-fun narrative of exceptionalism is found in nearly all forms of entertainment. Rambo always takes out the bad guys, and Sherlock Holmes always solves the mystery. Professional sports is the only arena where we expect the majority to lose, and even then, the worst-performing teams are usually given an advantage in the following year’s draft.

It didn’t matter how many different ways this conversation played out, I couldn’t convince our testers that it made sense for them to lose a three-to-one battle roughly one-fourth of the time. Past certain odds, people expected to win no matter what, but also to occasionally prevail if they were the underdog in the same situation.

“Well, I had this two-to-one battle, and I lost. Which is okay, I know we’ve had this discussion. But right after that, I had another two-to-one battle, and I lost again!” “Well, when you flip a coin, each flip is unaffected by the previous—” “No, no, I’m not talking about coin flips. It was Horsemen and Warriors.” “Right. Totally different. Got it.” Again, emotions trumped logic, and we had to accept that. So we started taking into account the results of previous battles, and making it extra unlikely for too many bad (or good) things to happen in a row. We made it less random, so that it could feel more random.

It wasn’t enough to listen to our players when they demanded to know the odds between spearmen versus tanks; we had to intuit what they really wanted instead of what they asked for. Feedback is fact insofar as it reveals how our game makes people feel, but after that, it’s our job to come up with the right solution to that problem. There are, after all, a lot of complex variables to take into account.

As with larger, more serious projects, I never try to cram something into a specific game template—I start with something that’s interesting all on its own, and figure out what kind of game it’s meant to be.

But it’s not the countless callbacks and references that make the nuclear Gandhi story so funny to me. It’s the fact that none of it is true. The overflow error never happened at all.

My habit of avoiding them prevents that kind of regret to a certain degree, but even when I do come across flaws, I don’t usually dwell on them. I see them as inspiration for a new game that does things differently.

The rock star wants to keep writing new music, but his fans want to hear the hits, and I think there’s a certain obligation for both to meet in the middle.

Fan interaction is a part of my job now, and it’s not a burden by any means—but it’s not the reason I get up in the morning, either.

I once received a star on the “Walk of Game” in San Francisco, with press photos and speeches and everything, and six years later the whole thing was demolished and turned into a Target.

I think that in life, as in game design, you have to find the fun. There is joy out there waiting to be discovered, but it might not be where you expected. You can’t decide what something’s going to be before you embark on it, and you shouldn’t stick with a bad idea just because you’re fond of it. Take action as quickly and repeatedly as possible, take advantage of what you already know, and take liberties with tradition. But most importantly, take the time to appreciate the possibilities, and make sure all of your decisions are interesting ones.