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Ask Sid Meier
Sid Meier is a household name in gaming. Titles he's designed, such as Railroad Tycoon, Pirates!, and Civilization, are pillars in the history of PC gaming. This year the fourth chapter in the Civilization series of games is being released, and we have a great opportunity. Today we're asking for questions about design and philosophy to pass on to Mr. Meier. On Wednesday, we'll be asking for questions to give to the Civilization IV development team. That day you'll have the chance to ask technical questions about the moddability and design concepts that went into the game. For today, here's your opportunity to put questions to one of the most respected game designers in the industry. Keep them topical, and one question per post please. We'll pass on the ten best questions, his responses will go up as soon as we get them back.
What do think are the most important aspects of game design and do you think they vary greatly for different genres?
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Mr. Meier,
Recent studies suggest the traffic and ad revenue for "shock sites" may surpass that of online games and pornography[1]. Estimates of growth range from 15%[2] to a whopping 200%[3] per annum.
With those hard numbers what are your thoughts regarding games capitalizing on this until-now dark side of the net? For example, an online version of Railroad Tycoon in which a train tunnel morphs into the goatse man with the use of a cheat code.
It may not be for everyone but considering the extremes to which games such as Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt go, is this really that far fetched?
Thanks for your time,
grub
1 - "The Internet's Hidden Gold Mine" 2004, Dahg & Felch
2 - "NSFW! Don't Click There!" 2003, Don Bayomi
3 - "'Shock Sites' to Surpass Porn by 2008." 2005, T. Johns
Trolling is a art,
...on open source clones such as FreeCiv? FreeLoaders, or flatterers? :)
What factors do you think help keep PC gaming alive when competing with consoles, and do you foresee that PC gaming will continue to survive when confronted with the next generation of consoles? Or from the reverse perspective, what prevents consoles from finally killing off PC gaming?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
This is just a general game design question. Have any of you worked on Adventure games (Kings Quest, Full Throttle, Star Trek: Judgment Rights, etc). Adventure games were my favorite genre and were part of the reason I started down a path that led to my computer science degree. Now days, it seems like that genre is dead with many games of that era that were scheduled for sequels in eternal limbo (the Tex Murphy series and Gabrial Knight are examples).
My question is, what do you think led to the move away from this genre? Comsumer demand? Replay value? Do you see a return to the old inventory/pont-n-click/story driven games eventually in the future?
How do you balance great game play with actually creating a product and shipping it within a reasonable time frame? More to the point, how do you create an entertaining game without falling into the 'duke nukem forever' release schedule?
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Could you please describe some of the more technical aspects of the games you developed? Specifically, what language(s) did you choose when implementing your games. Why? Which compiler(s) did you use, and why did you choose them? Were there any compilers that either stood out in a very positive or negative way for you? What libraries did you use, if any, and why did you choose them?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I think the big question on a lot of our minds is: Why did you start doing game design and programming in the first place?
When building any strategy game, where do you start when you attempt to balance the game? Do you find that you personally need to play test and try new concepts to balance games, or do the inherent mechanisms of your games lead towards making balance easier for you to to achieve?
Since the first Civilization game in 1991, how do you think the gaming industry has changed? And, is the change for the better or for the worse?
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
One quick question... Have you explored the possiblity of actually taking one of your great sim game engines and using it in a 'real world' type environment. (i.e. a city planner laying out their city in simcity 4000) Obviously things like an alien attack wouldn't be part of it, but with some changes I imagine it could make a relatively accurate sim. Your thoughts on it?
I've been a huge fan of Civilization since it first came out. I've always thought the AI of the computer players is relatively good, especially how each has certain characteristics which differentiate them and give them strengths and weaknesses. But AI in strategy games doesn't seemed to have advanced drastically in the last 15 years. What do you imagine the next big advances in game AI will be? When will games really learn how you play? When will we not be able to tell the difference between a human and computer competitor?
Developers: We can use your help.
You've got a consistent track record of making some of the most interesting single-player turn-based strategy games ever to grace our screens. Civ and its descendants also make great turn-based multiplayer strategy games.
On the other end of the scale, we have MMORPGs - which to date, have been the direct opposite of single-player turn-based strategy games: repetitive skill grinds, no story arc, etc. The problem tends to run down to the fact that not everyone wants to run an empire - but by the same token, not everyone is content to PVP or grind all day.
It seems that many of the concepts that make a TBS great (IMHO the list includes, but is not limited to, a largish number of factions, shifting alliances between those factions, territorial control, resource management games requiring player allocation of resources between the generation of infrastructure and expendable units, a God's-eye view of history, and a story arc that emerges out of the economic, social, and political interactions between the factions) could be translated to the MMORPG genre - at least, given a suitably inspired design team and suitably-large time/dollar budget.
To what extent (if any) can TBS aspects be translated to a genre as radically different as a MMORPG, and to that extent, what advice would you have for a MMORPG designer?
Mr. Meier,
Is it true that you are the face of the Phantom of the Opera in Microprose's Return of the Phantom? The role of the phantom is uncredited and listed as, "???????."
Inquiring minds would like to know!
Have you ever played FreeCiv? If yes, how did you like it? Do you believe in Free Software, and, more specifically, have you considered releasing (older) game engine sourcecode under the terms of the GPL, or "vintage" game content under a Creative Commons-like license?
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
Hi.
The evolution of the Civilization line has brough exciting new features with each new title. One thing though never changed much, I am talking of the government types. Do you have any plan and do you think it would be possible to have a system that could permit the creation of new government types, a kind of building block system (pretty much like unit building in Alpha-Centauri) that would give the opportunity to assign different modes of operation to different government levels, based on the separation of powers, the social choices, the economic models, etc. Thank you for your time.
Xavier Guilbeault
Some game producers, mainly id software usually release the source code for older versions of their games, have you ever thought of doing the same?
What are your reasons for/against? How do you feel about current free software Civ "clones" like FreeCiv?
It seems as if the mass market has become rather stagnant for several years. The last 'big new thing' was MMORPGs, and they've become fairly mature and standardized. Civ (although not the first 4X game) certainly sparked an entire class of games, Doom kickstarted first-person shooters and multiplayer. RTS games are still doing well, but classic adventure and turn-based have been somewhat in decline, as have RPGs. What do you see becoming the next genre in computer games?
With the unveiling of the Nintendo Revolution and its point-and-click interface, do you think Civilization-esque strategy games will finally come to home consoles? And with this new, entertainment-center, living room environment will there be new ways for you to expand on the genre? Perhaps, for example, with regard to teamplay and multiplayer, as these are big in the home console setting?
I understand that life's not fair, just why is it never unfair in my favor?
Sid -- I've always been curious: In Alpha Centauri, how did your team come up with as many snazzy future quotes as they did? Several of them seemed downright smart enough that I was suprised to see them credited to in-game characters rather than historical writers. Thanks for all the great games; I just dusted off Civ 3 for my yearly week of nonstop obsession.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Good games (and specially videogames) entail a great deal of simulation of reality: they are bits of everyday life simplified for casual enjoyment.
What do you feel is more important for a game to be great and/or successful: that the bits of reality captured in the simulation will create an environment with interesting and complex possibilities, or that the game mechanics are fun and easy to grasp?
Is balance required between these two design forces? And which of the two do you enjoy most in your own experiences as game user? (provided that you actually enjoy playing games and not just design them!)
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Who or what is your muse? When and how did that first big 'spark' click in your brain for games like Pirates! and Civilization?
Thank you,
Tom Darby
(P.S. If you feel that you simply can't answer this question properly in plain text, I'd be more than happy to drive on up to Firaxis...)
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I found great joy in being able to play Marla's Earth map against 15 CPU players in Civ III. The game took at least a month to complete... partly because of the size of the map, but a great part of it was the game took up to 10 minutes to process the CPU Player moves. What changes, if any, have been made to speed up game play without sacrificing the CPU's ability to formulate a realistic strategy?
It's a technical question, but I'd rather not wait until Wednesday:
How does the source code and implementation design quality of such open source engines compare to the actual products?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
A two-parter. I had read before you were making Civ III that you were planning on merging the two worlds of Civilization and Alpha Centauri, giving the player the ability to play through a big "sweep of time". Was this idea just too ambitious, and had to be shelved for the design process, and will it be revisited? If so, what about the design specifically was it that put this idea on the back-burner?
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
I admire many of the great game designers who have pushed the boundaries in gaming (yourself, Will Wright and Peter Molyneux to name a few). However, I can't help but feel that many of today's genres are stale and a lot of new games are mostly repeating past formulas as we see many sequels or derivatives of previous games being released. This appears to be a trend that will continue.
Where do you think the future of gaming is headed and how hard is it to introduce radical new ideas into the industry (for example, Firaxis shelving Dinosaurs or Will Wright's bold idea in Spore)?
Sid,
In any Slashdot gaming discussion invariably the debate between playability vs. graphics comes up. "This game is pretty but the game sucks!" "Nethack is all I need man."
Of all the games you've had a hand in, the intricate strategies and complex ways one can enjoy the game have always seemed paramount, with graphics playing a backseat for the most part. Some of the most successful games in the past have been very simple on the surface but can have amazing depth, all without gee-whiz factor of purty lights and pictures of bleeding edge graphics engines (Tetris, Nethack, Civ series, etc). How much focus do you place on the graphical aspects of gaming and do you think there is a way to achieve a balance without sacrifices on either end and how do you tackle that problem? Nintendo's approach of focusing on "fun" and innovation in their games seems to be one example of how it can be done but sadly they are an exception to the rule it seems.
Amoeba
Do not taunt Happy-Fun Ball
At the time that prompted learning photoshop and my first real in depth look at the Internet. In retrospect that helped spur my career in IT, by making things accesible enough for somoene who wasnt a programmer to go under the hood and make changes, to play with it.
Was it your intent to help spur interest in technology as a career, or was this just an easy way to make the game? Is making the game that easily modifiable in the future something you still plan on doing down the road?
The first version of Civilization was released 14 years ago. With the original copyright terms, it would now be entering public domain. But copyright terms have been extended many times, so Civilization will not enter the public domain for many decades, perhaps not at all.
As one of the more innovative game designers, I think your opinion on this is quite relevant. Is it necessary for copyrights on these games to last for longer than 14 years? Do you depend on revenue from the first Civilisation game? Do you even get any anymore? Would you still have created Civilization had the 14 year copyright term still been in effect? What is the rationale for longer copyright terms?
What I'm getting at, is that Civilization is a landmark in gaming; it's part of our culture and I feel that you have already been duly rewarded by society for creating it, so the reason for you having copyright - so that you can create games as a profession - is no longer valid. Do you agree, and if not, why? If you do agree, do you think there are any situations in which a game company should have longer copyrights?
Please bear in mind the distinction between trademarks and copyright - Civilization entering the public domain would not mean that people would be free to create their own games called Civilization.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Mr. Meier,
You've displayed a remarkable ability to keep yourself free of the major game publishers, even as groups such as EA begin fairly hostile takeovers of other game development companies. My question, then, is twofold: Is this simply an intent to wait for the right price, or is it instead a personal calling to stay out of the mega game houses? And secondly, what do you feel would be lost by allowing major publishing companies to acquire one (or more) of your original titles?
Mr Mier,
Have you improved the AI? CivIII was much the same game as CivII. The AI had the same failings. For many of us who play your games, and replay them, we are less interested in the pretty pictures as the game play. A smarter AI goes a long way towards keeping your loyal people loyal.
Are you planning on giving finer grain control of the difficulty settings? If not, why? One of the most annoying features of the game is the way that the difficulty is handled. Once you get past a certain point in difficult, it just cranks up the advantages to the AI (initial start, production, combat) globally. It would be nice to control which advantages it gets. For example, the huge initial advantage makes it difficult to play on the smaller maps. Yes isn't that the point? But the real thing is that if you want a smaller map for time reason (some of us have kids) but want to play a challenging game, you can tell in 10 moves (oops 3 opponents are close) it is time to quit. It would be nice to say, "Give them all the production and combat advantages possible, but only a small initial seed bonus" or conversely on a large sparse map, "give them a huge initial bonus and reduce the production and combat advantages to moderately high" being able to tune things like this will allow the players to create more difficult or easy scenerios.
Even better would be for the scenerio editor to have the further away AI get different bonuses to the close ones.
How much of the design work deals with the technical aspects of a product, as oppposed to the playing itself?
Meaning, do you start with what the machines can do, and design a game to fill those functions, or do you dream up a game and then design it so that it will fit the technical limitations of the machines?
You can't take the sky from me...
You've been involved with all of the main sequels in the Civilization series. I was wondering if you ever plan on getting involved again with Railroad Tycoon in a similar way? I know two sequels have already been made without your involvement -- they were pretty good. But I felt that something was "missing" in those sequels. Perhaps it was the Sid Meier touch? I honestly had more fun with the original Railroad Tycoon! I know I'm speaking for many when I ask if it's ever possible we'll see a TRUE sequel to your original Railroad Tycoon?
Vote Libertarian
Why do you keep using a square grid (however distorted by perspective) when a hexagon grid is known to be more accurate for movement across a landscape? I do understand that this would influence a number of other things, such as the Local City Area would be 18 surrounding hexagons instead of 20 nearby squares, and that when surrounding an enemy you only have 6 ways to attack instead of 8, but those are not insurmountable issues. For example, if the SCALE of the grid compared to the map was shrunk a bit, you could "enlarge" the Local City Area by another ring of hexagons, for 36 total surrounding cells. Productivity in every cell is merely set a little lower than before. In combat distance weapons having a range of 2 cells could allow an enemy to be surrounded by up to 18 of your units (probably only after Cannons are invented). Alternately, simple construction of roads and railroads already allow distant units to engage an enemy; why can't building roads and railroads near a city extend the Local Area of that city? And other ways of accommodating a hexagon grid are possible, I'm sure. So, why not?
How do you think multi-core/multi-threaded system will effect future games?
What about asymmetrical systems like the Cell?
Could the future of game design eventually lead to every unit being a separate thread?
What about managed code? Will future games start using garbage collection to speed development?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Thanks for your contributions to computer gaming. Out of all the tremendous games that you have developed, which one do you feel is the most underrated? That is, the one game that you found very rewarding to develop, but didn't garnish the attention that it should have.
What do you think of user modifications of your games- patches, hacks, cheats users rebalancing the game and reworking it into something hardly recognizable, and playing the game in ways you never intended it to be? I know that some designers take a rather dim view of this; specifically I recall how in Roller Coaster Tycoon, some later versions had special checks so that if it detected you cheating, then it would not just delibrately crash the game, it would set a special internal flag so that it would keep crashing every time you started the game from then on (until you reinstalled or deleted/tweaked a special data file); what do you think of these sorts of practices?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
In the book "Hackers" by Steven Levy, there is an implication that Sierra, with Ken Thompson, implicitly tolerated drug and alcohol abuse in the early games development studios he commanded. There were huge parties, huge hangovers, and general debauchery on a regular basis. Obviously this kind of atmosphere wouldn't be tolerated today--if only for the potential liability, but I wanted to ask you whether or not you found, in your experience, addictive personalities being attracted to the game programming and design profession? Did you ever have any negative (or positive) experiences related to drug use in and around your offices, especially in the early days? Do you condone (or not) the use of mind-altering substances as a creative aid during the design phase?
Putting aside their (potential lack of) work ethic for the time being and concentrating solely on the economic value of the artistry of game design, of those users you knew for a fact were using drugs, did you find them to be more or less creative than normal people?
And a followup: Could you put the Loki ports of your older games up for download, or at least make them available for purchase somewhere?
I am your target consumer! I'm that crazy guy who bought Civ 1, CivNet, Civ 2, Civ 2 Multiplayer, Alpha Centauri, Civ 2 w/ all the expansions, Civ 3, Civ 3 w/ all the expansions, and Civ 3 Gold. I even own a copy of 'Advanced Civilization' even though you nor your company were in charge of that one. I have a problem, though I'm sure you could say otherwise. Alright, enough with the lamprey attitude... So, Civ 3 was not as popular or well-liked as Civ 2. Anyone who has played both tends to agree with that statement - Civ 3 may be prettier, and may actually RUN in a Windows XP environment, but it lacks a great number of the features that everyone liked in Civ 2. Varying unit hit points/firepower, useful artillery, units being forced to stop when adjacent to another unit, farms, unit-based spies and diplomats, movable aircraft, etc. At the same time, Civ 3 offered a number of new features that few can become annoyed with, such as the differences between 'workers' and 'settlers,' or the inclusion of the unique units for the different civilizations, or the loss of that stupid ability to poison a town's water supply. My question is: How do you decide what to keep from the original game, and what to axe? How do you balance innovation with traditionalism? A great many sequel-based games try to make each iteration completely different (re: the current run of Final Fantasy games), which others keep with what works (re: Unreal Tournament). Do you consider each game an experiment on your original idea, or a new method to express the idea?
How do you tune values for economics, damage, etc in your games? Is there a special rule of thumb to follow (other than the "double it, if it looks too small, double it again" rule)?
Sid,
Many of your early games for Microprose were built around the concept of taking several robust mini-game concepts and weaving them together into a coherent whole (I'm thinking in particular of Pirates! and Covert Action, although there are others that fit this description). Was this a conscious design decision? Were you looking for interesting play mechanics to build games around, or did you start with the concept (Pirates! Spies!) and then work from a list of pirate-like and spy-like activities?
Conversely, when one of these mini-games doesn't work out like you'd hoped, do you cut them? A lot of people reacted negatively to the dancing game in the new Pirates! re-make, for instance, and I hear a general consensus among gamers that the mini-game build around sacking a city lacks depth. How hard is it to cut one of these games? What do you do when the mechanic just doesn't feel right?
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
What is your favourite game of all time, and why?
C17H21NO4
How do you feel about the largely unrecognized awesomeness of Colonization? Have you thought about making a new revision of it? What about open sourcing it so guys like me can fix it up to work on modern OS's?
Like any programmer, I've spent ridiculous amounts of time playing Civilization, but in all honesty I've spent more playing Colonization and I always felt it was a better (but less-well-received) game than Civilization. I still find myself trying to run the original DOS game on my Athlon64, and I find it sad that I can't get the original MIDI music to work either.
Not only was Colonization an incredible game, it was educational without cramming it down my throat. When I was a little kid studying history I knew all of the pioneers by name and accomplishments already.
Kudos to you, and thanks for the memories.
QUESTION 1: Why do you think there are so few online strategy games for systems like the Xbox?
If simply the cumbersomeness of controllers. Why is there no innovation? Do you think the Nintendo Revolution controllers might lend nicely to strategy games? Where one could easily draw a circle around their units and then hit a button to select an action option?
QUESTION 2: With the advent of "multi-player" internet games...do you think we'll ever see multi-faceted intertwined games?
For example: A hybrid of Civilization & Battlefront style games. Where certain players are playing strategically. And other players are fighting the actual battles?
How did you get your name on all of this software? We don't see "John Carmack's Quake", or "Rand Miller's Myst", but we see Sid Meier everywhere, making you one of the only household names in game design. When the first "Sid Meier's ...." title came out, did people know who you were, or just assume that you were an expert on pirates and the war between the states?
By the way, F-15 and F-19 were two of the greatest games of my teen years.
Will there be any forthcoming updates to the (in many minds: ultimate) sci-fi strategy franchise, Alpha Centauri?
I wonder if it has ever been considered to make the ultimate strategy/simulation game, utilizing the brilliance of both Sid Meier, of almost every series, to Yoot Saito, designer of almost every (good) sim, including most of the early but goodie sims, i.e. SimTower, and I believe the early SimCities. Perhaps together they could make one game that could dominate the simulation genere, kind of like how Halflife I/II have dominated the FPS Genere. (little punch to those quake/doom/UT/Farcry/etc. players) My $.02
Recently, there have been a couple stories about World of Warcraft having a virtual plague outbreak, which apparently has evolved a new method of gameplay.
Have you found any modes of gameplay in anything you've designed appear in 'the wild'? Not just different ways of using the existing, 'accepted' paths, but entirely new ways of playing, and winning, that you didn't envision in the design and implementation of the game.
antipaucity
Not so very long ago, computer games were simple beasts, relying on little more than text and simple rectangles. Nearly all of these games remain fun today. Advancing technology has made it possible to experience games in new ways, but do you believe the art of game creation itself has been much advanced by computers? As an example, conceptually speaking, Doom and Quake, though technological marvels, aren't so very far removed from paper-and-pencil role playing games. The computer merely automates the dice-rolling and map drawing.
To put it another way, are there any new types of games that you've thought of or are out there that are simply impossible without computers?
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Turn Based games seem to always have "cheating" AI in order to pose a challenge to a human player - the Civilization games are notorious for some of this.
What are your thoughts on this? Is it all about the gaming experience so, ultimately, "cheating" AI is perfectly OK so long as it provides a fun and challenging experience? Or would you ultimately want to see AI that could actually play by the same rules as the humans, and play well?
Side question: Just as we have video cards optimized to provide better graphics, could you see AI cards in production to enhance the AI of various games? Is AI even really relevant, past the point where the "average" gamer is presented with a challenge?
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
According to wikipedia's bio you started designing games in the 80's, and there seems to be a common element of deliberation or strategy in many of them (less twitch, more think).
:^)
What games or game designers inspired you? I've not played MULE, but I'd guess you might have played it. What about board games? Chess, Go?
Since you make games for a living, what do you do "for fun"?
--Robert
Unfortunately, at least one claim has been made that the source code no longer exists.
Can you tell us whether or not the code still exists, and if it does, whether or not there is any chance of it being released? Are you in any position to influence the decision as to its release, and if so, would you argue in favor or in opposition?
Thank you for your superb contributions to the gaming scene.
Question: How much of a hand did you have in the recent remake of Pirates!, and what do you think of it?
Thanks!
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
I love playing Civ III on my laptop. It's great for on the plane. But as it is released, the game requires that the installation CD be in the drive every time you play even though none of the data on the CD is needed! This has the effect of annoying your customers by forcing them to search for CDs every time they play, unnecessarily wearing out the CDROM hardware on your customers' computers, and wasting your customers' power/battery life.
Most people I know who play Civ III must resort to downloading a "No-CD Crack" to fix these problems. How do you feel about the use of cracks to fix the flaws in your software? Do you intend to include similar CD restrictions in Civ IV, despite the fact that copyright violators will still be able to get around it, while your customers will continue to be inconvenienced?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
On my Linux box, I have two Sid Meier games: the original civilization, under Dosemu, and Alpha Centauri, ported by Loki Games. (As far as I know, Alpha Centauri is the only Firaxis game that runs on any non-Microsoft platform.) While any game could eventually be ported to any platform, choosing to use traditional sockets for networks and OpenGL for graphics and so on will make such action significantly smoother, and I believe is a strong consideration in choosing games for the Linux porting houses. Is there any thought going into portable design, any plan to release on any operating system other than Windows, and in particular, any plan - or thought of - releasing on Linux?
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
Dear Sid, Have you ever though of creating a game like Master of Orion? The genre could use some of your design. MOO3 was a design failure. The best game ever released was MOO2 and it was released in 1996! They miss the point of making ship design/ship combat fun, and it could use a lot of your last Pirates!
Mr Meier,
I greatly enjoy Civ, Civ II, and Civ III, and I will undoubtedly buy Civ IV, and its expansion, for the PC. However, I still cringe when I see a "sticker price" of $60, especially when I know there's a $30 expansion coming down the pike in less than a year, and a year after that I can get both of them together in a "Gold" or "Game of the Year" edition for $45 or $50 that you will still realize profits from. You're one of the few developers who makes great games that don't stress my hardware and force me to get upgrades, so I guess I should be thankful about that.
My buying habits -- waiting until the games hit the discount bin with their expansion packs -- probably hit you in the wallet. Is there anything you can say to convince me I should buy Civ IV as soon as it's released?
Thanks
Jurph
My question is this:
When I have recently read the books Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse by Jared Diamond, I was astonished by how closely the underlying concepts and ideas in the books match those in the Civilization series. (effect of environment, interaction between civilizations, making use of available resources, etc.)
Have you read the books or corresponded with Mr. Jared Diamond? Could you comment on the similarities/differences between the games and theories of J. Diamond? Honestly, I am really very curious if he has played or has been affected by the game?!!!
I noticed in the original Civilization that the computer player would sometimes be able to 'cheat' or do certain things that humans could not. Presumably these worked around limitations in the AI, but they seemed to spoil the game a little once they became obvious. Was this part of the original game design, and do you think it's unavoidable, or do better AI engines mean that computer players can be subject to the same rules as humans?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
One of the few elements of the Civ games that I always disliked was the manner in which the game is made more difficult on higher difficulty settings. It seems like the game is made harder at first with smarter AI, but after a certain point, the game mechanics change and the AI just cheats. AI Civs are permitted to acquire techs they haven't researched or traded for, AI Civs cut ludicrous deals with other while gouging the player, they produce units units faster than is possible, field armies of economically ruinous size, overcome preposterous odds in battle, all while researching at a breakneck pace and beating the player to wonders with no civil unrest. Finally, when the player comes out on top despite all this, the AI civs simply all gang up on him and arbitrarily start wars when the player is close to victory regardless of how benevolent, honorable, and generous of a diplomat he has been. The difficulties in developing a good AI justify some such measures, but rivals such as Galactic Civilizations appear to have successfully created "smarter" AIs rather than just stacking the deck against the player. What kind of unique challenges do Civ and its cousins in developing "smart" AIs that can challenge the best of players? Is it clear when you've hit an AI wall and the only way to toughen up the difficulty is with rule-bending? Does the pressure to publish and realize revenue result in shortcuts in AI development? I've always been curious about how much development efforts goes into AI, it strikes me as one of those areas where it'd be easy to cut corners and still produce a game looks, sounds, and plays great.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
There are a lot of issues in society today which have become extremely taboo. We can't avoid them, but to talk about them, or include them as game content runs a serious risk of being ripped apart by various extremist groups (who sit on the both extremes). Some of these things could apply to the macro-managed world of Civ, including terrorism, global warming, and bio technology. Also there are a number of older frowned upon topics, that are part of our history whether we like it or not, racism, genocide, and slavery.
These are just to name a few issues that might make the game to hot to publish, but may be relevant content in the context of empire building/managing. Will CIV 4 have some of these aspects included insofar as they are relevant, or will the game pussy foot around the most controversial?
Geoffrey Peart McMaster University Sfwr Eng Coast of Araska
In order to leave a legacy, future game designers must have access to your work. Future game designers will have to overcome both legal and technical obstacles to access your work. The legal obstacles are not going to go away.
I have purchased copies of Xcom1, Master of Orion, Master of Magic, Civ 1-3, and so on. However, this is no longer possible. Several of these are not for sale anywhere. We have seen the Linux variant of the Planetary Pack totally disappear.
These works (and yours) will still be copyrighted by somebody long after my grandson is dead of old age.
How do you hope to preserve a lasting legacy of game design?
I've always thought that you had a very novel approach to games and created some of the most addicting games. Will you be doing any MMORPG games? (which are already addicting, but I can only image how addicting you can make them :)
I would love a newer version of Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire. Can we expect some? Beg? Sacrifice something?
When you are about to begin work on a new project do you choose team members because you feel they will impact the design of the game in the direction you envision?
Or do you assemble a team consisting of different strengths and let the group dynamics mold what the end result of the game will be like?
Diablo was not evolutionary.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume English is not your first language. I said that I would like to see games that are evolutionary (as far as graphics and gaming engine are concerned) and which are somewhat improved versions of existing games, except with a new plot, story elements, artwork etc. The Diablo series is evolutionary because Diablo 2 is a bunch of improvements on Diablo without changing anything major. I'd like to see a third version that is better yet, with the specific improvements I mentioned, which would be another evolutionary (rather than revolutionary) change.
Diablo was a Roguelike with a few fancy graphics tacked on.
Diablo was somewhat like rogue in that it had similar story elements and traditional equipment, levels, and other RPG elements, but the plot was completely different and the gameplay was completely different. The graphics were obviously improvements on ascii, there was sound, the control was via a mouse with the keyboard as secondary input, etc. etc.
why not count Doom 3 (which is Doom with fancier graphics) as "evolutionary"?
Doom 3 is evolutionary improvements on Doom 2 and Doom 1. Who would argue otherwise? The problem with Doom 3 is the lousy plot, and poor story telling. I actually look at games as being composed of three parts: gameplay, story, and display. The gameplay is the mechanics of play, what controls, what you can do, how fast it goes etc. Story is the plot and characters. Display is the graphics and sound. Doom 3 has a great display and the gameplay is OK, but nothing special. The story is crap. I wish gaming companies would hire few good writers rather than more code monkeys. Diablo 2 had a very nice story, the display was good too, but I'd like to see some evolutionary improvements to the gameplay.
The Scratchware Manifesto
Do you still look to boardgames for inspiration? Have you tried any boardgames that have been released in the last decade, such as Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, or Puerto Rico? Do you see any aspects of these games that could be adapted to perhaps break some of the rigid stereotypes that PC games all seem to conform to these days?
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Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
There are two types of games currently in development. Games for consoles (xbox, ps2, etc.) and games for beefed up computers. On the other hand more and more people are purchasing laptops since they better fit their lifestyle and provide the functionality they need. Unfortunately most of these machines do not have specs required by most of the modern games because if they would , they would weight more than a person would want to carry around. Do you see any value in game development specialized for casual portable machines which would address this audience?
Having quite a few of your games, one thing has always stood out: While the game concepts are out of this world, the quality of the programming is usually very lacking, most especially in the optimization area. As an example, Civ 1, 2, CTP, and 3 all ran much, much slower on my hardware than games which by all rights *should* have been much more demanding. Why has that been the case?
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
an interactive history lesson?
:-)
Don't get me wrong, I've been enthralled by Civ ever since I first saw it on my high school's computer lab computers. And I did learn a thing or two about history from the game.
But...it's not really your own civilization you are creating. Its a sort of interactive history lesson, with specific technological breakthroughs, wonders of the world, historic figures, and even the artifact of the Christian calendar.
But it seems to me, that if you were to truly rewind the clock and let history unravel in a different direction, many things would be different, not just the calendar! Why not start at year 0 and count up from then instead of the contrived system of some odd number of years between turns that changes as time moves on?
Science and technology hasn't always been a march towards progress that's more or less fueled by money. Sometimes there's a great leap forward brought about by a controversial figure. Perhaps a sort of random event engine in the game could replicate this. For instance, the player might be working on stamping out religious and political unrest in his empire, when he suddenly discovers that a figure (say Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, or, maybe it doesn't need to be a scientific person, maybe a Martin Luther or a Thomas Jefferson, the name could optionally be randomly generated but their contribution to history would be the equivalent) has appeared and gives the player an empire changing choice, either maintain the status quo or embrace a new paradigm. These could be random events, not entirely dependent on an Earth-like history.
Also, perhaps the same idea could be applied to the wonders of the world.
To me, this would be even more satisfying and enthralling. Don't just recreate history as the Romans, Babylonians, Chinese or the Americans, but as a whole new people who the player can shape into one of those civilzations, or something entirely new. Cultures are dynamic, not static as in the Civilization (and other such games.) They're molded by the people who live in them, leaders, thinkers, malcontents and common people.
Now, if only I could get paid to come up with ideas like you do.
Sometimes "sequels," if you will, are redundant and add very little to the original game *cough*Madden*cough*. IMO a sequel or continuation of a game is okay if it doesn't feel like the same game rehashed. I personally haven't played Civ, but seeing magazine ads for Age of Empires 3 make me want to buy it because it's so different from the original AoE (which I still enjoy and occasionally play). This is apparent in the Final Fantasy "series"; yes, there may be eleven FF games (excluding games like Crystal Chronicles and Tactics), with a twelfth in the production pipeline, but each one is different. FF7 != FF8 != FF9 etc. Don't pull an Electronic Arts and give me the same damn football game with updated rosters (which will be outdated soon anyway) year after year after year.
This may get lost in the noise (5 pages long now and still growing) but I would like to know what to tell my son.
He plays games. He's never been interested in hardware. He doesn't know what an OS is, nor a programming language - yet.
However, becoming a game designer may not depend on these things...in the not-too-distant future.
Hearing about the feast-or-famine industry, where human resources are used up and discarded (to be replaced by the next eager candidate), I don't want my son to walk into this without a clue.
I'm a J2EE guy, I don't write or design games. There's too little room here to really put my question(s) into context, but I feel you'll understand where I'm coming from.
What would you tell my son?
Thanks.
Redundancy is good; triple redundancy is twice as good! - Me.
I have played Civilization, Civ II, and CivI II. I mostly play and enjoy Civ II (it is one of my all-time favorite games) because that is the first one I ever played. One thing that I have noticed is that, with each new version, the game takes longer to complete. My Civ III games take substantially longer to complete than my Civ II games (in which I usually win via space race) and many times I don't even get into the modern age in Civ III. This can get very boring and frustrating, and this is the main reason why I prefer Civ II to Civ III. Is Civ IV going to follow this trend, or are you going to make the game play out much faster?
The current business model for games is getting ruinously expensive: more detailed textures, more frames, features added because they're standard (e.g. multiplayer modes). Games are now easily a dozen man years and several millions of dollars in cost, making game development a high risk investment. Do you see any possible business models which may help reduce the risks which stem from such high costs?
I really liked the ability to choose the economic model, values, security and future society attributes for my faction in Alpha Centauri, and I also like the unit editor and I was considerably disappointed when those features did not appear in Civ III.
Is there any chance we'll see those features incorporated into Civ IV?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
From all the previews I've read, there will not be any choice of atheism/agnosticism for a religion in Civ IV. If all the religions are being made equal, with equal benefits for each, why are you singling this one out? It would make perfect sense to "discover" atheism right along with Marxism/Communism, as those governments are officially atheist. Personally, I was pretty upset to find out that my own personal faith was not going to be included in the sequel to one of my favorite game series, a game that will be sucking up a lot of my time in the future. Is it actually in there and we simply haven't heard of it? Or is it deliberately not being included?