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The Father of Civilization: Profile of Sid Meier

Posted by timothy on from the he's-just-this-guy-you-know? dept.

An anonymous reader writes with a link to Kotaku's recent profile of Civilization creator Sid Meier, and includes this snippet: "One year, as [coworker John] Stealey recalls, the two men went to an electronics trade conference. On the second night of the show, they stumbled upon a bunch of arcade games in a basement. One by one, Meier beat Stealey at each of them. Then they found Atari's Red Baron, a squiggly flight game in which you'd steer a biplane through abstract outlines of terrain and obstacles. Stealey, the Air Force man, knew he could win at this one. He sat down at the machine and shot his way to 75,000 points, ranking number three on the arcade's leaderboard. Not bad. Then Meier went up. He scored 150,000 points. 'I was really torqued,' Stealey says today. This guy outflew an Air Force pilot? He turned to the programmer. 'Sid, how did you do that?' 'Well,' Meier said. 'While you were playing, I memorized the algorithms.'"

4 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Meh.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    He had a hand in making some fine games in his day...

    And now... His name is slapped on all kinds of broken crap sequels nobody wanted.

    Thats your legacy sid. Overpriced, overhyped, crap. Good job i guess.

    R.I.P civ.

    1. Re:Meh.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

      Could you please actually learn what music is before talking about it.
      Stagnated ? A good part of my favorite music is from the end of the sixties, that was a freaking golden age, I wasn't even born then. Yes there was shit music then too, including at the top of the chart, as there is today. Have you even listened to (in no particular order, and only citing more than 30 years old music, there is plenty of good recent music too) Hendrix, The Doors, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, The Rolling Stones, The Velvet Underground, The Cure, Miles Davis, Leonard Cohen, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Dire Straits, Albert King, Neil Young, Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, Queen, Tom Waits, Bob Marley, The Police, the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Janis Joplin, Ten Years After, Muddy Waters, Billie Holiday ...

    2. Re:Meh.... by andrepd · · Score: 0, Troll

      What?? No, not at all! Are you for real? I love classical music. I don't listen to Bach because I've stagnated in the 17th century. I just think that it is far superior than any commercial crap that is produced today. Rock, with its "I'm so cool rocking the guitar", Pop, with its "chorus verse chorus bridge chorus", Rap with its glorification of shitty lifestyles, none of that interests me. The unfathomable intellectual depth of Bach's works is objectively superior. Even 20th century stuff like Pink Floyd or the Beatles is far more acceptable than this commercial made-for-teens stuff. Same thing goes for literature. If you ask a teenager if he prefers reading Heart of Darkness or Harry Potter, he'll pick Harry Potter of course. I know what I prefer, though. And it has nothing to do with stagnation or whatever. For heaven's sake, shitty erotic fanfic like 50 shades of gray topped bestselling lists. I don't know what you make of that...

  2. I memorized the algorith! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    'While you were playing, I memorized the algorithms.' The ACTUAL ALGORITHMS! Not the patterns resulting from them like a mortal man would.

    I see three possibilities here:
    1. Sid Meier, super genius.
    2. Sid Meier, not knowing as much about computers as we though.
    3. The person that say that he said 'While you were playing, I memorized the algorithms.' is an idiot.

    Which one do you subscribe to?