Factually! with Adam Conover - The History of Civilization (the Game) with Sid Meier

Episode Date: December 30, 2020

Just in time for the lazy holiday break, legendary game designer Sid Meier joins Adam to discuss the genesis of his seminal game series “Civilization.” Sid and Adam explore how the early years of game design were driven by programmers following their passions, how good games need “interested decisions,” and the advice he gives budding young game designers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Factually. My name's Adam Conover, and welcome to the doldrums of the holiday season. That's right. It's a long stretch between December 25th and January 1st, right? No matter what winter holiday you celebrate, you have celebrated it. You have opened all the presents. You have eaten all the fucking cookies. There is nothing more to say to your family, whether in person or over Zoom. You're on good terms, but you've covered all the bases. You've seen all the holiday movies.

So now you're just sitting around in your sweatpants waiting until you can get drunk on New Year's. You know, this is a time where we're all 13 years old again. We can do whatever we want. And unfortunately, there just isn't even much to do. Hell, you can't even go to the movie theater and see a crappy Tim Allen movie with your family. What the hell are you supposed to do? Well, what better time then to fire up the old gaming console, sink into the couch, and start playing some video games, right? I love video games.

I play them all the time. And I've been playing them more than ever this year. You can in fact watch me play video games while I talk on my Twitch channel at twitch.tv slash Adam Conover. Like millions of other people, video games are now an integral part of my life. But one thing we forget about this medium is that video games are a relatively new form of entertainment. They got going in the late 1970s. So depending on when you want to date it, this now dominant cultural form, which makes billions of dollars every year, the biggest video games make far more money than the biggest movies. This form is just about 40 years old. That means, think about it in film terms, we're around like in the 50s. If you're

thinking about film, that's where we are today in 2020 with video games. This means that the people who created the very first video games are still alive. In fact, they're not even that old right now. We can't go talk to the earliest stars of the silent film era, but we can talk to the earliest people who made video games. earliest people who made video games. And the thing is, the world in which those pioneers of video games worked was very different from the massive, professionalized studios we know today. These people were not creative executives. They were often just weirdo computer programmers or hobbyists who would, you know, cobble together a game in their spare time and then put an ad in the back of a magazine and send people floppy disks in the mail. It was a wild era, and the basic principles of video game design were laid down in those early years, and they continue to influence video games and the way we think about the world to this day. There's perhaps no better example of this than the game Civilization. You might have heard of this game. It's a globe-spanning strategy

game. You play an individual civilization like England or China and guide it from prehistory into the modern era. Now, this game has an incredibly engaging mix of history, fantasy, strategy, and narrative, and the gameplay is just addictive. It's one of those titles that keeps you up hours later than you were supposed to, just clicking one more turn over and over again. I myself have had to delete this game from my hard drive. You know, I had work to get done that didn't involve building a pleasure palace for Kublai Khan or advancing my Persian phalanx against Carthage. But more importantly, this game is now a lens through which millions of people look at the history of the world. The lessons taught by civilization are lessons that people carry forward in the way that they think about the world around them, the way they think about history, and even the way they think about their own lives, just like film or novels or any other art form influences our worldviews. So I think it's important to ask, where did this game come from?

Who came up with this cultural artifact that has now lasted for decades and influenced so many people? Well, the full title of that game, Civilization, is Sid Meier's Civilization. And today we have on the show, I'm happy to say, legendary game designer Sid Meier himself. That's right. It's all his fault that I blew through that essay deadline in college. So I'm going to be talking to him on this episode. This is going to be a low-key fun episode for what should be a low key fun time. So, you know what? Grab a couple of cookies, pour yourself an eggnog or whatever your beverage of choice

is, and, you know, relax. I know it's been hard to do, but let's relax together with this interview with Sid Meier. Sid, thank you so much for being here. My pleasure. Sid, thank you so much for being here. My pleasure. So look, video games, computer games are, I believe, the greatest new art form of the century, in my opinion. That's what they've grown to be.

Did you know that that is what they were when you got started in the late 80s, early 90s, right? Creating, you know, you created one of the greatest game series ever, Civilization. Did you know when you were taking those first steps that that's what this was? That actually was a question that came up quite a bit back in the early days. I think since there was so much technology involved and it was kind of a hackers and geeks kind of thing, there was really a question, is it an art form? Is it just kind of a use of technology? And I think as we made games, as we showed what they could do, there was that kind of combination of technology, but also creativity,

I think that is part of any art form. So I think we made the case that it was art, art based on some very cool and emerging technology, but there was a lot of creativity involved. And kind of as we learned more and more what we could do, that creativity became more and more part of what games were about. Well, tell me a little bit about those earliest years. I mean, you founded MicroProse, correct? Correct. And you created these series that we still have today. But what was your first inkling of that games had this potential, right? That what drew you to it? I mean, when you got started, it wasn't a foregone conclusion that people would even use computers for games, right?

Very much so. In fact, we were discouraged from using computers. I studied computers in college. They were IBM mainframes that lived in an air-conditioned room, and you went with your deck to punch cards and made your offering to the computer, and you got your printout and hoped that it worked. So definitely gaming was discouraged in those early days. It wasn't until the personal computer, the Atari, the Apple, the Radio Shack computers came about that there was extra computing time available to play games. But games had always been an interest of mine, even as a kid before there were computers. I loved games. So I can kind of combine two things that that I enjoyed.

I'd studied computers in college and I loved games and the time was right to start making games. And I just did that kind of for my own enjoyment. And this industry gradually started to happen and I jumped on board and declared myself a game designer and the rest is history. What is the first, I'm really curious because you were around in those very early days, what is the first computer game that you remember encountering in your life? Were there games on those IBM mainframes? There were not. games on those IBM mainframes? There were not. In fact, I tried to put a tic-tac-toe game on the machine and I got in trouble for that. My account was canceled. So I had like a two or

three year delay in my career based on that. Wow. For tic-tac-toe? Yeah. Yeah. There were, I mean, there's something called Space Wars way back then that if you had access to a graphics terminal, you could play. But we didn't have graphics terminals. So it wasn't until a couple of years after college when Space Invaders came into the arcades, Pac-Man. That was kind of the awakening that, oh, these games are fun, but I don't want to have to keep putting quarters into the machine. I want to do this at home. And that was kind of the impetus to play computer games at home was saving those quarters. And also personal computers, as you mentioned, like those mainframes that you're talking about, those were owned by, they're massive computers owned by what, companies and

universities, and you basically had to beg for time on them. So like, yeah, any sort of frivolous use would be frowned upon. But once you could have a computer in your own home, you could do whatever you wanted with it. So people could, or all they were paying for was electricity. Exactly. You could, it was your computer. And immediately games took off. That was the untapped need, desire that home computers filled. You know, you could do spreadsheets and other boring stuff, but people really wanted to play games. And the computers evolved in that direction. The early computers were black and white, but people wanted color to be able to play the games as they saw them in the arcade, for example. They wanted more sound. So home computers evolved really based on the needs of gaming to give you more color, more sound, you know, kind of more graphic speed because people wanted to play the games they saw in the arcade and the computers had to kind of keep up. I never thought of that. You're right. Like in the 80s and early 90s, like home computers really advertised as like, you can do your taxes on it and like, look at the spreadsheet. And I

remember like VisiCalc or is that what it was called being like an early killer app? Killer. It was a killer app. Yeah. But like, if you look back at those, what rudimentary business formulas must have you been doing on these? Like, you know, doing a spreadsheet on an Apple IIe, it's not like you were really able to do serious, serious business work on it. And yeah, but the idea that games instead, obviously, I knew would draw people to it. But the idea that games would drive the innovation of the color and everything else, that's nothing I ever considered. But it's so obvious now that you say it. Things like VisiCalc were kind of the rationalization for getting a computer, you know.

And then you really wanted it for the games, but you had to kind of justify it to, you know, whoever you had to justify it to. So, oh, it'll do, you know, visit calc and important stuff like word processing. But I really want to play games. Yeah. Even, even in those very early years, like even Nintendo flirted with having, you know, like, oh, it's not just games. It comes with a little robot.

It's like educational. Like there was this whole element of a fig leaf that had to be put on the industry. There was a shame. There was a shame to being a gamer. It was like, you're wasting your time playing games. Don't you have anything better to do? Some of the first games that you worked on were flight simulators, right? Which had, they also had that veneer of seriousness to them. Like, oh no, you're learning to fly a plane.

That's true. I think we, you know, in the age of Pac-Man and Space Invaders and games like that, we thought there was a market for games that were a little more, had a little more depth to them. Kind of, you know, real world games like flight simulators. And, you know, we were expanding the audience, expanding the market because we were, you know, we consider that like the Wild West. It was the, you know, the early days and we didn't know what we could or could not do.

So we might as well try, you know, all sorts of different things, whether it's a flight simulator or pirates or, you know, we ended up with doing civilization. simulator or pirates or, you know, we ended up with doing civilization, but so many, you know, varied topics were done, you know, we made games on because we didn't know what was not possible. So we figured we'd give it a try. Right. I'm always really fascinated by, and this is kind of an aside, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it, about the Wild West years in any market or any space. You know, like I got my start doing video on the internet before YouTube. Like we were uploading QuickTime videos in like 2005

to our own web servers that people were watching with my college sketch comedy group. And we had massive hits for the time. And it's because there was like no other video content. Our videos were not very good, frankly, but there was nothing else to watch. And people were like, wow, a funny hits for the time. And it's because there was like no other video content. Our videos were not very good, frankly. But there was nothing else to watch. And people were like, wow, a funny video on the internet. I didn't know this existed.

And then they would send it to each other. And now we never would have been able to survive because online video is so saturated. YouTube is so competitive. But those Wild West years gave us room to experiment and for things to catch on early. And I wonder, yeah, I wonder having gone through something similar, what that was like for you. Very much the same. We would be wondering what new game is going to come out this month, you know? Today, it's like, which, what 27 games are going to come out today between noon and one o'clock? So it's very different in that regard. The other difference is we were

really discovering the technology as we went. A lot of the games we made in the early days were based on some new capability of the hardware that we discovered. At one point, we figured out how to make a smoothly scrolling map that would move around the screen. And, you know, what do we do with that? Let's make a game about pirates where you're sailing across the ocean. Or we learn how to make a 3D model rotate and turn. Let's make an airplane game with that. So a lot of the game ideas that we pursued were based on a technological trick kind of that we discovered, and we turned it into a game. You know, today the computers are so capable that,

you know, you got to kind of hold yourself back and not, you know, make a game forever. But in those days, it was kind of like, here's a new piece of technology. We'll, you know, we'll fill up our 32K of memory, and when it's full, we're done, and we'll ship it. So very much a different world. But also, I assume, again, with your early days, you really weren't limited by what other people had done. You were kind of free to try anything because there were no genres, no conventions, no market research to tell you what path to follow. And so we had that kind of freedom in the early days. Yeah. The difference between then and that, like now pushing the limits of technology means you need 500 programmers to, you know, pull,

like ring something out of the new graphics cards that they upgrade every year back then that was just you finding some some untapped potential of some little chip yourself as a programmer i mean you were you were designing and programming games personally right i was not only that i was doing the art and the sound uh basically the first seven or eight games that i made i i I was the only person working on them. Wow. But the potential of what we could do graphically, et cetera, was not that great. So my art was good enough. My sounds were good enough.

And what was different then is we really required the player to provide their imagination to fill in all the missing colors and sounds and pieces. And we learned to do a lot with a little, and that has served us well, really. And we learned that what happens in the player's mind is more important than what happens on the screen, regardless. Even today, it's important to engage, you know, all of the player's brain and not, you know, not just try to amaze them with something cool that they're watching, but get them to imagine, you know, what that world is and what would I do in that world and what would

I do next? And how would I deal with this situation? Give them a lot of interesting things to think about. So they're kind of their entire brain is engaged. And that was, those were lessons we learned in those early days. Yeah, that is, when I think back on my early days with video games, that's such an important piece of it, that it was happening in my mind, not just on the screen. Like I think so much about all the art that came with video games in those days. They had these big boxes with like a big painting on the front, you know, and they would often come with really lavish instruction manuals that were filled with art as well. You know, Nintendo had all these

magazines and strategy guides and manuals and posters that like would depict the characters. And, you know, sometimes it'd be every spell you cast would have a different piece of art, right? And that's because the graphics were so rudimentary. It was like, here's what it should look like in your mind. Picture this. When the screen flashes when you cast Fireball, think of it like it's like this kind of, it's a lavish fantasy painting. And that's what it would mean to me in my head.

That was why it was so transportive. And that was often more of, and again, I was a child at the time, but it was more transportive of an experience often more of an, again, I was a child at the time, but it was more transportive of an experience than I often have today with games. Um, uh, and so I, that's really cool to hear that that was something that you were like distinctly aware of when you were designing. Yeah, it was, it was all we could do. And, um, but we found, what we find though, is that as the graphics got better, as you know, everything, the presentation sounds got improved, that widened the audience.

Because not everybody was willing to make that commitment to imagining the fireball the way they'd seen it in the documentation. You know, I think as things got better and better, the audience grew. We've seen that. And now we have games that appeal to you know such a wide range of players um but but in the early days you had to bring your imagination to the to the table to play now uh one thing that i think is really interesting when you look at how art forms develop like this is so many art from forms forms go from being basically pulp to like auteur driven. You know, if you look at film, if you look at comic books, graphic novels, things like that,

they go from being, hey, we're just churning out B movies, you know, westerns, who cares? They're just, you know, whatever. And then you start to like some people start to really put extra effort in and they start to have their names attached to it. You know, you know, Sergio Leone or Clint Eastwood, or like in comics, you know, the names of the artists, you know, you know, Stan Lee and da da da. And you were one of the very first people to make that transition in games because to, to, because you were one of the very first game designers where people knew your name. And that's why I'm excited to talk to you.

I'm like, oh, Sid Meier, I've been seeing that name on the top of game boxes for years in an age where nobody's name was on top of the box. It didn't say Shigeru Miyamoto's Mario on top. It took us longer to find out who he was, but your name was on there. What led to you putting your name on your games? That was really a marketing strategy.

We had done a couple of flight simulator games and a submarine game, a couple of military games. And I decided I wanted to make a pirates game. Wouldn't it be fun to make a pirates game, kind of more of a storytelling role-playing game? And my partner, Bill Staley, who was, I was the creative guy. He was the sales, the marketing guy. He said, no, we need more of those military games because they like those military games. And I was like, no, I want to make a pirates game

because pirates are cool. What a serious conversation. No, Pirates are cool. Yeah, you had no marketing research. That was all you had to go on was I personally think Pirates are cool. Exactly.

And so he said, well, we'll put your name on the game so the people who like the military games might say, OK, it's the same person. And I like those games. So I'll give this game a try. And pirates did well. So, you know, once something works, you stick with it. And it became kind of a brand, you know, of a certain type of game. you know, of a certain type of game. And, you know, the irony to me is that as a game designer,

our role is really to recede into the background. I mean, in, you know, a movie producer, a movie director, or a singer or an artist, you're focused on that person. But in the game, our job is to kind of pull back and let you be the star. You'd make the big decisions. You feel the ownership of the experience. And so there's an irony that, and it's probably a reason why there aren't many games that have designers' names on them,

because you don't want to feel that you're playing as Sid Meier. You want to feel that you're playing as yourself. And when you win, it's you that gets the glory for that, not this Sid character. So it has become, you know, it's worked as a brand, but, you know, I think there are reasons why it hasn't become the norm in the industry because the one unique thing that we have is the interactivity and the ability to make the player the key character in whatever it is. That's not true of a movie or a book or a piece of music. So that's kind of the one uniqueness that we have.

And we want to be careful not to take the attention away from the player. Well, it's really interesting because I think there are some games where you do want to feel like you have total control. And then there are other times I'm playing a game is I want to feel like I'm in good hands and I want to feel like the person who created it had intent and I'm going to, you know, enjoy an experience that they, that they wanted me to have. I'm of two minds about it. I'm also of two minds about, you know, it's interesting that we know your name and we know, say Hideo Kojima's name and a few people like that. But we don't know the names of so many other game designers who have had influence on the industry. And so I wonder how the and that's that's, you know, to the detriment of those designers, maybe to some extent.

I wonder how the industry would be different if, you know, in the same way, every time you buy an album or stream an album, you know, the name of the person who made the album, uh, it's right there on it. If every single time you bought a video game, it had, if everyone had followed your lead, right. And said, Shigeru Miyamoto's, uh, uh, Mario and, you know, uh, uh, this person's Castlevania, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, what, what that would have been, what the difference would have been. It's an interesting thought experiment. Yeah. You know, it would have led to a whole other set of discussions of like, why is there a new name on this game?

What happened to this person? You know, kind of all the behind the scenes intrigue of, you know, trying to track the, I think the problem is the personalities of designers is pretty boring. So, you know, people would be disappointed if they tried to figure out the gossip or the dirt behind all these designer names that they're seeing.

You know, I think movie stars and singers and directors are much more interesting as individuals often than game designers. Well, you know, I don't know if that's true, but I'll take you at your word for that. When you think about a game that says Sid Meier on the top of it, right, or when you think about yourself as a designer, what do you think characterizes your work as opposed to games designed by other folks? What are you interested in? And, you know, when you look across your work, what sort of themes do you think you're exploring? The games that I make are games that I want to play. I think that's one of the luxuries that we have is that we can make games that we are excited about actually playing.

And hopefully that comes through in the final product that we wanted to about actually playing. And hopefully that comes through in the final product, that we wanted to make this game, and it's about a topic that interests us, and it's presented in a way that we think is the most fun that we can make it. So we'll iterate, we'll try all sorts of different things to make the game as fun as it can be. And I think that's also a characteristic of, of, of our games is that we, we,

we tackle, you know, what might seem to be serious topics, things like civilization and outer space and pirates, I guess, not so serious, but, but we try to present them in a very fun and accessible way.

We're not, it's not a history lesson. It's not, you know, the darker side of whatever. It's, let's have some fun in this world. Let's see all the possibilities. Turn you loose to be a fighter pilot or a pirate or a king of a great civilization. And, you know, really focus on the fun and creative parts of those those roles. Yeah. Let's talk about Civilization a little bit, because that game is enormously influential.

Very fun. It's one of the it's still one of the most addictive games. People say that it's the ultimate just one more turn game that people can't put down. I have many friends who've said they've had to delete it from their hard drive. And I also have that reaction with it, too. I install the new version and I start playing and then I lose a whole night to it. Oh, God, what happened? I got I got to I can't play that anymore right now. I got work to do.

I think it's a really interesting game because for that. really interesting game because for that, I want to get to that point that you just made because it simultaneously feels like it's trying to be about the real world more than a lot of other games, especially at the time where you're, you're trying to track the progress of a human civilization in a way. But then on the other hand, it's also got like a real fantasy element and that like the leaders of each civilization, no matter what year you start, Gandhi is in charge of India and Abraham Lincoln is in charge of America. And they're that way for what are supposedly got to be thousands of years. Right. So they're like these weird historical avatars. It's not like, you know, if people know this company, it's not like a paradox game where it's like really directly modeling real life as closely as it can. And so I think it's a really interesting place for it to be situated.

I don't know. Why situate it in that sort of middle zone? Well, we basically made those decisions based on what we thought would be most fun for the player to interact and meet great leaders. You know, people that, you know, Gandhi, Lincoln, Julius Caesar. Yeah, they didn't hang around for 6,000 years. It's true. But you wouldn't want to meet the third cousin of Julius Caesar and have to negotiate with them. You want to talk to Julius Caesar himself. So that was basically more fun that way.

That was basically more fun that way. And, you know, the reason we thought it would be fun to make a game about the real, real world was that you know the concepts. You know that if I invent the wheel, that's going to come in handy somehow. If I discover gunpowder, I can make some great use of that. So that you are already familiar with the world. You're not having to learn the rules. You're not having to learn, what does Sid think about this? It's like, I know these people, I know these concepts,

and I'm going to put them to work to make the greatest civilization of all time. Where did that idea come from? That's the worst question. I'm sorry. Why did I even ask you that? We're not going to edit it out. I want to prove to people that I asked bad questions like that. But tell me a little bit about the conception of that. I mean, we're 25 minutes into this interview and I haven't yet asked you about the conception of Civilization, one of the greatest game series of all time. So I'd just like to hear a little bit of that story. it was a bit of its time. So a year or two before that, SimCity had come out and had really been the first of these kind of building games,

sometimes they're called God games or Lego games or construction games or whatever, games that were less about blowing things up and more about creating something. And inspired by that, we did Railroad Tycoon, which is our first game in that genre, where you start very small, but you build tracks and stations,

and you kind of end up with this great railroad empire. And we kind of said, that was fun. That was a fun game. We like that idea of starting small but ending up somewhere where you know that no one has ever made this exact same railroad,

for example. You've created something unique. And what's a topic even bigger than that, that we could apply this idea to? And it was the history of civilization. You know, starting with one city, one settler, a little piece of land, and gradually exploring, gradually building more cities, gradually negotiating, running into more cities, gradually negotiating, running into different leaders, discovering new technology. It had that very much that kind of easy to start playing, you know, simple at the beginning,

but gradually layering on more and more interesting things and very hard to stop playing because there's always one more thing, one more turn to see what's going to happen next. And how much of that process of coming up with those concepts, how much of that, I'm very curious, was preconceived where you're like, I kind of want to make a game that feels like this versus how much did you discover along the way? I'm sure it's a mix of both, but where is that weighted for you? We are continuously iterating as we make games. I'm constantly playing the game, adding a new feature, trying it out,

fixing it if it doesn't work, take it out, change it, make it better, whatever. We had a general idea that it would be fun to make a game about with all these historical ideas that allow fun to make a game about uh you know with all these historical ideas that allow you to create a civilization but how the the exact nature of how that would all work

was iterated on you know daily basically so um you know at one point the tech tree came along and we said oh this is a great way to hang, you know, unveiling new things, giving the player decisions to make about what direction they wanted to take their technology, explaining why stuff wasn't available at the beginning. You know, kind of allowing the game to grow in kind of detail and depth. The kind of a hidden map, the map where you're gradually exploring and uncovering more and more of it. Many of those elements were, you know, we discovered that, oh, this works. This kind of gives you something to look forward to. It creates this whole anticipation about what's going to happen next. And that's kind of the key to One More Turn is I just got to see what happens, you know, when I cross that ocean or once I get that technology, you know, I'm building this wonder.

When that's done, then so you always have a couple of things to anticipate and look forward to. because civilization originated so many of these concepts that we've seen in games since that are really deeply embedded in the medium now and have even made their way into other mediums. But the way you just described it made it sound less like you're creating these concepts than that you're discovering them, almost like an explorer in civilization

discovering a new continent. Like by this process, you are stumbling across them and say, oh, there's something here that maybe we didn't anticipate. Do you relate to that or no? Yeah, I think given that we're playing the game every day, we can actually, you know, interrogate ourselves and say, okay, you played, you had this much fun, but what would have made it more fun? Or what was missing for you? Or what didn't work? Or what was unclear? And then we would fix those things.

You know, it's almost like a sculpture. Like you, okay, now we need to add an arm to this thing. You know, it's kind of like, given that we're making a game that we want to play, we are kind of like the focus group, our own internal focus group. One half of our head is the focus group and the other half is the designer,

and we're kind of really asking ourselves those questions. What would make it more fun? Did it take too long to do this? All those kind of questions about what would make the game better and things like the tech tree exploration, those all came about by trying them and realizing, oh, you know, this is more fun now. This works better now. I'm more engaged. I've got two or three things that I'm really, you know, looking forward to. So this is starting to work. Now, when you look at the history of this franchise. Going from Civilization I, 1991, to I think we're up to VI today.

Yes, we are. And I'm sure they're working on VII. I'm sure you've had a meeting or two about VII. How much do you recognize your own decisions and your own discoveries that you made back then in the game today? What is your relationship with it now? that you made back then in the game today? What is your relationship with it now? I think what we've tried to understand is what is the appeal of the game?

Because when it came out, it was very different from just about everything else that was out there. There were a couple of games, you know, in that genre, but most games were action or, you know, about, like we say, about blowing things up instead of building them. And just the idea of strategy was a very negative. No games were strategy games. Strategy was like boring and hexes and, you know, only for nerds. We want action, no strategy.

only for nerds. We want action, no strategy. So we kind of, we claim that we made the world safe for strategy because, you know, after that, everything was strategy, real-time strategy, turn-based strategy, you know. Suddenly strategy was okay and was actually a good thing. So we try to understand, you know, what had we created and why had it been successful? And given that we're going to do a sequel and another sequel, maybe another sequel, what are those core elements that we want to retain? And that is our thinking, you know, every time we look at doing a new civilization,

it's kind of like, here are the core elements that have to be there. It's going to be turn-based. It's going to, you're going to meet-based. You're going to meet great leaders. You're going to discover cool technology. But what are the new things we can add? We haven't done much with espionage yet. We haven't done much with the environment. We haven't done much with religion.

So it's kind of a balance of keeping those core elements but also introducing new things that complement what we already have. Yeah. And then, you know, as you say, we've been able to get up to Civilization VI with the support of an amazing community of players and gamers and folks that have provided actually some great game design ideas and some great mods to, to the series that has kept it, you know, even more energized. It's the dialogue.

It is. It's the community that really supports us and lets us do what we do. Well, I have so many more questions for you. I really want to ask about what your games have to say about the world we live in and how you feel the industry's changed, but we got to take a really quick break. We'll be right back with more Sid Meier. Okay, we're back with Sid Meier. How do you feel the, you know, games as a medium have changed?

I mean, first of all, I'd like to ask, you know, when you got started and, you know, you would have dinner with people and say, hey, I'm a game designer. Was that something that people even understood what that meant? No, no. Very, very bizarre profession to have at that time. Most people didn't play games. It was a very, very small core group of us that played and understood games. And, you know, we had our own magazines and our own conventions where we got together to reassure ourselves that we weren't, you know, about to die off and disappear. to die off and disappear. So, yeah, it did not register with people, I think. And that has changed, of course. Now everybody is familiar with games and curious about how they get made. And if people are Civilization players, they always have one or two thoughts about what could be improved, what should be different, why did you do this?

I always have one or two thoughts about, you know, what could be improved? What should be different? Why did you do this? So, yeah, things have changed very much in terms of the visibility of game designers. And the way that the industry operates is so massively different. I mean, it was a bedroom industry in your time. Like, you created the games all by yourself. There are still people who do that.

And those are still some of my favorite games. and it is a wonderful part of the industry but it's very very small compared to you know the the scale on which i mean how many people worked in the last civilization hundreds um 50 to 70 people like all right okay and that's a team that's a mid-sized team there there are games that have hundreds of people working on them there are um have have multiple designers people working on them. Oh, yes, there are. Have multiple designers, programmers, et cetera, et cetera. And the industry produces billions of dollars. Video games are, you know, bigger than movies often. You know, the largest games make billions all by themselves, which movies struggle to do.

And, you know, from a labor perspective, there's a lot of, you know, a lot of issues in the industry there. You know, there's there's rampant overwork and underpayment and discrimination. There's all the all the issues that a large industry has. Right. I'm curious, as someone who's been tracking along the whole time and as you're now at the point, you've written a memoir about your time in games. Right. So you've you've you've been doing it for a while. Do you look at it today and say, God, I don't know how I could hack it if I were to start? Or do you look at it

and say, oh my God, I'd love to get in there. It's a great time. A little of each actually. In some ways, it's a great time to become a game designer. We have tools out there like Unity and Unreal that kind of do a lot of the grunt work that we used to have to do ourselves. And you can kind of jump right in and start making games a lot more quickly. There are libraries of models and all sorts of pieces that you can use to put things together. So I think it's easier to kind of get to a certain point to, you know, to get something that looks like a game. The problem is that the goalposts have moved way down to the other end of the field. So to get something that looks anything, you know, like a Fortnite or whatever

is still a lot of work. And it's, you know, one of the situations that I see is that once you've Yeah, massive. fun to play? Does it have depth? Does it have replayability? Those are not things that you can press a button and there's no replayability button that you press to add that to your game. So in those ways, I think there's advantages these days that you can get moving very quickly and get something that looks pretty good quickly. But to get to an actual game is still, you still got to do some hard work. Well, and when you describe it as quickly, like the part that you're making something that looks like a game, right? You're talking about the graphics,

having a character running around, the sound effects, all those sorts of things. Those now require so many dozens of people putting in years of effort to make those sometimes, right? That it often seems the bar has been raised in many ways where, you know, when underneath you still need that great gameplay, you need something that interesting for the players to be doing. But a lot of people also expect this extremely high budget look in many ways,

which is, I don't know. It seems like, yeah, it seems like the bar has been raised a bit, perhaps. Maybe it's difficult to say whether the barriers to entry have gone up or down. True, because we have the whole indie scene and, you know, there's the iTunes store where, you know, there's casual games. There's a lot more types of games that are out there and a lot more ways to get into, you know, to get into gaming. On the other hand, the bar is raised for a lot of games and the expectations are pretty high.

I love this distinction you made about, are there interesting decisions, right? That no matter what a game looks like, underneath the player, the game is going to be happening in the player's mind, right? And the player needs to have a rich, fulfilling interaction with it. So break down some of what goes into making that work that way. What are the interesting decisions? What does that mean? Yeah, that's kind of one of our basic tools that we use to analyze a game or think about a game, especially when it's not working, what's gone wrong. You know, at one point we're kind of asking ourselves, what is fun?

You know, we say we are looking for fun. We're trying to make fun. Yeah, wait, what is fun, Sid? Hold on a second. What the hell does fun even mean? Can you define fun? Well, we have our definition. And so we feel that a game needs to be a series of interesting decisions.

Now, that's kind of a very general metric that we can basically apply to anything that we're trying to call a game. And by interesting decisions, we mean the player is choosing a path, but the other paths look almost as interesting as the one that they have chosen. So that they're thinking, oh, next time I play, I'm going to try that option. Or, you know, that they feel that they're controlling the path of the game. They're controlling how things go forward. So they have ownership.

They have an investment in the outcome. But we've provided them these interesting choices so that they've kind of had some interesting things to consider, kind of where turn-based has an advantage that the player can take the time they want. We can present

them with somewhat more interesting decisions because they're on taking whatever time they want to make those decisions. But planning that seed of replayability, next time I'm going to try this path, these two technologies, I've got to choose one. I'd like to have them both, but right now my strategy is military, so I'm going to go with this one.

But next time I play, I might try a more technologically-oriented strategy. I'm going to go with this technology. So we've kind of planted all these seeds of the next time I play, there's more to this game that I'm going to be able to experience the first time. I'm going to try it again. So these interesting decisions kind of draw you into the world. You've got to imagine, if I go this path, what's going to happen next?

And, you know, again, we've got your imagination engaged in playing and projecting what might happen in the future. Yeah, that's really interesting because, I mean, you described the turn-based nature of it and how it happens in the player's mind that occurs to me that when you're playing civilization or a game like it you are spending most of your time just scrolling around the map looking at it just going like okay I have these units over here and I'm trying to build this over there I know what's in the tech tree and let me make some choices and you probably spend 90 of your time doing that and then you hit next turn and then the game finally powers up and it does all the results and then you pause again and you start staring at it one more time

uh and that is very unique that you know most of the time the the true action is happening in your mind because the real gameplay is you puzzling through the decisions. Yeah. You are, you are living in the future. Basically, if I do this, then this might happen. Okay. But if I do this, then this is going to happen. So you're, you're kind of constantly imagining what could happen if I go this way or that way. And, and, and then eventually you make a decision and you it's, it's not always quite that slow, but you are spending most of your time projecting and living in the future of the game. And of

course, then you want to see whether it actually happens. You know, you got to play that one more turn to see whether what you imagined in your mind actually comes, you know, takes place. Now, did you, this is a very rote interview question, but I am genuinely interested. Did you have any inkling that you were creating something that was going to last this long, that was going to go through this many iterations? Not at all. And actually when, when Civilization came out, I think we had a flight simulator game released around the same time that really got the majority of the attention of the company and, you know, was expected to do, you know, be the main product.

I forget what it was, and I'm sure it did okay. But Civilization took on a life of its own, but a little bit gradually. took on a life of its own, but a little bit gradually. It took two or three months for us to start getting this feedback and players to respond and, you know, get this sense that it was gradually, you know, taking off and it had a longevity to it. It had a word of mouth to it, you know, that we felt it was a good game. We enjoyed playing. We, you know, we had one more turn experiences ourselves,

but it was very different from anything else that was out there. And so we had, you know, we had no surety that it was going to be successful. Well, what about the games industry? Did you have any suspicion? Hey, this weird little industry we're working on, this is going to

fucking take over the world one day. It's going to be bigger than Hollywood, which I believe it is at this point. I believed early on that it should, and it had that potential. I felt that the fact that we were interactive, that we were presenting the player with the opportunity to be the star was unique to what we had to offer. Now, we had a lot of work to make it look good, sound good, feel good, play good. But if we could capitalize on that uniqueness that we had, the player engagement, the player's role as the leading character um that it would become a you know a very compelling form of entertainment and and rival some of the other ones um we were counting on people to be willing to be active you know as opposed to passive to be um engaged you know and uh and we found that people enjoyed that they enjoyed playing games. They enjoyed sharing the experience very much with other players.

And I think when the Internet came along, it's fun to talk about a TV show that you like or a movie that you like with other people. But talking about a game experience that you had that you owned and that you were invested in with other people, I think is just more compelling, more interesting. So we had this advantage, and I think we did a good job of building on it and taking advantage of it. The technology advances were nothing but helpful. More colors, more sounds, CD-ROM, Internet, multiplayer. I mean, a lot of these technological advancements have games, have made games more fun and more engaging. And, you know, we've ridden that wave of technology to make games better and better.

So between all those things, we have, we've become, you know, a very successful part of the entertainment industry. But it really strikes me that, you know, at the end of the day, it is, again, the gameplay, all the graphics and the colors are wonderful, but, you know, it is the core game experience. Underneath, I think about a game like Among Us. I don't know if you've heard of this game. It's just, it's basically a video game version of Mafia or Werewolf, that type of game. I've been playing it with friends almost every day. It's taken the world by storm and it actually is a little similar to

It's a very small team. The graphics are pretty rudimentary but they nailed this experience that people want to have that the game is happening in the players' minds as they argue with their friends about who the imposter is. And that core of it still exists as much as everything has changed. is happening in the players' minds as they argue with their friends about who the imposter is. And

that core of it still exists as much as everything has changed. Yeah, I think you could look at a game like Minecraft. Very rudimentary graphics, very basic, but it's genius. So there doesn't

have to be the best graphics, et cetera. Back in the day, Tetris was very popular, very simple-looking game. But again— Still is popular. Still is popular. They've made it look prettier. They've made it look more impressive.

Tetris Effect is an incredibly beautiful version of Tetris, but it's still Tetris. Yeah, so gameplay is the one thing that we have to offer uniquely and, you know, I think it, you know, serves us well to, to focus on that and make sure that that is a, a key part of what we do.

Are you still playing? What was the last game that you played that inspired you that you're like, Oh my God, this game's amazing. I've been playing some of the indie games just to kind of cleanse my palate from working on games. There was a game, Flame in the Fire, I think it was called. I'm not sure.

I have the Xbox subscription, Xbox subscription, so you can sample all sorts of different games. Flame in the Flood, I think it was. Flame in the Flood, that's what I thought, yeah. Yeah, that was fun. And Overland was another game, an indie game that I've been having fun with. Another turn-based game. Do you still gravitate towards turn-based?

Yeah, I think so. I think so. I'm usually, I mean, if I'm traveling, which I don't do anymore, but, um, uh, often I'll be playing on my iPad or something. So those, those games tend to, tend to be suitable for that kind of gameplay. Um, I like racing gaming, like, you know, Forza or, um, those games as well. So it's not just turn-based, but I like actually both kinds of games. But you said working on, it's a nice break from working on games.

Tell me a little bit about what it's like for you working on games now. If you, whatever project you can mention, I'd be happy to hear about, but I'm also just curious, what kind of teams are you working on? How are you still embedded in the industry? Well,

for me, the most fun is the early parts of game making. I'm really exploring a lot of different possibilities. So I'll be working on one or two prototypes generally of game ideas. Some of them eventually turn into games. Others don't. But it's a pretty small team, usually just myself. And I work with a programmer who kind of helps me to, you know,

created almost a prototyping designed environment where we have all these different models. I mean, if you imagine having access to everything that was ever made for civilization, we've got, you know, tanks and airplanes and buildings and all sorts of fun pieces to play with for putting something together. So I'm generally looking at, you know, new ways of taking these assets and tools that we have and, you know, what could we do in terms of a game experience?

So basically I'm doing game design. That's great. I mean, it's a great job. Have you ever thought about going back to your roots and just like, Hey, I'm just going to program this thing from scratch. Let's do it. Let's do a one man band version of,

of gaming again. Um, that is, um, that's the problem with the Sid Meier name, to be honest with you. That was, that's what people expect.

Yeah. Sid Meier couldn't do that. There's too, you know, the burden. Yeah, too much work. It's like, Sid, you're, you know, you're getting lazy there. You're getting lazy there. Come on, come on.

We're expecting big, big things. Well, it's also a hugely team-based industry, and it's the same. You know, my favorite joke from my friend Raphael's show, BoJack Horseman, is TV is a medium where hundreds of people do incredible work, and one person gets all the credit. And it must feel like that for you a little bit as well i imagine yeah yeah i mean we clearly um uh there's a lot that goes into making uh you know a game like civilization and and great artists and programmers and uh so many things that are really expected and almost taken for granted these days let's end with this what do you tell uh you know budding young game designers who who want to break in what are your what are your thoughts uh i know what I tell people who say, how do I do comedy, right?

It's the same speech over and over. I've given it hundreds of times now, and I know what it is. I'm not going to tell you folks listening right now, you'll have to come find a Cosme in a dark alley to hear it. But what, what is your version of it? What do you tell people? Well, a couple of levels. I mean, if you want to be a game designer, the first thing we say, you've got to design games. I mean, the technology is there. There's no reason why, you know, you can't learn programming, can't take advantage of some of these tools. Even, you know, things like Roblox or whatever have the ability to make your own game. Don't expect it, obviously, to be a AAA title, but as we've kind of discussed,

it's that core gameplay that is the elusive element, not all those other pieces. So, you know, kind of one is make games. Now, the problem is that that doesn't make you a game designer. You have to figure out how to get your game to the public. And there are a couple of things we talk about there. You know, if you want to be in the AAA game world, you need to have a skill that a AAA game company is going to value, whether it's programming art, even play testing or producing, you know, get into a company. And once you're in the door, there are often opportunities to contribute to a game that's

in design and kind of demonstrate that you've got some great game design ideas. And then perhaps you'll become an assistant game designer and eventually a lead game designer. Or you can go the indie path, you know, and that's another, you know, if you want to take that route, it's obviously you're competing with hundreds and thousands of other games and designers out there. But if your idea is unique and there's probably a little bit of luck involved. If you can go viral, then you might be successful. So, but the first thing would be to make a game. Yeah, that's the first step. Well, let me, let me ask you this. And I, I'm sorry, I said that we'd end with that, but I do have one more question because it's something I think a lot about. What, do you have any concerns about, you know, working conditions, structural issues in the industry? Because in both those paths you just talked about, right, AAA games are notorious for overworking folks, for people burning out early, right, crunching.

They have, you know, forced mandatory 18-hour work days, and then people tend to stay in the industry for like a couple years and then leave and go do something else because it's, you know, it depends on where you're working. But that is a pattern that we've seen. something else because it's, you know, it depends on where you're working, but that is a pattern that we've seen. And then in indie games, well, that has a problem of, you know, you've got these massive platforms like Steam that sort of are controlling the flow of players. And so those viral moments, those viral, we have so many more indie games competing and those viral games are a lot harder to produce. And so it's much more competitive. You have people who are spending years of their lives making a game that never is able to reach players. And, you know, as someone working

in the entertainment industry, I'm very concerned about, you know, that sort of thing in my industry. And I'm just curious what your view is on those issues or if you have one. If you don't, that's fine. Well, I think things have evolved. I mean, I kind of took a chance on being a game designer hoping

it would become a viable profession uh back in the early day i quit my day job and became a game designer that was that was risky and i think at any point in time um if you're going to pursue your passion, you might end up taking some risks. Today, it's a different situation. I think, you know, you're definitely, the market is huge, the level of competition is huge. You know, there are a lot of people who would like to become game designers. I mean, it's actually a college course now. I mean, I was amazed the first time I heard, oh, they're teaching game design at the university. You know, parents are paying tens of thousands of dollars for their children to learn game design.

It's like, don't become, you know, it's almost like becoming a musician or, you know, it's that kind of a profession now where there are probably more people that want to do it, then there's going to end up being space for it. Comedy is certainly that way too. Yeah. So if, but if you've got the talent and, you know, and, and the drive and the vision and the dream, there's lots of opportunities out there. There's lots of great games still being made. So just understand what the ground rules are of the game, as it were. Well, Sid, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show to tell us about it. Thank you so much.

And thanks for all the innumerable hours that I have put into your games. Time well spent, and I thank you for it. You're very welcome. Well, thank you once again to Sid Meier for coming on the show. If you enjoyed that interview as much as I did, please leave us a rating or review wherever you subscribe. It really does help us out. Now, I want

to remind you that we are going to be doing Stitcher Premium subscriber episodes, special episodes in which I and some comedian guest stars will be answering your questions. So please send your questions, any question at all, to me at factually at adamconover.net. That's factually at adamconover.net and look for those episodes in the new year. I want to thank our producers, Kimmy Lucas and Sam Roundman, our engineer, Andrew Carson, Andrew WK for our theme song. I want to thank Falcon Northwest for building me the incredible gaming PC that I record this show on and that you can watch me use to stream on Twitch at twitch.tv slash Adam Conover. You can find me on Adam Conover or wherever you get your social media or just,

I don't know, look me up on DuckDuckGo or whatever. You guys know how to do it. And look, we'll see you again in the new year. I know it's been a rough one, but you know, tomorrow is always another day in which we can make the world a little bit better place than it was yesterday. That's what I'm going to wake up on January 1st thinking, and I hope you do too. So thank you so much for listening and above all, don't forget to stay curious. That was a HeadGum Podcast.