Founders - #195 Sid Meier (Computer game designer)

Episode Date: July 31, 2021

What I learned from reading Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games by Sid Meier. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----Sometimes it takes a misstep to figure out where you should be headed.Each game taught me something, each game was both painful and gratifying in its own way, and each game contributed to what came after it.We are surrounded by decisions, and therefore games, in everything we do. If my gravestone reads "Sid Meier, creator of Civilization" and nothing else, I'll be fine with that. It's a good game to be known for, and I'm proud of the positive impact it's had on so many players' lives.There was no such thing as a retail computer game, only free bits of code passed  between hobbyists, so it would have been difficult for me to harbor secret dreams of becoming a professional computer game designer."I could design a better game in two weeks." “Then do it," he insisted, "If you can do it, I can sell it."At the time it felt like a fun project, but not any sort of life-changing decision. The big moments rarely do, I think, and the danger of retroactive mythologizing is that it makes people want to hold out for something dramatic, rather than throwing themselves into every opportunity.—As soon as the articles were published, Bill began placing calls to hobby stores that were farther than driving distance away."Hello, I'm looking to buy a copy of Hellcat Ace."Hmm, I don't think we carry that one""What?" he would fume. "What kind of computer store are you? Didn't you see the review in Antic?" Then he would hang up in a huff, muttering about taking his business elsewhere.A week later he would call again, pretending to be somebody else. And a third time a week after that. Finally, on the fourth week, he'd use his professional voice. "Good afternoon, I'm a representative from MicroProse Software, and I'd like to show you our latest game, Hellcat Ace." Spurred by the imaginary demand, they would invite him in.—My appetite for making games was growing stronger. I never forgot that moment. My mother had become emotionally invested in this little game, so profoundly that she'd had to abandon it entirely.Games could make you feel. If great literature could wield its power through nothing but black squiggles on a page, how much more could be done with movement, sound, and color? The potential for emotional interaction through this medium struck me as both fascinating and enticing.Were there people who got paid for making games? Could I be one of those people? I knew by now that I was a person who would make games, probably for the rest of my life, but it had never occurred to me that it could be a source of income. If that were true, then being a game designer seemed like the ideal job.I was cautious about giving up my steady paycheck, and still not convinced that this dream was going to last.Quality content was the driving force behind it all.All that mattered to me was that I got to make games for a living.I don't think any of us could have imagined back then the kind of cultural domination that gaming would someday achieve.Robin Williams pointed out that all the other entertainment industries promoted their stars by name, so why should gaming be any different?A pirate's career would last about forty years between childhood and old age, and his goal was to accomplish as much as he could in that window-to have an adventurous life with no regrets.Life is not a steady progression of objectively increasing value, and when you fail, you don't just reload the mission again. You knock the wet sand off your breeches and return to the high seas for new adventures. And if you happen to get marooned on a deserted island a few times, well, that makes for a good tavern story, too.I'd always had a distaste for business deals in general, simply because it's not the kind of thing I want to spend my day doing, but I was starting to realize that there was potential danger in them as well.People play games to feel good about themselves.Age and experience may bring wisdom, but sometimes it's useful to be a young person who hasn't learned how to doubt himself yet.Sid Meier makes a pathetic Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he makes a magnificent Sid Meier.Deciding what doesn't go into the game is sometimes more important than deciding what does.Conventional wisdom said a strategy title would never make the big money. (Sid sold 51 million copies)They were interacting with the game as a tool, rather than an experience.Good games don't get made by committee.What I didn't see at the time is that imagination never diminishes reality; it only heightens it.The dichotomy between someone else's talent and your own is a cause for celebration, because the further apart you are, the more you can offer each other.This is not to say that my version of Civilization had no outside influences—far from it. Aside from the general "creating not destroying" concept I had first encountered in SimCity, there were two games that I very much respected, and blatantly took ideas from to use for my own purposes.The ideas didn't start with us, and they can't end with us either.Whatever it is you want to be good at, you have to make sure you continue to read, and learn, and seek joy elsewhere, because you never know where inspiration will strike.A full 70 percent of Candy Crush Saga users have never paid a dime for the game yet it still brings in several million dollars a day.So many of our wildest dreams have turned out to be laughably conservative that it's hard to write off anything as impossible.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

A billion hours ago, Neanderthals were making spearheads in the Stone Age. A billion hours from now, it'll be the year 116,174 AD. With a billion hours to play with, you could make roughly 13,000 round trips to Alpha Centauri at the speed of light. Or you could spend it all playing Sid Meier's Civilization, so I'm told. One billion hours is the sort of number that is humbling to the point of incomprehensibility. Or you could spend it all playing Sid Meier's Civilization, so I'm told. One billion hours is the sort of number that is humbling to the point of incomprehensibility, and it is a wildly conservative estimate at that. The game distribution service Steam only began collecting player data in earnest within the

last decade, and one billion is actually the number of hours played on Civilization V, from its release in 2010 up through 2016. A six-year window into one game in a series that spans 29 years and 12 editions, not to mention the expansion packs. To imagine the hours devoted to all the incarnations of Civilization since 1991 is, well, incomprehensible. I wouldn't want to try. What's more, any fair assessment of Civilization's success would have to include all the other games I've crafted along the way, including titles like Pirates and Railroad Tycoon, which were popular series in their own right, but also overlooked projects

that started strong but fizzled early, because sometimes it takes a misstep to figure out where you should be headed. Each game taught me something. Each game was both painful and gratifying in its own way, and each game contributed to what came after it. What follows is a largely chronological examination of all the games I've produced over my lifetime, from the wildly successful to the completely unheard of. Whether they took a billion lines of code, or less than a hundred, there is one thing every game in this book has in common. They are fundamentally comprised, as all games are, of a series of interesting decisions. We are surrounded by

decisions, and therefore games, in everything we do. Interesting might be subject to personal taste, to some degree, but the gift of agency, that is, the ability of players to exert free will over their surroundings rather than obediently following a narrative, is what sets games apart from other media. Without a player's input, there can be no game. I'm often asked in interviews when I got interested in games, usually with the implied hope that I'll identify a moment in my childhood when I suddenly knew I was a game designer. But from my perspective, there was no turning point. I never made the conscious decision to embrace gaming, because as far as I can tell, gaming already is the default,

straightforward path. Not only does it span a billion hours of history, ancient Sumerians were throwing dice as early as 5000 BC, and cruder games almost certainly go back as far as the Neanderthals, but it's a deeply embedded human instinct. Everyone starts out life as a gamer, and I was no different. First I laughed at peekaboo, then I lined up toy soldiers, then I played board games, then I made fun computer programs. To me, it seems like the most logical progression in the world. The question, when did you start, would be better framed as, why didn't you stop? But even then, I don't have a good answer. I find it mind-boggling that a life spent dedicated to gaming is the exception rather than the rule.

If my gravestone reads, Sid Meier, creator of civilization and nothing else, I'll be fine with that. It's a good game to be known for, and I'm proud of the positive impact it's had on so many players' lives. But it won't be the whole story. This is the whole story. That was an excerpt from the book

that I'm going to talk to you about today which is Sid Meier's Memoir by the creator of Civilization, A Life in Computer Games and it was written by Sid Meier and this is another example of a book that I would have never found if it wasn't for you guys.

This actually was a recommendation from a misfit named R. Nate Lockwood and it was absolutely fantastic read. I'm going to read the back because I think there's a blurb that gives you a good insight into what you might get out of reading this book. It says, if you ever wish you could stay up all night and hear the most amazing stories from one of the most creative people, Sid's memoir is for you. This book is full of incredible technology history and deep insights into what it takes to make a world-class game. But most of all, I loved getting inside Sid's brain and seeing things from his inventive and wise point of view.

And that's what I feel like when I get to the end of the book. Okay, I just had this one-sided conversation with this gifted person. You know, the conversation probably took 10 or 15 hours where he's just distilling all the main lessons that he learned in his multiple decade career. Let me read the inside flap. Because this way, when I got the recommendation, I checked out the product page on Amazon. This is what really drew me to it. It says over his four decade career, Sid Meier has produced some of the world's most popular video games, including Sid Meier's Civilization, which this is what blew my mind, which has sold more than 51 million units and accumulated more than a billion

hours of play. We know that number is way, way higher than that. Sid Meier's memoir is the story of an obsessive young computer enthusiast who helped launch a multi-billion dollar industry. They consider him, he's called the godfather of computing gaming. Writing with warmth and ironic humor, Meier describes the genesis of his influential studio, his company that he founded was Microprose, which was founded in 1982 after a trip. Imagine making, this is another thing that's going to blow your mind about this book, making computer games in 1982.

It's just bananas. Founded in 1982 after a trip to the Las Vegas arcade and recounts the development of landmark games from vintage classics like Pirates and Railroad Tycoon to Civilization and Beyond. Articulating his philosophy that a video game should be a series of interesting decisions, which he was just echoing, or I guess introducing rather, in the introduction, this idea that that's what he defines a game as.

It's a series of interesting decisions and how he thinks that there's a lot of lessons that you learn from games that you can apply to life. And not only that, to company building. I was listening to the founder of Shopify, Toby Luque, talk. And he says he learned how to build companies by playing StarCraft. Essentially, it's a game about resource allocation, is his description of it. So it says Meyer also shares his perspective on the history of the industry, the psychology of gamers, fascinating insights into the creative process, and including his rules of good game design. Okay, so let's start

out in 1982. He is 28 at the time. He's working as a system analyst. And the really interesting part about this whole section is the fact that when he starts out designing games, he's just designing them for fun, and then eventually realizes, hey, I would love to make a living at this. There was no such thing as a retail computer game when Sid started. So he's at the very, very beginning of this industry. And he says, I'm not a fan of viewing the past as some inevitable march to destiny. At the time, it didn't feel that way at all. So now he's writing this book as a man in his 60s, looking back at the mindset he had when he was in his late 20s when he stumbled upon what was going to be his life's work and his greatest passion. She says, I began my career as a systems analyst, installing networked cash register systems in retail stores.

Working with computers was satisfying, and I was grateful to have what amounted to a very good job for a recent graduate. That's another thing that Sid's writing. First of all, it's really fun to read the book. He applies this game designer philosophy in reading, so it's very simple. It speeds along really rapidly. He has all these fun things where it's like, oh, achievement unlocked. You get to certain parts of the book. But what I liked about Sid is he's got a completely optimistic perspective on life,

and I think a lot of his optimism is rooted in gratitude. He's got a completely optimistic perspective on life. And I think a lot of his optimism is rooted in gratitude. Even before he was, which he calls being a game designer, the best job in the world. And even before he had what he called the best job in the world, he's like, listen, I just love computers. I was glad to do anything. You know, maybe he wasn't very interested. Listen to his description. I was installing networked cash register systems in retail stores.

Probably not passionate about that, but hey, I'm thankful. I have a job working on computers and able to pay my bills. And so I think that's a lesson we learned right from the very first chapter, the importance of gratitude and how you can change your perspective on how you look at things. And thus you can change on your enjoyment or your misery that you get out of life. I wasn't desperate to unleash my creativity on the world or even thinking very hard about the future of the industry. At best, you could call it a state of ignorant bliss. There was no such thing as a retail computer game. Only free bits of code passed between hobbyists.

So it would have been difficult for me to harbor secret dreams of becoming a professional computer game designer. There was no such thing at that point. And so he gets into, okay, well, how did I wind up becoming a game designer? So he's working for this company called general instrument they're having like this uh this like company-wide i guess get together or seminar uh in las vegas and so this is a pretty big company he's sitting down i think they're at a bar some of some sort and this guy he doesn't know he vaguely kind of familiar to him but they don't work they work at the same company but they don't work in the same department and this is going to be his future co-founder. And so the note I left myself on this page is meeting the perfect co-founder. And I think that's another main lesson in the book, because Bill, which is going to be his co-founder, is a super aggressive

former Air Force pilot, like a master salesman. And Sid is an introvert. He's an introvert that likes people, but he prefers, you know, just, he likes to, he likes working with computers. He likes working alone. He will be making the, you don't have to motivate him to, to, to make the game. So do that on his own. But as far as selling the games, this is where Bill, they just, they go together like chocolate and peanut butter. So it says Bill was a reserve air force pilot who'd fought his way into the program despite wearing glasses. And he was proud of his training that he he was so proud of his training that he printed fighter pilot supreme on his business cards. This guy is a wild dude. So he talks about they're just they're just kind of making small talk from two people that don't really know each other.

I managed to offer up the fact that I've been programming an airplane game in my spare time. Bill had said he recently purchased an Atari 800 home computer. He had gotten it to play a new game called Star Raiders. And then he says a very important sentence in the life of Sid Meier. I really want to get into selling games, he said. This is the future. Remember, it's 1982. I told him that I actually just sold my first game to a small publisher named Acorn Software. Again, he was just doing this for fun, but doing it on the side, did not think of it as a career oh suddenly bill looked very keen we should start a business so they wind up going around they're talking the whole night they go to an arcade and bill's like you know i'm a i'm a pilot they're uh they wind up playing a uh

a world war one flight simulator the The game is called Red Baron. So Bill goes first. He's like, look how good I am. And then Sid gets on and kind of kicks Bill's ass. So he says, this was my turn to play. Then it was my turn to play. How did you do that? Bill sputtered, staring wide-eyed at a final score that was roughly double his own.

I'm an actual pilot. How could you have possibly beaten me? I shrugged. While you were playing, I memorized the algorithms. You did what? I'm a programmer, I reminded him. The AI of the enemy planes is very predictable. I could design a better game in two weeks. Then do it, he insisted. If you can do it, I can sell it. And there's that one sentence completely summarizes their partnership in the very beginning of their business, which is going to be a wildly successful business. If you can do it, I can sell it.

And so we began. At the time, it felt more like a fun project. Remember, he started out the section saying, I don't believe in viewing the past as some inevitable march to destiny. His whole thing is that, one, I learned something. It led me to a next experience. I learned something else. I just kept building it over for an extremely long career um and in the introduction he talks about that you know every

game that i made influenced the next game i made so he sees series sees his career as a series of not only interesting experiences but interesting decisions and taking what he learned and applying it to the next project i think it's like a huge part that he's trying to convey to the reader in this book uh so he says at the time it felt just like a fun project, but not any sort of life-changing decision. The note I left myself, I should have read to you earlier, a life-changing moment that doesn't feel that way at the time. The big moments rarely do, I think, and the dangers of retroactive mythologizing is what makes it, oh, this is so important, I underlined this twice, what he's about to say here. All right, so he says uh the big moments rarely feel like life-changing at the

time okay and the danger of retroactive mythologizing is that it makes people want to hold out for something dramatic rather than throwing themselves into every opportunity so that is what sid did he threw himself into. Again, what he wound up dedicating his career to didn't even exist when he was a kid, when he was in college, when you're thinking about, hey, what do you want to do with my life? He just trusted the fact that, hey, if I could throw myself into every opportunity, I'm a lifelong learner. He talks about that over and over again. And then just trust that the path will reveal itself.

The reality is I've been fiddling around with game programming for years by then. And then I double underline this next sentence. The first step is almost always to sit down and start working. And so now he goes into the process. Okay, well, I just said I could do a better game. Bill held me to it, said, okay, you do it, I'll sell it. And then he talks about really like thinking himself as he was extremely it's extremely important to him to build great to do great work to build in to use steve jobs word insanely great products and so he's looking at all the other uh fighter like simulation fighter pilot games at the time and he says there's a pretty big gulf between better and best remember he says i could design a better game in two weeks right there's a gulf between better and best. Remember, he says I could design a better game in two weeks, right? There's a gulf between better and best.

And I always wanted to be on the far side of it. He wanted to make the very best games, not only for his own professional pride, but he wanted other people to say, hey, Sid's games are fantastic. And that's another thing. It's going to blow your mind because I didn't know. Robin Williams is going to make a cameo in this book. But all of Sid's games, almost all of them, they start with his name. So his name, he talks about the difference between,

hey, I'm Sid Meier as a person, but then there's Sid Meier as a brand. And so what winds up happening is he creates such great games. They start putting his name on all the games so people know, oh, wait, I played Pirates. I like that. I'll play Civilization or I'll play this game. And so not only, again, he wants professional pride, his work to be admired. Other people, his peers and everybody else say, hey, he's really good at what he does. But then it becomes almost like an obligation because all the games start with his name. So it has to have a certain level of quality.

When I finally decided the game was ready as it could be i handed it over to bill and this is an important part too and a day later he returned it to me with a list of bugs and military inaccuracies that was when i knew that this partnership could really go somewhere what an interesting surprise right some people don't like criticism we just saw it was at the last last episode two episodes ago i can't remember the. The Arnold Schwarzenegger autobiography that covers the first 30 years of his life where he's like, no, no, you want to know your weaknesses. Where he went so extreme, he hired a professional photographer to take pictures of him every month and then looked at the pictures with a magnifying glass to find any imperfections. That is very similar mindset that Sid has. In fact, when he talks about the people that he worked best with, where the people even later on, he talks about, hey, you know, I became super famous in this industry. It was hard to find people to give me honest feedback. They're like,

hey, you're great. But essentially, he's saying, you know, you gotta be wary of having a bunch of yes men, right? That he's mentoring all these people that are supposed to be helping him with the quality of the game. But they kind of like idolize him, or he works best with people that give him honest feedback. They're not trying to hurt his feelings. They're saying, hey, this could be better. And so you can think about that the same way that Arnold says, hey, constantly identify your weaknesses and improve them. And so that's what Bill's doing here at the very, they don't even have a company yet. This is the very beginning. That was when I knew the partnership could really go somewhere. Bill wasn't looking to make a quick buck on something he didn't understand. He was as

invested in the game quality as I was. And this is the beginning. So with $1,500 in savings, we bought a stack of floppy disks, a package of label stickers, and a box of plastic baggies to put them in. That's how you sold games at this time. This was standard packaging back then, even for professional releases. No one would have thought to waste an entire cardboard box on just a disc and a half sheet of instruction so there is a lot of similarities and the reason i wanted to read this book too is because i love video games i love them so much that i have to stay away from them because i have an addictive personality and i want to direct all

my addictive personality to reading and making podcasts right now and i know how i am you get invested in games. I've been playing video games since I was a tiny kid, a little kid. So right now, it's like they're too addicting. They're too good right now. I have to stay away from them. But the reason I was excited to read this book too, apart from my own personal interest,

is one of my favorite books that I've read for the podcast. If you want to think about what book I've stolen so many ideas from uh it's masters of doom it's about john romero and john carmack it's founders number uh 21 if you haven't gone back and uh not only read the book because it's fantastic but listen to that podcast as well and it's all about like they start out making their indie game developers very much like Sid. And in that book, what blew my mind is what he's talking about here, what Sid's talking about here. In Masters of Doom, it's called Ziploc Bag Distribution.

And here's a line from Masters of Doom about that. It says, Ken and Roberta Williams. This blew my mind when I read this. And I haven't read the book in, what, two or three years, and I never forgot it. It says, Ken and Roberta Williams, a young married couple in Northern California, pioneered the Ziploc distribution method, turning their homemade graphical role playing games into a 10 million dollar a year company, which they called Sierra Online. So exactly what Ken and Roberto Williams are doing with John, John Carmack and John Romero are doing is exactly what Sid's doing here.

It's like, hey, I made a game. He had physical copies of the game in a floppy disk. I put them in a Ziploc bag, and that's how I sell it to you. And I think not only is this book an example of that, but especially Masters of Doom, I think every entrepreneur or anybody that wants to do something creative or interesting should read that book because there's tons of ideas that they wind up using that are – like I'm taking some of their ideas from video games and trying to apply it to podcasts, for example. They just have a lot – it's very, very interesting the trial and error and the way they took ideas from different industries because even Doom, for example, right?

There was an industry called shareware where people would essentially release games for free, right? And this is most, not games, sorry. Let me back up. I'm not being clear. Shareware started out as like business applications for free. Try it, download it. If you like it, send me a check. And they tried to do,

they tried to take that idea for games. People would download the game and not send any money. And then they start altering that idea to the point where they would release, like in Doom's case, one of the most famous video games ever. They built it themselves with a relatively small team. They released it for free online and said, hey, you can play the first 15 levels. If you want the next, let's say, 45 levels or 30 levels or whatever it is, this is how you send us money and you can download the rest.

I think it was a download. I can't remember if it was a download or an extra disk. But anyways, less than like, I want to say 1%, 2%, something like that, some number like that, actually, of the people that played the game, wind up buying the rest of the levels. And these guys were in their early 20s at the time, and Doom was bringing in a hundred thousand dollars a day after the release and they were i don't think they had very very limited expenses because they

all lived in a house together if i remember correctly remember uh you know i'm going off memory from several years ago but they all lived in a house and i think there was like six people in the entire company um so again we see this on a different level a much smaller level uh with sid's first game in 1982 now he's eventually going to build large games but he says even towards the end of the book that he's at his heart and soul he still considers he still prefers indie development but civilization that that that multiple part you know 20 to 25 30 year uh game that they kept adding uh different uh kept extending rather uh you know that's he says there might be he's like it might not even be an exaggeration there

might be a billion lines of code in there like it's a it's a massive uh it would it winds up turning into a massive endeavor with all kinds of programmers and designers and everything else um because of the popularity but he does have like a soul of an indie developer and at the very beginning they're very happy just to sell a couple hundred games a month which is what the next section i'm going to read to you in the beginning the sales calls bills made were based mostly on convenience if he had a business trip out of town he'd walk from the train to the nearest computer store and try to sell a few copies on weekends he'd load a box of this i love this level of entrepreneurship the fact that they're selling their product out of the trunk of their car.

There's a line, there's a song by Nas where he talks about this. There's a lot of there was a lot of independent musicians and independent rappers, especially. And it's not just for in hip hop. It's all different genres, especially in the south, like Tennessee and everywhere, where they would sell their music out of the trunk of their car. And then they would take the proceeds and they'd keep reinvesting in the company. And then eventually they wound up having mainstream hits, but yet they own all their masters. They own their entire music, which is extremely rare, was extremely rare back then. It's becoming more common now. But I just love that level of entrepreneurship that, hey, I'm going to start out. I have something people want. They're not quitting their jobs. We see this at nighttime in a weekend hustle,

and they're like, I'm just going to sell it back to the trunk of my car. So he says, on weekends, he'd load a box of discs into the trunk of his car and drive as far as he could on I-95, coming back just in time for Monday morning meetings at his day job. Then late one evening, my phone rang. Sid, I think we might be onto something here. Bill, where are you? New Jersey. We just sold 50 copies of Hellcat Ace. Hey, that's great. Yeah, he said. So start copying. And this is what I loved about this book too,

because Sid is constantly comparing and contrasting the level of technology in his day when he got started comparing to now so he literally has to copy them one at a time each individual sale back then translated to about 60 seconds of boredom in front of my matched pair of floppy drives making copies of the game one by one so eventually they get their game gets enough attention that it started being reviewed in some of these gaming magazines and publications at the time. And Bill comes up with a really funny and really effective early sales technique. Remember, this is not really a company. They're just selling a couple hundred a month. They're just trying to do whatever they can.

And so this is what Bill does. As soon as the articles were published, Bill began placing calls to hobby stores that were farther away than he could drive. Hello, I'm looking to buy a copy of Hellcat Ace. Hmm, I don't think we carry that one. What? He would fume. What kind of computer store are you? Didn't you see the review in Antic or any other magazine? Then he would hang up in a huff, muttering about taking his business elsewhere. A week later, he would call again, pretending to be somebody else. And a third time a week after that. Finally, on the fourth week, he'd use his professional voice. Good afternoon, I'm a representative for MicroPro Software,

and I'd like to show you our latest game, Hellcat Ace. Spurred by the imaginary demand, they would invite him in. So it's during this year he starts making several, I think he makes three games during 1982. And he starts to release them, just like his initial beta testers, they're just his fellow co-workers. And the important part of this section is that if you have this small initial success or small initial traction, it can really light a fire in you and kind of believe, okay, hey, wait a minute, this actually might be possible. So he says, initially, I posted it, I posted the game to only a few interested co workers. But within a few days, it seemed like everyone had heard of it. The company network began to drag and small beeps

ricocheted throughout the halls as a sort of work abandonment klaxon of shame. Eventually, the drain on productivity became too significant to ignore, and I was told to delete the game. My coworkers were understandably disappointed, but I wore that ban with pride. It was an objective measure of how good the game must have been. It did leave me with a problem, however. My appetite for making games was growing stronger. But if I couldn't program in the office anymore, where could I do it? And he had good timing because not only as at the same time, his appetite for making games is growing, he gets kicked out of being able to develop in the office. Atari, which way back on Founders number 36, Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, and the mentor of

Steve Jobs. He actually hired an 18 or 19 year old Steve Jobs to work at Atari. He's actually that book that he wrote. The autobiography is called Finding the Next Steve Jobs. But Atari makes a game. They just released a computer rather that is made so you can make games on. So he winds up, Sid winds up buying that and then starts producing a lot of games. He lets his mom play one of these games. And this is something we saw.

It was a few weeks ago, maybe a few months ago in that book about the guy that ran MGM, MGM Studios, Louis B. Mayer. I think it was like founders number 173. In that book, it talks about like the very beginning of the movie industry, how it was just black and white and then no sound. And then they started playing movies with sound. And what Louis B. Mayer realized, because he saw the reaction of the audience, like they would start gasping when they heard sound in a movie theater for the first time. They would cry.

They would laugh. In other words, the movies are now evoking emotion. And so Louis B. Mayer went all in when the other people, the people that were invested in silent movies, I forgot the actual term for them, but the people that were producing the movies that didn't have sound in them, were like, oh no, the sound is just a fad.

Don't worry about it. And Louis is like, no, no, no. I'm going all in on this because the fact that our customers are now crying and laughing. If you have a product that evokes emotion, those products win, right? And Louis understood that, you know,

a hundred years ago. And so we see the same thing. We see Sid's coming to the same realization here because his mom's flipping out at this game. She's not even a gamer. She starts playing this game and she's getting so tense because suddenly she dropped the controller

and turned her face away. She told me she couldn't play anymore. Her heart was racing and it was all too much. I never forgot that moment my mother had become emotionally invested in this little game so profoundly that she had to abandon it abandon it entirely games were not just a diversion i realized games could make you feel if and i love how he compares gaming to other things like movies and novels and

everything else. And so he says, if great literature could wield its power through nothing but black squiggles on a page, how much more could be done with movement, sound and color? The potential for emotional interaction through this medium struck me as both fascinating and enticing. But he's talking about this like, oh, I want to do this. But where are the people who got paid for making games could I be one of those people I knew by now that I was a person who could make games probably for the rest of my life but it never occurred to me that it could be a source of

income if that were true then being a game designer seemed like the ideal job and so he still talks about the fact that you know know, when he's invited to give talks, you know, people always want to talk about the past. And he's very thankful for that. But he's like, I still make games today. It's like, I'm going to do this till I die. And so he talks about the difficulty of, you know, I'll never top civilization. You know, I'm not going to sell 50 million copies of whatever game I'm doing now, but I do still like to do this. And I would like your attention on that. So I thought that was interesting that he brings that up. I was neither a boisterous salesman nor self promoter. And though I knew it was counter, even though I knew that was

counterproductive to my own goals. So another way you could think about that sentence, he just said, he's identifying his weaknesses, right? So it's like, okay, I'm not boisterous salesman. I'm not a self promoter. I'm kind of the guy in the background, just I'm the craftsman in the background, right? I had useful knowledge that others salesman. I'm not a self-promoter. I'm kind of the guy in the background. Just I'm the craftsman in the background, right? I had useful knowledge that others didn't have. And I would have to rely on those who had knowledge of my knowledge, who could be my link to the non-programming world. People like my future partner, Bill.

And again, I just, I know I repeated that. I think it's very important to identify the weaknesses. And then, hey, if I can't strengthen those weaknesses, find people that already have that. Your weakness is their strength. Bill is going to sell. He's a master salesman. Sid is not.

Let me just team up with this guy and we can actually build a company together. I'm fast forwarding in the story. But, again, I want to hit on this part that small initial success can cause you to believe it is possible. You can't accomplish anything until you actually think it's possible. That's the first step. And so the fact that he's having these people are playing his games, his mom's freaking out, his coworkers are freaking out, Bill's selling 500 copies a month. He's like, all right, I'm going to do this. Gaming had its hooks embedded in me. I now believed that I could,

that I myself could be a game designer. According to my short autobiography at the end of Formula One Racing Manual, this is a book that he did. This enterprising 28 year old with exactly one professional title under his belt had two dreams in life. So now he's going back as a mid 60s man and looking back what his 28 year old self wrote in the manual for his first game. One, I want to develop a music composition system, which I eventually did, and it flopped. And number two, the other was to write the ultimate strategy game. That is Civilization.

That is the one that sells 51 million copies. Okay, so they have some success selling these games. And it says, Bill and I were almost selling 500 games a month. I had just churned out my fourth title. The next step, as Bill saw it, was to broaden our audience And it says, Micro Pros was still a nights and weekends operation out of our homes. Now, Bill sees the potential before Sid does. That's very fascinating. And he's also has, I would say Sid's more cautious. It's a little wild.

Bill decided it was time for him to leave General Instrument and work full time at Micro Pros. There was no realistic way for him to increase his efforts at the company otherwise. But I was more cautious about giving up my steady paycheck and still not convinced that this dream was going to last. Our philosophy had always been to avoid loans and venture capital, and it would only take a couple months of slow sales to drag us under. I decided it would be more prudent for me to go halftime, spending two days a week at the new Microprose office space and three days a week at my day job. So he finds a way to compromise to have a safety net, but I can also dedicate more hours of my week to making this company successful. Let me skip ahead to how they wind up. They wind up analyzing the retail game market,

which is starting to grow little by little at this time. And they're like, okay, well, how can we rapidly accelerate sales? Instead of, you know, I'm just, I'm calling up, I'm doing like prank calls to gaming retailers. I'm selling things out of the trunk of my car. Like, how can we speed this up? And so what they realized is like the retail game market at the time, you have to put yourself into a spot where a buyer can notice you. And why is that important? Because the buying of new games was outsourced by the retailers. So it

says there was no middle ground in the retail market. At the bottom were the mom and pop stores. These are the ones they're calling, trying to go door to door, essentially sell. And directly above them were the national outlets. So that's the ones who are trying to penetrate. Upward mobility came all at once or not at all. And so this is where they come up with a good idea. The national chains didn't decide for themselves what products to carry. Instead, they leased out their shelf space to professional distributors who would sign their own contracts with individual game companies. And he compares this to the music industry, like recording agents looking for the next big act. To get the attention we needed,

Bill said we had to get ourselves to ces this is the consumer electronics show this is 1984 and he says you know it's a big show but it's like more than twice as big today um so they wind up setting up a booth with a demo a lot of buyers are there they wind up signing a couple distribution deals now this was actually really really smart and i'm surprised i wouldn't say I'm surprised, but it takes a lot of, like you have to know why you're doing what you're doing to turn down a deal like this because they don't have a lot of money at this time.

So you have distributors that want to say, okay, for a cut, I'm going to put you in a retail store, right? But then you also have people coming around, other game development companies and some distributors saying, hey, we're not going to do a royalty-based deal with you. Just sell me the entire game and then I'll recoup it. But any upside, essentially, they're they're saying I'm going to buy a game, but all the upside is mine.

So what Sid and Bill did that was smart is like they always wanted to maintain ownership and they realized instinctively that it's a good idea not to cap the upside. I mean, imagine him selling the Civilization series, maybe sell for a million dollars, you think you're rich, but it goes on to sell 51 million copies, and all the upside goes to the person that bought it, right? So he wants to avoid that. Partnership was not the same as ownership, and Bill and I had been clear about staying on our side of the equation. Rather than a stake in the company, meaning buy into Microprose, our ongoing royalties, however, there's this company called He's Wear. He's Wear wanted to pay us a flat $250,000 to buy the game in its entirety and

then sell it as their own. On one hand, long-term sales of Solo Flight, that's the game, might surpass He's Wear's offer, especially now that we had distributor deals on the table. On the other hand, we were still running on a very tight budget. And with me not even able to work full time. So he turned down this deal and he's not even working full time. This is really, really hard to do, but really smart move. A large injection of cash, because they're going to wind up selling hundreds of thousands of copies. A large injection of cash would help us significantly and keep us afloat if the game turned out to be a bust.

But I gave Bill the only advice I had to offer. This is so important. If you believe you have something special, then you should treat it that way. If you believe you have something special, then you should treat it that way. I heard you shouldn't sell the family jewels, I said. It turned out to be the right decision.

And so when I got to that section, there's two examples that, one I've already covered on the podcast, one I will cover in the future. Akio Morita, founder of Sony, and Ralph Lauren both did the same thing that Sid did here. Akio Morita, his dream is like, I'm going to build a company that not only is Sony going to be world renowned, but it's going to, at the time, Japan had a reputation for making crappy products. And so he put his mission not to make Sony, he picked a mission bigger than mission bigger in his company so it's not like i don't want to just make sony successful i want to make the reputation for japanese products better and so he winds up at the early days sony i forgot what that what what uh what product it was but one it's one of the early products he

meets with like a large department store they say we, we love it. We'll take a hundred thousand units. And Akio Morita could not believe he's like, Oh my God, millions of millions of dollars that his company did not have. But the, the, the catch was we're not going to sell it for Sony with the Sony name. We're going to put our name. So essentially you're going to be our house brand. Right. And Akio Morita says, no, like I'm not doing that. And then he gets chastised by the buyer he's like well how dare you say no to us we're a company that's been around for decades we have a well-known brand you're just a you know fly by nothing and Akio Morita's like yeah but I won't be forever and one day my company will be as well known as your company and so he turned down that

huge offer same thing I haven't done the biography of Ralph Lauren yet but I will in the future but he in very early in his career he knew he wanted to have the Ralph Lauren brand I think one of the first things he sold was ties and it was like a Bloomingdale's kind of store and they're like we love your ties Ralph we're gonna buy him here's the catch you're gonna make him we're gonna put our name on him and he didn't have a lot of money he had no he there was no Ralph Lauren to speak of and he said no I'm not here to make your brand better. I'm making my brand. And so even when he didn't have money, just like Akia Morita, just like Sid,

he turned that down because he knew why he was doing what he was doing. And so this pays off. They wind up selling a boatload of Solo Flight. And it says a few months after signing the Solo Flight deal, Bill said the words I've been waiting to hear. Sid, we're making enough money. You can quit your day job. Which started out as a labor of love, now finally qualified as a legitimate labor that we all happen to love.

Remember, this is something me and you have been talking about over and over again. Find work that feels like play. Work that feels like play. No one can compete with you if what you're doing today feels like play to you and it feels like work to them and this is the most important part of this entire section quality quality content in this case his games quality was the driving force behind it all a few pages later this one sentence there's a one what i call one sentence story and again another illustration of that idea,

find work that feels like play. All that mattered to me was that I got to make games for a living. So I want to go back and reference Masters of Doom, podcast number 21. How do you have two partners, a small company making tons of money, two partners are running it, or it's John Romero, John Carmack, they wind up breaking up. Why are they breaking up? Because Sid, John Carmack, was very similar to what Sid says here. What did Sid say? All that

mattered to me was that I got to make good game or I got to make games for a living. There's a quote from Masters of Doom that I never forgot. As Carmack put it shortly after their breakup, Romero wants an empire. I just want to make good programs. Because Carmack found work that felt like play. I just want to make... Sid just wants to make video games. Carmack just wants to make video games. I don't need to have an empire. And in that case, I mean, he has almost like the...

It's almost like you have a mini empire because the games are so profitable. Doom was making so much money. So that book is just... There's a lot... Again, I just highly recommend everybody read that book because there's just a lot of lessons on how to make a product, how to market it. Just there's lessons on distribution, on pricing, but also what happens. We see this over and over again.

Having a co-founder is like being married and most marriages end in divorce. Same thing with co-founders. And you see like they had an empire and they broke apart. So, again, if you could read that and kind of learn from their experiences, maybe you can avoid those pitfalls in the future. I think that's where the value is. This is something interesting, reminds me of Claude Hopkins. I think this is founders number 170. I don't have it in front of me. Claude Hopkins is maybe the greatest copywriter of all time. He wound up working from home just with a typewriter and made like the equivalent like $4 million a year because his words induced people to buy the products of his clients. Right. And one of the two things I learned from Claude Hopkins that he influenced other people like David Ogilvie later on.

But the more you tell, the more you sell. Right. And number two, start with service. And there's just two quick sentences. And it's about you really see Sid's love for what he's doing. So it says one of the things that Microprose was famous was for our game manuals, which over time became as long and informative as textbooks. The manual for the game, the more he sells, the more he tells. He's putting all kinds of information in the game. Again, some people won't read it.

Maybe a lot of people won't read it. But the people that do read it will have a fundamentally deeper appreciation for your game. Just like with me, as I started reading these biographies and autobiographies of people, if their company is still around, I find myself more likely to spend money at their company. Ever since I did Trader Joe's, I've always shopped at Trader Joe's. But now I don't know if I've been to another grocery store since I've done that book. Because I'm like, wow, this guy really loved what he did. And reading that book, spending 10 or 15 hours having a one sided conversation with him.

Now I'm going to go to Trader Joe's. I'm like, wow, I can really appreciate his philosophy and all the work. It took him, what, two decades to finally or a decade and a half to finally figure out what his company was supposed to be. And so I think what Sid's doing here is really smart. It's listen i'm pouring all these game handles yeah you might not read it but what claude said the more you tell the more you sell you see this guy clearly cares and then start with service and he's talking about you know people like why are you doing this and one sentence here we just wanted to be helpful okay so i'ming the story. Obviously, if you want the whole story, you got to read the book, but there is, he's making more games, and you know, they're selling very, very well. Says the game went over to sell over 250,000 copies. I wish we could sell, and I'm gonna, he's talking about he had to fix the game in the development process, but I'm gonna, what he's saying here is gonna sound very similar to what we just learned from Johnny Ive a few weeks ago, maybe a few months ago in his,

in his biography. I wish I could sum up how we fixed it, but the math is long, complicated, and boring. The important thing to note is that it wasn't one, it wasn't a lightning bolt solution, but dozens of increment, this is so important, not a lightning bolt, dozens of incremental changes, many of which we couldn't take credit for. We had to find ways to do our job better, but we also had to take advantage of other people who were doing their jobs better. New technology, new compression algorithms, new ways to implement standard subroutines. Gaming is a collaborative effort, and it is silly to think that any one person can claim all the glory. And so from the Johnny Ive biography, they talk about innovation a lot,

like how are you making innovative products? And I can't remember if it's a direct quote or if this is the author, but it says innovation, I'm pretty sure it's a direct quote, innovation is rarely about a big idea. More usually, it's a series of small ideas brought together in new and better ways. So let's use that definition of innovation one more time. Innovation is rarely about a big idea. More usually, it's a series of small ideas brought together in new and better way. That is exactly what Sid just said in that paragraph. And the fact that he was able to bring a series of small ideas together in a new and better way winds up leading to one game. And they're making several games that sold 250,000 copies before the internet. That's insane. Another common theme that

we see over and over again in these biographies, you're going to be misunderstood by the outside world when he starts doing this. If you say I'm going to be a game designer today, it's like, oh, that makes a lot of sense, right? Massive industry growing rapidly. It's insane. But at Sid's time, it wasn't like that at all. It wasn't that gaming was looked down on by the rest of the world necessarily, but it was sometimes glanced at sideways in confusion. I don't think any of us could have imagined back then the kind of cultural domination that gaming would someday achieve.

Okay, so let's go to why he names his games like he does. So there's the Sid Meier, which is normal. But then there's Sid Meier that's italicized with an exclamation point at the end. That's how the title of this book, the title of all his games. And Robin Williams is why that happened. Why Sid's games started out using his name in the title. So it says he's at a meeting. There's some kind of SPA event.

I'm not sure what that is. But Bill happens to be there. It says Robin Williams, he loved games. In fact, he named one of his daughters Zelda, which I also didn't know that. But Robin Williams pointed out that all other entertainment industries promoted their stars by name.

Why should gaming be any different so he says hey you know it's a robin williams movie you know it's a stephen king novel why don't i know it's a sid meyer game um and so sid sid was a little reluctant to do that but then he says robin williams told me to do it it's a pretty good defense for almost anything so i thought that was really interesting then he talks about you know the beginning of industry is not like a lot there's not like best practices and so how do i make these decisions and this is something we've seen over and over again let's just start with the customer work backwards all i could was all i could do is keep asking myself would i want to play this game as long as the answer was yes the idea stayed in he always put himself in the role of his customer in the role of the player not just saying hey i

can design a game because it's easier for me no with the with the customer with the player actually like what i'm doing so one of his uh most popular games was uh sid meyer's pirates and i'm just going to read uh i'm going to skip over all the development i just want to hit some um like what he realized his like his key insight and what i wrote the note i left myself on this page is holy shit this applies for real life not just the design of a pirate game a pirate's career would last about 40 years between childhood and old age just like ours right and his goal this is so important and his goal was to accomplish as much as he could in that window, to have an adventurous life with no regrets. Let's go back to that.

And we're going to substitute pirate's career. Your career. Your career will last about 40 years between childhood and old age. And your goal was to accomplish as much as you could in that window, to have an adventurous life with no regrets. As in real life, success could only be measured as a combination of your exploits and how much value you put on those particular exploits yourself in your scorecard idea you and I've talked about over and over again. Life is not a steady progression of objectively increasing value. And when you fail, you don't just reload the mission again. You knock the wet sand off your breaches and return to the high seas for new adventures. And if you happen to get marooned on a desert island a few times, well, that makes for a good

story too. I just love that we can summarize that whole section there. Have an adventurous life with no regrets. So now they're having success. We're in the late 80s. And Tom Clancy, the very successful writer, Sid winds up doing an adaptation of The Hunt for Red October. It was either The Hunt for Red October or Red Storm Rising. Nope, Red Storm Rising. It was a submarine simulation they were building. So this was really, I wrote,

oh, this is never as surprising as it should be. And then a quote from Jay-Z I'll tell you about in a minute. It says, Tom Clancy was a very down-to-earth guy. The hunt for Red October had been a huge success, but as a debut author, he hadn't been able to command the greatest deal with his publisher, and he was still working at his day job selling insurance, even as Red Storm Rising was flying off the shelves okay so let me unpack that a little bit tom sold his first book the hunt for red october which is hugely successful novel

turned into a movie turned into all kinds of stuff he sold it for five thousand dollars so that's what i mean oh this is never be as surprising as it should be. He eventually makes more, but he winds up selling a hundred million books before he dies. And he dies in like his sixties, a hundred million books. Tom Clancy is wild, but at this point it's selling, he's got to go back and renegotiate and get more money for him, but he's still having to sell insurance. How crazy is that? He's got two wildly successful books and he's still having to work a day job. And so when I got to that section, I thought of this quote from Jay-Z. I've told you about this album before, his album 444. It's about his life, but really it's an album about entrepreneurship.

And you have a hugely successful person that came from the projects, Marcy Projects, I think he's like a billionaire today, has been successful in so many different domains. And even there, he talks about, he's like, there's a line on the album where he's talking about, you can think it's bougie, it's fine, but I'm just trying to give you a million dollars worth of game for $9.99. He's talking about, you know,

why are you rapping about investments? Why are you rapping about collecting art? Why are you rapping about building companies? And his whole point is just like, in the reference there is, you know, CDs, albumsds albums used to call nine before we streamed they you usually buy them from 9.99 so he's like i'm for ten dollars for buying this album for ten dollars if you actually listen to what i'm saying it's gonna

be worth over a million dollars to you in your life a million dollars worth of game for 9.99 but on in that um album and something he's he's renowned for he was decades decades ahead of this is over and over again. You see executives, record companies take advantage of the people that are actually producing the work, right? Making the album, making the music, whatever the case is. And in that case, he talks about how Prince, the famous, the famous music artist, you know, they they made they stole his masters. Somebody I forgot who he referenced in the album, they wind up after Prince died, they sold tickets so you could walk through his house

and he calls them greedy bastards in there. And the reason I say Jay-Z's way ahead of that is because no one would sign him when he was 26 years old back in the 90s. And so he signed himself. He's like, okay, well, I'll just make my own record label. And that was and that was very very like it was almost unheard of now back then now you're seeing a lot there's actually a lot i think modern day entrepreneurs can learn from from independent music artists now and i've mentioned this a few times on the podcast but if you actually study

them and listen to what they're saying like they maintain ownership they wind up using the latest technology they're making tons of money and they're not getting taken advantage there are still people getting taken advantage of so when i got to this tom clancy part which like you know tom is a very very successful but he's still having to work insurance and there's a line on that album where jay-z says y'all are still signing deals still after all they done stole for real. And his point is like you're I understand you're young and you want to break into the music industry, but you're ignoring decades of history, a very important history in the music industry of how they're ripping you off over and over and over again. He talks about, OK, we'll talk when you're behind your taxes. And again, I think that's why I think musicians, especially they they they are the most efficient storytellers in the world because in a few minutes or sometimes in a line or two they can just tell entire stories where

it's like you're still signing deals still after all they done stole for real now in Tom Clancy's case winds up working out but that's only because he was able to keep producing best-selling novels so just this idea that you're going to sell the hunt for Red October for $5,000. And then it might also be obvious when we got to that part. Like that is also something that Sid avoided. And he was offered a lot more than $5,000. They were going to give him a quarter million dollars for one game. And he was able to make multiple games in a year.

He's like, no, I'm capturing the upside. All right. So he talks about sitting down and essentially they're going to have a conversation. Him and I skipped ahead, but they built a friendship of some sorts or at least a relationship. And really, the whole summary of the section, this conversation that Tom Clancy and Sid Meier about to have is maintain control so you can avoid shady business deals. Business is full of shady, scummy, terrible people. I always think the best way to describe this is when it's a quote from Charlie Munger. He says, wise people want to avoid other people who are just total rat poison.

And there are a lot of them. So business is full of them. One way to avoid people taking advantage of you is to maintain control. It says, that night we sat up late together, expounding on the nature of art, sources of inspiration. Remember, he's a writer. Clancy's a writer. And in some ways, Sid is as well. It says, not so kind emotionally as he was forced to adapt to fame and the complications that come along with it tom was especially troubled by ongoing contractual issues with his first book and the fear that he might never again own the rights to his own character again this is what sid avoided right and later on when he says make civilization i skipped over a lot of this part but there's a lot of weird other people buy sid's creations too because it's unowned under a corporate umbrella.

It's really, really confusing. There's more details in the book, but he does eventually get back all control. The conversation was eye-opening for me. First in discovering a kindred creative spirit underneath that alpha male persona that Tom Clancy had. And also in the revelation that even someone of his stature could be taken advantage of through poor business arrangements. So they took advantage of Tom Clancy, when he was super famous, took advantage of Prince. The history of business, especially in the entertainment industry, is people being taken advantage of. I'd always had a distaste for business deals in general, simply because it's not the kind of thing I want to spend my day doing.

And I was starting to realize that there was potential danger in them as well. And I think that's another thing about Sid that you see if you read the book over and over again. He's smart enough to learn from the experience of others. Like, all right, I don't I'm going to avoid. I don't want to have to just learn through my own experience. Right. That's that's too expensive. I'm going to learn from other people's experiences. This conversation I have with Tom, I'm not going to forget it. Make sure I don't get taken advantage of like this. I'm going to bring you up to state of the business in 1990. As a company, we're now releasing three or four games a year and generating around $15 million in revenue.

So over and over again in the book, Sid talks about being inspired by the success and the work of others. He'll quote authors, musicians, fellow game designers. And this is an example of SimCity. This is a game I played when I was a kid. I love this game. It was actually, SimCity was the inspiration behind Sid's game Railroad Tycoon, which winds up being one of his most successful games ever. And the Railroad Tycoon title inspired like all kinds of,

like there was like a whole genre of tycoon. You know, you could build all kinds of things. They were not made by Sid, but they were in turn inspired by Sid. So it said, fellow designer Will Wright released his magnum opus, SimCity. The idea had come to him while working on a different title, after he realized that he enjoyed designing the levels more than bombing them.

Not entirely surprising for a game designer to feel that way, but he came to the radical conclusion that others might agree with him. Will had spent years trying to convince publishers that his city building simulator, this is the problem with gatekeepers, look at this. He spent years trying to convince publishers that his city building simulator was a game at all until finally he and a partner formed their own company to release it themselves in February 1989. So he said SimCity was either the kick I needed to see what was right in front of me or else maybe the reassurance that my intuition was feasible after all and from then on i knew

this wasn't a distracting little side project we were making a railroad game so instead of the idea that you have to kill people something said i don't think sid has any violence violence in his games it's like one of his philosophies uh you have to blow things up or he's like no why don't people just might be interested in just constantly building to blow things up or are he's like no why don't people just might be interested in just constantly building and making progress and so what he's learning on real from sim city on railway tycoon he then will also apply to civilization this idea of just perpetual progress and not just the destruction of things and before i get into this conversation where they realize okay now it's the time to build civilization one one sentence for you never forget

the why never forget why people are using your product. People play games to feel good about themselves. So I just listened to a talk that Sid did like six years ago. In about an hour and a half, he lays out all his gaming philosophy. It's on YouTube if you want to watch it. He talks about it over and over again. Like people play games to feel good about themselves. So don't make decisions as a game designer that go against why they're playing your particular game. So this is where he realizes it's time for civilization. That was a pretty

fun game to make, Bruce said. It was, I agreed. We should do another one. Something bigger. What's bigger than the history of railroads? The entire history of human civilization. We laughed at the absurd truth of that statement. But as soon as it was said out loud, I don't think either of us could have settled for anything less. We were not the type to turn down an interesting challenge. At the age of 28, I had declared in my very first instruction manual that I would one day write the ultimate strategy game. Now, at 36, I figured I was ready. Age and experience may bring wisdom, but sometimes it's useful to be a young person who hasn't learned how to doubt himself yet. So you have an idea as to why he's saying that.

Age and experience may bring wisdom. Sometimes it's useful. However, sometimes it's useful for a young person who hasn't learned how to doubt himself yet. He did not know how hard making civilization was going to be, and he's going to wind up putting everything into it. And it's fantastic. It was, it was, uh, successful, but it burns him out for extremely long period of time. And again, I just think that's something that's mentioned over and over again, where

people are looking back and like, Hey, if I knew how hard that was going to be, I would have, when I started it, I wouldn't have done it. So there is some kind of benefit to, to ignorant bliss or naivete or whatever you want to call it. This is Sid really saying you need to know your edge. We simply can't compete with the panorama of a movie or the length of a novel or the acoustics of an album. And prioritizing these features over gameplay, which is his edge, will always lead to disappointments. The time has come for us to outgrow Hollywood envy. I think there's another game designer or game publisher.

It says, as Chris Crawford once wrote, the time has come for us to outgrow Hollywood envy. Sid Meier makes a pathetic Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he makes a magnificent Sid Meier. Okay, so pull out a couple more interesting things about while he's making games. In one game, he winds up making like a – he has one game but has multiple games inside the game. And what he realizes like – really where I'm bringing this paragraph to your attention is because it reminds me a lot of Steve Jobs. Steve, one of his greatest philosophies is the fact that the further you go away from one, the more complexity you're inviting in. And then his other – another thing it reminded me of steve jobs says that focus is saying no right so says combining two great games had somehow left me with zero good ones the notion that one good game is better than

two great games was such a revelation that it became known in my mind as the covert action rule that's the game he was making that he learned this many Many of the designers I mentor now weren't even born when that game came out. So we're more likely to talk about it, talk about the issue in terms of where a game's center of gravity is. But the lesson holds, and I've never stopped citing the truth of it to myself or others. If anything, it's grown in relevance since back then when we at least had limited computing resources to restrain us. These days, the easiest thing in the world to do is more. And if we're not careful, we can end up with three or four games all jammed into one. Deciding what doesn't go into the game is sometimes more important than deciding what does.

And then he's got some advice on how to make progress faster. It's like a series of iterations. Don't just essentially sit around and overthink things. Just make a demo, see how it goes, and if it doesn't work back, roll it back. So he also has this idea. It's like you need to double what you're doing or cut it in half. So let me just read this to you and hopefully it makes sense. Mistakes are a given, and the important thing is to catch as many as you can,

as fast as you can. Ideally, you'll reevaluate your creation every single day. And each iteration is an opportunity not to pat yourself on the back, but to figure out where you've already gone wrong. Efficiency is the goal. And one of my big rules has always been double it or cut in half. Don't waste your time adjusting something by 5%, then another 5%, then another 5%. Just double it and see if it even had the effect you thought it was going to have. You just saved yourself a dozen iterations inching up 5% at a time. Less than a month before, and then you can move in the other direction too. Less than a month before Civilization was published, I cut the size of the map in half. It turned out that the

size wasn't as important as the sense of relentless progress. With a smaller map the game moved faster and that in turn made the map feel more epic than when it was twice as big. The point is there are bad things in my games at least until I managed to pin them down but I don't let the possibility of mistakes hold me back. I won't ponder for hours whether a feature would be a good idea. I just throw it in the game and find out for sure. If it's clunky, I cut it back out again. There is no map before you've explored the wilderness and no overriding artistic vision on day one. There's just a hard, consistent work of making something a little better each day

and being as efficient as possible in your discovery of what it's going to turn out to be. So after a lot of time and effort, he winds up finishing civilization and conventional wisdom winds up being wrong again. Civilization starts resonating with players. This is a conventional wisdom said a strategy title would never make big money. So the company even, and I've skipped over a bunch of like the weird people leave, ownership changes, all this other stuff. But they didn't put a lot of marketing dollars at the beginning behind civilization because they said, you know, conventional wisdom says you're not going to make big money. So why would we make a huge investment in marketing? They hadn't put a big marketing push behind it. So like most of my recent games, it started as a slow burn.

Then they realized, okay, we've resonated with something. When the first fan letters trickled in a few weeks after the game's release, they had a decidedly different tone than we were used to. Some of the letters were several pages long and included phone numbers in the hopes that we could discuss things in greater depth. We had gotten players thinking on a deeper level.

They were interacting with the game as a tool rather than an experience and what happens is it's a slow burn but it starts spreading by word of mouth so even years later he's saying this is like two or three years after the game was released new fans were discovering the game every day i had poured everything i had into civilization and i was honestly ready to think about something else for a while so now he's completely burned out and it says achievement unlocked this is the gamification of the book it says midlife crisis woohoo we're halfway there and so he he takes a break for a while he starts working on other um completely different games he makes that music composer game he wanted.

It winds up flopping. Later on, he says Civilization, the titles, there was always different lead designers because that's something you have to do when you're young and full of energy because it's just so comprehensive. It's such a large project. I do want to pull out one sentence here that's Sid's realization

that is going to be something that we've seen over and over again in this book. It says, good games don't get made by committee. So good products don't get made by committee. That's something Edwin Land, Steve Jobs, George Lucas, David Ogilvie, Charles Keitering, they are all agreeing with Sid here. That's something that pops up over and over again. Good products don't get made by committee. You need that formidable individual that's leading it. So this is interesting.

He talks about where he made mistakes. Civilization has this huge modding community that's sustained it for multiple decades. They'll actually change the game and re-skin it and change things about it to make it more, essentially customizing it to their own liking. And he thought this was a terrible idea and so one of the um one of the the next civilization designers is actually the one that pushed him in this direction he's like brian you're insane you shouldn't be

doing this and then he talks about the the realization he has when he comes when he figures out he was wrong i thought it was valuable so i'm going to read the tune a minute brian unlocked the back end even further he made it possible for players to alter graphics, replace sound effects, modify rules, and basically create an entirely new game from themselves around the skeleton of our code. I could not be convinced this was a good idea. This idea of handling everything over to the players was just baffling. They would probably be terrible at it, I thought, and blame us for their uninspired creations. And if by chance they did happen to be good at it, then all we were doing was putting ourselves out of a job. Either way, I knew that modding was a great way to ensure that Civilization never saw a third installment.

I was so wrong. On all counts. The strength of the modding community is, instead, the very reason this series survived at all. Our audience had been clamoring to modify the game since the first fan letter what i didn't see at the time is that imagination never diminishes reality it only heightens it so the next two paragraphs i'm going to read that i'm going to start that again the next two paragraphs are really his key insight here and i think the reason i'm reading this whole section too because i think it applies to other things very very wise of him what i didn't see at the time is that imagination never diminishes

reality it only heightens it just like a fantasy can awaken you to new possibilities in the real world letting the fans play in the sandbox with us only brought them closer to the universe we had created the one that had made their fantasy possible i thought they were tearing the house down when in fact they were only remodeling because they liked the neighborhood and wanted to stay. Fortunately, Brian had the wisdom to give away the construction materials. To say fans ran with it would be an understatement. So to some degree he becomes like a, what is it, a prisoner of your own success? And this is again, we're just going to echo.

I just, he just wants to make games. Like it doesn't have to be complicated, right? But we love to overcomplicate things. Just like John Carmack, just want to make games. I was frustrated. I didn't like doing licenses and I didn't like the corporate structure that had been slowly but surely building up around me for years. I just wanted to make games.

Many other early folks had moved on as well. and it was time for me to do the same so once the company grows big and unwieldy it has its own momentum of itself he winds up leaving starting a tiny uh i shouldn't say tiny but it starts out small but it's going to grow to uh design another just another design studio where he's like okay i'm going to start it's just going to grow to design another just another design studio where he's like, OK, I'm going to start. It's just going to be us three. And then we'll build up from there. And this is how tied into his decision about wanting to go back to the basics to a smaller team is this is Sid describing how he likes to work separately is probably how I work best with everyone. I'm an introvert who likes people. I want to collaborate on the whole, but I want to do my part individually. There are so many things in the world to be good at. and I get a thrill every time I come across someone who excels in their field.

The dichotomy between someone else's talent and your own is a cause for celebration, because the further apart you are, the more you can offer each other. The further apart you are, the more you can offer each other. So he's talking about, hey, at the beginning, he did everything. He's making the game. He's designing the game. He's doing the audio for the game. Slowly but surely, he's got people say, hey, I can design each other. So he's talking about, hey, at the beginning, he did everything. He's making the game. He's designing the game. He's doing the audio for the game. Slowly but surely, he's got people who say, hey, I can design for you. So he's like, oh, I don't know.

Maybe you can. Then he looks at the designs and says, oh, they're better than me. So, okay, I'm going to grab that guy. I can do audio for you. He does the audio better than me, so I'm going to grab that person. So that's what he's talking about. It's like, yeah, stick to what is your edge and then find the people that can fill in the gaps. Same thing with Bill, his first partner.

You know, Bill can sell. I don't want to sell. So the further apart you are, the more you can offer each other. I know where my own talents are, and I find that sharing those duties usually falls somewhere between inefficient and frustrating. I want to combine other people's unique expertise with mine and create something that none of us could have made alone not compromise on the same task uh he's going to bring up the idea that everybody's constantly building on the work of others all the time uh that is not to say my version of civilization had no outside influences far from it aside from the general creating not destroying concept i'd first encountered in sim city there were two games that I very much respected and blatantly took ideas from to use for my own purposes so this

game called Seven Cities of Gold and it says the game was a cloud parting shackle removing mind-blowing masterpiece for me and there were elements of it in nearly every game I made thereafter and he's got a great line to summarize this section. The ideas didn't start with us and they can't end with us either. So he talks about, you know, I was influenced by tons of people. And so when I see somebody doing influences by a game like Pirates or Railroad Tycoon or Civilization, like I love that. I love seeing further improvements. The ideas didn't start with us and they can't end

with us either so he's talking about game design in this next section but again there's so many things when you talk about game design i feel applies to real life too he's talking about how to like the beginning of what do you want your game to be let's say okay what do you want your life to be who's having the most fun that's who you want your player to be the person with the most power living the most exciting life in the the history of civilization, it's the king. On the Spanish main, meaning the pirates, it's the captain of the pirate ship. In war, it's the general. And in the transportation industry, it's the tycoon. So just think about that. Not who's your player, not your life, right? Who is having the most fun? That's who you want your player to be. That really echoes an idea from a long time ago when i did that three

part series on elon musk tim urban of way by way but why did an elon musk blog series you can read it for free online by going to his website but um i bought the ebook or the kindle version rather and it's like 60 000 pages but anyways that whole idea about treating your life is like you're playing a video game one of the the metaphors that Tim uses, Tim Urban uses to describe Elon Musk's approach to life is grand theft life. That section is worth reading and rereading over and over again

because it's very fascinating. So few people use that, that I guess metaphor, that philosophy. This is Sid talking about the benefit of being obsessive. I think having a slightly obsessive personality is a useful thing. It keeps me focused on the quality of my work. It provides critical sources of outside inspiration, which often contribute in surprising ways. Whatever it is you want to be

good at, you have to make sure you continue to read and learn and seek joy elsewhere, because you never know where inspiration will strike. As you can imagine, there's tons of people wanting to break into the industry, younger people to ask Sid for advice. So this is his advice on how to get started. The best way to prove your idea is a good one is to prove it, not with words, but with actions. Sit in the programmer chair until you have something playable. Then sit in the artist chair until you have something crudely recognizable. Then sit in the tester chair and be honest with yourself about what's fun and what's not. You don't need to be perfect at any one job. You just need to be good enough to prove your point

and inspire others to join you. So he talks about the pricing model of games and how it's changed over time. And I think this is really where studying the gaming industry is really beneficial because it's also mentioned a lot in the masters of doom book um so he's talking about this is now in like the modern era right uh we decided whether we had to decide whether to charge a one up a one upfront premium for the game as was traditional or try out the trendy new model of downloadable content in which a limited version of the game would be given away for free and then subsequent levels would have to be individually purchased. So a lot of mobile games are using this, obviously.

I mean, computer games are using it, not just mobile games, but he's going to reference a mobile game here. But this is also the Doom model, the model that they came up with, I think, in the early 90s. If you ask a group of gamers their opinion on these so-called microtransactions, most would probably respond with a string of rude words. But their revenues tell a different story. Nexon, the company that invented the notion of small purchases within a free game, first used it as a Hail Mary pass for an online server that was about to be shut down for lack

of subscribers. Membership predictably skyrocketed once the game was free. But more importantly, the new microtransactions dwarfed previous subscription sales, not only saving the game, but increasing the total corporate revenue by 16% in one year. So he's going to talk about the state. Really what he's referencing here is the difference between stated and revealed preference. They state they don't like it, but they wind up spending a lot more money the other way, right? A full 70% of Candy Crush users have never paid a dime for the game, yet it still brings in several million dollars a day. We say we hate it, but the balance sheet proves otherwise.

I do think the idea of a free demo with the option to purchase the entire game is a fair one. And he talks about it's also not a new idea. And coin-operated arcades were engaging in microtransactions long before their current wave of popularity. And finally, I'll close on it with a few parting words of wisdom from Sid. So many of our wildest dreams have turned out to be laughably conservative, that it's hard to write off anything as impossible. Making games is simply the best job in the world. And I think that in life, as in game design, you have to find the fun. There is joy out there waiting to be discovered, but it might not be where you expect it. You can't decide what something's going to be before you

embark on it. And you shouldn't stick with a bad idea just because you're fond of it. Take action as quickly and repeatedly as possible. Take advantage of what you already know, and take liberties with tradition. But most importantly, take the time to appreciate the possibilities and make sure all of your decisions are interesting ones. And that is where I'll leave it for the full story. I highly, highly recommend reading the book. And I think this book actually pairs nicely.

If you have not also listened or read Masters of Doom, highly recommend you buy that book as well. So buy the book using the link that's in the show notes on your podcast player. You'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. I think that's 195 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon.