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Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games
The life and career of the legendary developer celebrated as the “godfather of computer gaming,� and creator of Civilization.
Over his four-decade career, Sid Meier has produced some of the world’s most popular video games, including Sid Meier’s Civilization, which has sold more than 51 million units worldwide and accumulated more than one billion hours of play. Sid Meier’s Memoir! is the story of an obsessive young computer enthusiast who helped launch a multibilliondollar industry. Writing with warmth and ironic humor, Meier describes the genesis of his influential studio, MicroProse, founded in 1982 after a trip to a 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 videogame should be “a series of interesting decisions,� Meier also shares his perspective on the history of the industry, the psychology of gamers, and fascinating insights into the creative process, including his ten rules of good game design.
Over his four-decade career, Sid Meier has produced some of the world’s most popular video games, including Sid Meier’s Civilization, which has sold more than 51 million units worldwide and accumulated more than one billion hours of play. Sid Meier’s Memoir! is the story of an obsessive young computer enthusiast who helped launch a multibilliondollar industry. Writing with warmth and ironic humor, Meier describes the genesis of his influential studio, MicroProse, founded in 1982 after a trip to a 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 videogame should be “a series of interesting decisions,� Meier also shares his perspective on the history of the industry, the psychology of gamers, and fascinating insights into the creative process, including his ten rules of good game design.
286 pages, Hardcover
First published September 8, 2020
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April 22, 2021
Two things I should get out of the way:
1) I worked with Sid Meier for several years, and have credits in a handful of the games mentioned in this book.
2) Sid Meier is the single greatest designer in the history of video games. This should not be seen a terribly controversial statement, as it's an indisputable fact, an immutable law, like gravity.
Anyway.
Working with Sid (even at the level I did) was an honor, yes, but it was also an education. You can't intersect with him in any way without coming away with a better knowledge of game design. I quote Sid, his rules, or lessons I've learned from him, constantly (enough so that I'm sure my coworkers, family members, and random people at parties are all sick of hearing them). Thanks to this book, you can too.
Many of those rules are in here, albeit in expanded form. Things like the Covert Action rule (never make two mediocre games instead of one good one), or when balancing, always half or double, never increment. Like Sid himself, these are legendary.
What you won't get in this book, is a whole lot about his life. He goes into some of the key moments, but usually only through the lens of how it impacted the games they inspired. Sid's had tragedy and loss, but those are brushed aside. The subtitle is a "Life in Computer Games," and that's exactly what this is. A title-by-title look at his career and what he learned from each one. Unsurprisingly, it's pretty great, because even his failures imparted valuable lessons.
If you have even a passing interest in the craft of game design, I highly, highly recommend this book.
1) I worked with Sid Meier for several years, and have credits in a handful of the games mentioned in this book.
2) Sid Meier is the single greatest designer in the history of video games. This should not be seen a terribly controversial statement, as it's an indisputable fact, an immutable law, like gravity.
Anyway.
Working with Sid (even at the level I did) was an honor, yes, but it was also an education. You can't intersect with him in any way without coming away with a better knowledge of game design. I quote Sid, his rules, or lessons I've learned from him, constantly (enough so that I'm sure my coworkers, family members, and random people at parties are all sick of hearing them). Thanks to this book, you can too.
Many of those rules are in here, albeit in expanded form. Things like the Covert Action rule (never make two mediocre games instead of one good one), or when balancing, always half or double, never increment. Like Sid himself, these are legendary.
What you won't get in this book, is a whole lot about his life. He goes into some of the key moments, but usually only through the lens of how it impacted the games they inspired. Sid's had tragedy and loss, but those are brushed aside. The subtitle is a "Life in Computer Games," and that's exactly what this is. A title-by-title look at his career and what he learned from each one. Unsurprisingly, it's pretty great, because even his failures imparted valuable lessons.
If you have even a passing interest in the craft of game design, I highly, highly recommend this book.
December 3, 2021
Sid Meier is the normiest person in video games, boring and unremarkable to a fault.
Most of these memoirs by or about video game industry "personalities" of the '80s and '90s tend to grab attention mainly because of how shitty the people involved were as people (Bushnell, various Johns) or how excessive their lifestyles were (Mechner, various Johns), but there's no attention-grabbing here: Meier went to an unremarkable university, got an unremarkable job, made games as a hobby, founded a very sensible company to make games professionally, worked (relatively) hard, spent his money sensibly and lived a very middle-class life (by '80s standards—definitely comfortably upper-middle by today's, even in the beginning), parted ways almost implausibly amicably with aforementioned company to avoid conflict (!), founded a second company, kept on plugging. No anecdote in this book is going to make headlines; the most outlandish ones involve Bill Stealey, MicroProse's co-founder, and even they are so forgettable (even the time he bought a company fighter plane) that I only remembered halfway into them that I'd heard them before. Even the founding of Firaxis, which seemed like a very dramatic and dynamic move to me while it was actually happening, turns out to be fundamentally beige.
(I don't mean to oversell Meier's non-shittiness: the normieness cuts both ways, and this is obviously still the guy who felt and continues to feel happy to put his name on Sid Meier's Colonization twice (though that's Brian Reynolds' brainchild), thinks his many military games are basically apolitical unless they're about a conflict in living American memory like Conflict in Vietnam was, and thought working for a military weapons manufacturer for a few months (as a payroll programmer) "felt really cool".)
If you're a particular fan of some of the games that have had Sid Meier's name attached to them (most of which he actually worked on, even), the book does cover most of the ground you would want it to cover, and it's certainly not an exercising read. As the years progress, details get scarcer, though: there's a lot about the games before Civilization—the boring flight sim games, the boring tactical war games, Sid Meier's Pirates!, Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon, &c.—but after that only the games that were particularly close to Meier's heart get much attention. There's still a good bit about Sid Meier's C.P.U. Bach, Sid Meier's Gettysburg!, Sid Meier's SimGolf, and that cancelled dinosaur game, but Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (by far the most memorable thing Firaxis ever did, as far as I'm concerned) only gets a quick name-check, and some of the later ones only get a listing in the chapter heading, nothing else. Obviously there have been a lot of games, and Meier presumably wasn't as closely involved in the later ones as he was at MicroProse, but at 278 pages it's also not like they were running out of paper.
Regardless, Sid Meier being who he is makes this memoir an important piece of video game history even if it has some gaps or is fundamentally unexciting, and I suppose it is good to be reminded that being unexciting is still actually possible.
For me, its biggest contribution is that I now have an irrefutable thing to point to whenever some Redditor repeats that myth about the Gandhi underflow bug nuke thing.
Most of these memoirs by or about video game industry "personalities" of the '80s and '90s tend to grab attention mainly because of how shitty the people involved were as people (Bushnell, various Johns) or how excessive their lifestyles were (Mechner, various Johns), but there's no attention-grabbing here: Meier went to an unremarkable university, got an unremarkable job, made games as a hobby, founded a very sensible company to make games professionally, worked (relatively) hard, spent his money sensibly and lived a very middle-class life (by '80s standards—definitely comfortably upper-middle by today's, even in the beginning), parted ways almost implausibly amicably with aforementioned company to avoid conflict (!), founded a second company, kept on plugging. No anecdote in this book is going to make headlines; the most outlandish ones involve Bill Stealey, MicroProse's co-founder, and even they are so forgettable (even the time he bought a company fighter plane) that I only remembered halfway into them that I'd heard them before. Even the founding of Firaxis, which seemed like a very dramatic and dynamic move to me while it was actually happening, turns out to be fundamentally beige.
(I don't mean to oversell Meier's non-shittiness: the normieness cuts both ways, and this is obviously still the guy who felt and continues to feel happy to put his name on Sid Meier's Colonization twice (though that's Brian Reynolds' brainchild), thinks his many military games are basically apolitical unless they're about a conflict in living American memory like Conflict in Vietnam was, and thought working for a military weapons manufacturer for a few months (as a payroll programmer) "felt really cool".)
If you're a particular fan of some of the games that have had Sid Meier's name attached to them (most of which he actually worked on, even), the book does cover most of the ground you would want it to cover, and it's certainly not an exercising read. As the years progress, details get scarcer, though: there's a lot about the games before Civilization—the boring flight sim games, the boring tactical war games, Sid Meier's Pirates!, Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon, &c.—but after that only the games that were particularly close to Meier's heart get much attention. There's still a good bit about Sid Meier's C.P.U. Bach, Sid Meier's Gettysburg!, Sid Meier's SimGolf, and that cancelled dinosaur game, but Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (by far the most memorable thing Firaxis ever did, as far as I'm concerned) only gets a quick name-check, and some of the later ones only get a listing in the chapter heading, nothing else. Obviously there have been a lot of games, and Meier presumably wasn't as closely involved in the later ones as he was at MicroProse, but at 278 pages it's also not like they were running out of paper.
Regardless, Sid Meier being who he is makes this memoir an important piece of video game history even if it has some gaps or is fundamentally unexciting, and I suppose it is good to be reminded that being unexciting is still actually possible.
For me, its biggest contribution is that I now have an irrefutable thing to point to whenever some Redditor repeats that myth about the Gandhi underflow bug nuke thing.
January 10, 2021
Sid Meier's Civilization series is one that shaped my life. I've spent so much time on every game in that series, so I was intrigued to find out what Sid himself is saying in these memoirs.
If you are into the video games, I think you'll find it quite interesting. "Oh I know that name, didn't know that's how he started." or "Interesting inspiration for this project." It's all about his journey through the pioneer years of the video game industry. But the book is also quite factual that it can drag a bit, and if you are not into video games I think you should skip it.
I enjoyed it.
If you are into the video games, I think you'll find it quite interesting. "Oh I know that name, didn't know that's how he started." or "Interesting inspiration for this project." It's all about his journey through the pioneer years of the video game industry. But the book is also quite factual that it can drag a bit, and if you are not into video games I think you should skip it.
I enjoyed it.
November 1, 2020
Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games, by Sid Meier, is an autobiography written by famous video game designer Sid Meier, creator of the Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, and other famous video game series. The book chronicles Meier's career in video games from his hobbyist pursuit of the medium in its earliest days in the 1980's, to it becoming a career in the 1990's, and the release of Civilization (and its subsequent five official sequels and numerous spin-offs) that would make his name a household name in the industry. Meier began his career in programming in its early days, with room spanning computers spitting out ticker tape, and learned about programming and its iterations from this point up. Meier seems to be an individual who gets intensely focused on subjects - possibly to the point of compulsion. He acknowledges this when discussing a game he made called SimGolf - a golfing green management simulator. This compulsion has allowed him the opportunity to become intensely focused on his area of current interest. The design and programming in the original Civ game allowed for the creation of one of the best games series ever made - and to this day still a series that is an absolute blast to play.
Meier looks at much of the industry from behind the lens. Although his name is featured on his products, he says he was never really invested in this idea, and only agreed to it at the behest of others. His main passion is designing and programming games, and shies away from both the limelight and the controversies inherent in the gaming industry to this day. He acknowledges much of the corporate stuff here - the buy outs, the copyright issues and so forth, but really it seems he is not so keen on these things. Instead he talks about the principles and ideas behind the games he has made, some of it wistfully philosophical, and some of it deeply pragmatic. His love of Civil War history helped with his Gettysburg! title, his passion for management simulators went into Civilization and Railroad Tycoon, and his belief in low violence games and putting the player first when developing new ideas comes through in how he discusses his working life.
This book was really interesting as someone who grew up playing the Civilization series, and indeed has just finally acquired the sixth title in the franchise. These games were extremely appealing to me, and I credit much of my voracious reading habits in history, politics and economics to the influence this series (and others like it, such as SimCity, Europa Universalis and Total War etc.) to this title. Reading about the design decisions, programming background, and underlying artistic philosophies behind this title and Sid Meier's other works was fascinating. The biography itself is even keeled, interesting and discusses the wider industry as a whole, while also focusing with nuance on the life of the writer. This was a very interesting book, and one I would easily recommend to fans of Sid Meier's and the video games series he created.
Meier looks at much of the industry from behind the lens. Although his name is featured on his products, he says he was never really invested in this idea, and only agreed to it at the behest of others. His main passion is designing and programming games, and shies away from both the limelight and the controversies inherent in the gaming industry to this day. He acknowledges much of the corporate stuff here - the buy outs, the copyright issues and so forth, but really it seems he is not so keen on these things. Instead he talks about the principles and ideas behind the games he has made, some of it wistfully philosophical, and some of it deeply pragmatic. His love of Civil War history helped with his Gettysburg! title, his passion for management simulators went into Civilization and Railroad Tycoon, and his belief in low violence games and putting the player first when developing new ideas comes through in how he discusses his working life.
This book was really interesting as someone who grew up playing the Civilization series, and indeed has just finally acquired the sixth title in the franchise. These games were extremely appealing to me, and I credit much of my voracious reading habits in history, politics and economics to the influence this series (and others like it, such as SimCity, Europa Universalis and Total War etc.) to this title. Reading about the design decisions, programming background, and underlying artistic philosophies behind this title and Sid Meier's other works was fascinating. The biography itself is even keeled, interesting and discusses the wider industry as a whole, while also focusing with nuance on the life of the writer. This was a very interesting book, and one I would easily recommend to fans of Sid Meier's and the video games series he created.
October 17, 2020
Hızlıca okudum. Değişik bir çalışma olmuş, Sid Meier tüm hayat öyküsünü anlatmak yerine sadece profesyonel yaşamını kaleme almış, bu kaleme alınan kısım da ağırlıklı olarak Civilization oyunu çevresinde yoğunlaşmış. Bu seçim belki iyi olarak da değerlendirilebilir, sonuçta Sid Meier'in çocukken hangi parkta oynadığından çok yaptığı işlerle ilgileniyoruz, haliyle. Ancak söylemek gerek ki büyük kısmı Civilization üzerine olan bu anlatıda Civ üzerine hiç duyulmamış müthiş bilgiler, çok ilginç anılar falan da yok. Tüm kitaptan öğrendiğim en ilginç şey, ilk Civilization'da yer alması planlanan milletler içinde Türklerin de olduğu ama oyunun geliştirilme aşamasında Türklerin yerine Almanların konulduğu oldu.
Sonuç olarak, kötü bir okuma değildi ama bunun yerine daha iyi bir şeyler de okuyabilirdim.
Sonuç olarak, kötü bir okuma değildi ama bunun yerine daha iyi bir şeyler de okuyabilirdim.
May 13, 2021
We are surrounded by decisions, and therefore games, in everything we do.
I finished this memoir in five days. If not for the side effects of a COVID-19 vaccine, I might've been finished reading the book even faster. Sid Meier's Memoir! was a fun and easy read, with occasional deep insights into the fundamentals of game design. If you've ever played a Sid Meier game, you should consider reading it.
I finished this memoir in five days. If not for the side effects of a COVID-19 vaccine, I might've been finished reading the book even faster. Sid Meier's Memoir! was a fun and easy read, with occasional deep insights into the fundamentals of game design. If you've ever played a Sid Meier game, you should consider reading it.
September 23, 2024
Hayatımı değiştiren oyun: Civilization!
Sanıyorum 1996-1997 yıllarıydı. Pangaltı'daki telefoncular sokağında telefonculara ilaveten birkaç tane de bilgisayar oyunu satan dükkan vardı. Annemle girdiğimiz zaman 12-13 yaşlarındaki ben Civilization II'yi kendim mi seçtim, yoksa dükkandan mı tavsiye ettiler hatırlamıyorum. Ancak bu oyun hayatımı çok derinden etkiledi ve değiştirdi. Öyle ki hem lisans, hem de yüksek lisans tezimde bu oyundan bahsettiğim veya referans aldığım yerler bile oldu. Diplomasi, ekonomi, tarih ve daha pek çok alanda tecrübeler edindim.
Dolayısıyla bu kitabı da okumamak olmazdı. Tatmin etti mi, açıkçası etmedi. Sid Meier oyun geliştirici kimliği harici oldukça sıradan birisi. Zaten kitapta da tamamen oyunlarla tanışması ve geliştirme süreçlerini anlatıyor. Açıkçası ben çok daha fazla Civ olsun isterdim, belki geliştirme konusundaki sıkıntıları, easter egg'leri, bunları nasıl aştıklarını okumak isterdim. Ve ne yalan söyleyeyim Pirates, Civ, ve bir iki ufak oyun harici diğer hiçbir oyunu da duymamıştım.
O yüzden kötü olmamakla birlikte bekleneni vermeyen bir kitaptı.
Herkese keyifli okumalar!
Sanıyorum 1996-1997 yıllarıydı. Pangaltı'daki telefoncular sokağında telefonculara ilaveten birkaç tane de bilgisayar oyunu satan dükkan vardı. Annemle girdiğimiz zaman 12-13 yaşlarındaki ben Civilization II'yi kendim mi seçtim, yoksa dükkandan mı tavsiye ettiler hatırlamıyorum. Ancak bu oyun hayatımı çok derinden etkiledi ve değiştirdi. Öyle ki hem lisans, hem de yüksek lisans tezimde bu oyundan bahsettiğim veya referans aldığım yerler bile oldu. Diplomasi, ekonomi, tarih ve daha pek çok alanda tecrübeler edindim.
Dolayısıyla bu kitabı da okumamak olmazdı. Tatmin etti mi, açıkçası etmedi. Sid Meier oyun geliştirici kimliği harici oldukça sıradan birisi. Zaten kitapta da tamamen oyunlarla tanışması ve geliştirme süreçlerini anlatıyor. Açıkçası ben çok daha fazla Civ olsun isterdim, belki geliştirme konusundaki sıkıntıları, easter egg'leri, bunları nasıl aştıklarını okumak isterdim. Ve ne yalan söyleyeyim Pirates, Civ, ve bir iki ufak oyun harici diğer hiçbir oyunu da duymamıştım.
O yüzden kötü olmamakla birlikte bekleneni vermeyen bir kitaptı.
Herkese keyifli okumalar!
August 30, 2020
As a fan of history and memoirs, I found this book interesting. As a hobby reader, I found this book a bit dry and tedious. For anyone who is a big fan of Sid Meier and any of his many video games, this is a great book to pick up.
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November 30, 2020
The first time I played a Sid Meier game it was the day after my last final in my first semester of my freshman year of college, My neighbor, an engineering student, had the still relatively rare luxury of a personal computer, and showed me his new computer game: "Civilization" a game where you explore, build cities, research science and technology, trade, and negotiate and fight other civilizations. I played it for the next 12 hours.
This is an breezy personal history of the video game industry, told by the man who has made some of the most fun and addicting games out there. It's most interesting for its look into his general design philosophy ("find the fun"), his discussion of game prototypes, the way he approached different genres, and his candidness in describing both his successes and the sheer number of things he got wrong about game trends and technology ("3D and multiplayer are a flash in the pan"). I liked how the book was structured by game rather than by year, but I would have loved to learn more about the design choices and processes he and his teams went through to make the games. While he does include some high level insights ("find the fun" & "good games are a series of interesting choices") he doesn't go very deep into specific games, the industry, or frankly himself. It was a fun memoir, but it was more like reminiscing with an old friend over a beer about good times past. I'm not sure that those who haven't invested countless hours in his games will enjoy it as much as I did.
**Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
This is an breezy personal history of the video game industry, told by the man who has made some of the most fun and addicting games out there. It's most interesting for its look into his general design philosophy ("find the fun"), his discussion of game prototypes, the way he approached different genres, and his candidness in describing both his successes and the sheer number of things he got wrong about game trends and technology ("3D and multiplayer are a flash in the pan"). I liked how the book was structured by game rather than by year, but I would have loved to learn more about the design choices and processes he and his teams went through to make the games. While he does include some high level insights ("find the fun" & "good games are a series of interesting choices") he doesn't go very deep into specific games, the industry, or frankly himself. It was a fun memoir, but it was more like reminiscing with an old friend over a beer about good times past. I'm not sure that those who haven't invested countless hours in his games will enjoy it as much as I did.
**Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
September 17, 2020
A great look at the career of one of the most influential developers in video games. Sid takes us on a journey through not only his games, but how he grew as a person over the years, and how this personal growth then fed back into his career. There are ton of interesting anecdotes, like I had always wondered how Avalon Hill went from king of strategy board games to a Hasbro subsidiary, or how there's more (or less) to the infamous nuclear warlord Gandhi glitch than the story that routinely makes the rounds online. This was a wonderful read and I highly recommend it not only to the gamers of the world, but to anyone with even the slightest interest in computing history.
February 4, 2025
Would have DNF'd this book but for the thrill of joining in my bookclub's tactical assault against Sid's neatly arranged little village of clean and linear narrative.
The rare honor of my 1 star review is earned not by how painful this was to read (it was fine) but rather by how the author and/or ghostwriter failed to come up with any good reason to write it in the first place rather than to slap "Sid Meier's" on the front.
At every opportunity for depth, or intrigue, or peculiarity Sid silences the thought and plods on undeterred to the next game accompanied by a smattering of bland anecdotes. Age of Empires is better than Civ anyway.
The rare honor of my 1 star review is earned not by how painful this was to read (it was fine) but rather by how the author and/or ghostwriter failed to come up with any good reason to write it in the first place rather than to slap "Sid Meier's" on the front.
At every opportunity for depth, or intrigue, or peculiarity Sid silences the thought and plods on undeterred to the next game accompanied by a smattering of bland anecdotes. Age of Empires is better than Civ anyway.
August 13, 2021
Thoroughly enjoyable memoir from a man responsible for a lot of games I've loved. I didn't expect to be so fascinated by all his commentary about the nature of gaming and how games have progressed. Definitely recommended for anybody who loves gaming, especially computer games.
December 24, 2021
A very enjoyable read for anyone interested in the man behind civilisation. His passion and love of creativity shines through and is very inspiring.
August 23, 2021
Although I am not mentioned by name in the book, Sid Meier’s Memoir! was particularly fascinating to me because I lived it—our paths crossing many times. Unlike Sid, I have “cheated death� in the Miss Microprose with Bill Stealey, his longtime business partner. Like Sid, I was at the first Computer Game Developers Conference outside of Chris Crawford’s ranch. Although Sid was one of the Legends of Game Design at a later conference (p. 62), I was the one interviewing him in front of the crowd of that plenary keynote session. And, Sid was incredibly gracious with his time to Alan Emrich and me when we wrote Sid Meier’s Civilization, Rome on 640K A Day. In fact, I think Alan kept him on the phone for at least an hour every day. Sorry, Sid. And I can remember meeting with an atypically dispirited Sid Meier during the Magic: The Gathering development period (see why on p. 172).
So, you can write off my high rating on this book as bias if you like. But if you care about computer games and how they evolved; if you wish you could get into a designer’s head as he performs summary (not detailed) post-mortems on both his great successes and great efforts; if you wish you understood how other elements in the industry and game technology drove release schedules and project choices; and if you wish you could have all of this delivered with Sid’s dry wit and low-key personal delivery, Sid Meier’s Memoir! is another of his major successes. Of course, just as Sid’s great successes have been tied to many collaborators over the years (Andy Hollis, Bruce Shelley, and Arnold Hendricks to name a few), this book has marvelous pacing and has not lost Sid’s voice in his collaboration with Jennifer Lee Noonan. At times, though, one gets the feeling that some of Sid’s notes were shoveled into the book in a bizarre historical present phase. For example, on p. 154, Sid talks about “still� having red caps around the office and wearing them for “good luck� just prior to going “gold� with a release, even though he had already established his own company different from Microprose by the time this volume was published.
Yes, I could just hear Sid lamenting (on p. 157): “My entire philosophy of gaming was that the player should be the star and the designer should be invisible, yet I was the guy who kept ending up on the box.� He meant it, too. Throughout the book, he gives credit to Dan Bunten/Dani Bunten Berry (calling M.U.L.E. “…which many consider to be one of the best computer games of all time, …� (p. 95), Walter Bright and Mark Baldwin (p. 190) for Empire: Game of the Century and how the way it uncovered the map influenced Civ (p. 190), Will Wright for his influence on Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon (p. 110), as well as Brian Reynolds for doing the “real� work on Sid Meier’s Colonization and Sid Meier’s Civilization II. I also have to give Sid “kudos� for his extremely accurate praise of Bing Gordon, one of the earliest pioneers at Electronic Arts and one of the smartest guys I’ve ever known in bridging concerns between marketing and gameplay (I still give him credit for being the guy who saved The Sims when it was on the cusp of success vs. failure, but that’s a different story.). [Amazingly, as powerful as he became, Bing was always one of the nicest guys I met in the industry. Lots of great people! Bing at or near the top of the list!]
There are so many jewels in this volume, even though I had a privileged seat through much of the history it entails, that I was delighted to find it and even had to take notes on many of the concepts. The ones I share here should not be taken as exhaustive or even thorough in any sense. These are just points that resonated particularly well with me. Indeed, I had only reached the bottom of page 2 when I wished that, when I had been teaching game design, I had been able to synthesize Sid’s approach to game design as well as he did when he explained that game design was an outward-looking mindset. As a result, “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, �.� Or, as Sid summarizes later in the book: “Good games teach us that there are tradeoffs to everything, actions lead to outcomes, and the chance to try again is almost always out there.� (p. 187) Again, “I think having a slightly obsessive personality is a useful thing. On the one hand, it keeps me focused on the quality of my work, but on the other, it provides critical sources of outside inspiration, which often contribute in surprising ways.� (p. 218)
During the process of building Sid Meier’s Civilization, I once harassed Sid about some of his design choices (Yeah, I know—the gall!) and he responded that they had tried many more choices but, ultimately, “It wasn’t fun, so we took it out.� I may not have the words exactly as he said them, but that’s the story I’ve told to design students over the years. He puts it significantly more elegantly in Sid Meier’s Memoir! when he talks about the dangers of giving players too many choices so that they become frustrated and quit. “It was my job, I thought, to whittle down the options and present only the best ones to the player.� (p. 73) He goes on to say, “So then: no wrong answers, and more than one right answer, but not too many.� (p. 73) Speaking of “fun,� his brutal awareness of a flaw in one prototype where he had provided a key to automate a function reads: “…if you have to offload the supposedly fun part of your game, that’s a pretty good indication that you’re confused about what fun is.� (p. 202)
I wish I had emphasized the “random� problem more vividly when I was teaching. I used to rant about “unfair puzzles,� but Sid cites the bridge problem in Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon where Bruce Shelley (yes, the same one who designed Age of Empired) kept complaining about his bridges being washed out. That was when, “The key difference between a gameplay challenge and a betrayal, I realized, was whether the player had a fighting chance to avoid it. So rather than eliminate the flooding, I introduced different kinds of bridges.� (pp. 113-114) And, having had many design students (well, design groups really) who tried to shoehorn too many different types of game mechanics together, I would loved to have been able to quote Sid as saying, “The notion that ‘one good game is better than two great games� was such a revelation that it became known in m mind as ‘The Covert Action Rule.� (p. 121) he talks about it in terms of finding a game’s center of gravity today, but I’m old enough to love its old name.
Interestingly enough, I had never really noticed an animation in Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon that was particularly important to Sid. Apparently, when trains are about to crash to their ruin because of washed-out bridges, the engineers and firemen always successfully bail out. I was probably so consumed by the disaster that I didn’t notice. But it is very consistent with Sid’s perspective on violence: “The world is often a very negative place, and I’d rather push it in the opposite direction whenever I can. There’s an argument to be made that by exposing the unpleasant reality of violence, you can inspire others to push against it, too, but this generally requires a removed perspective, rather than the inherent first-person nature of games. It’s hard to claim that our products are immersive, but somehow insist that the experience has no impact.� (p. 99)
Of course, I loved Sid’s philosophy about technology: “I generally saw technology in terms of progress, rather than limitations, and lived in a nearly perpetual state of excitement over what we could accomplish.� (p. 181) Another clever, but insightful, quip comes shortly after Sid confesses that he had even been late to his own meetings on the game because of playing the game: “The spectrum from interesting, to compelling, to addicting is long and nuanced.� (p. 196) The other side of technology was reflected when Sid wrote, “Most bug fixes are not about broken code, they’re about closing design loopholes that players refuse to ignore.� (p. 161) One “bug fix� that wasn’t a bug is described in detail concerning development of Sid Meier’s Civilization: Revolution. Even though it is possible to lose battles where you outnumber your opponent considerably, the code reduces the randomness so that one couldn’t lose at higher than 2:1 odds. But, when people complained about losing 2:1 battles in a sequence, they ended taking the previous battle into consideration so that you couldn’t lose a 2:1 battle twice in a row. “We made it less random, so that it could feel more random.� (p. 247)
I loved Sid’s admission that he thought Brian Reynolds was wrong when he opened up Sid Meier’s Civilization II for modding. Sid felt gamers would do a poor job of modification and blame the designers or, conversely, push the designers out of a job—limiting future possibilities. “I was so wrong, on all counts. The strength of the modding community is, instead, the very reason the series survived at all.� (p. 164) More importantly, he observed on the same page: “What I didn’t see at the time is that imagination never diminishes reality; it only heightens it.�
Another great observation in this book is so true to the Sid Meier I’ve known over the years. “The truth is I never really give up on anything. The ideas just sit in stasis, sometimes for decades, until I can figure out the right way to make them work.� (p. 201). One piece of wisdom I had forgotten, though either he or another Microprose veteran seems to have told me. That was the secret to making sequels in a series of games. Since life often follows the “Rule of Threes,� it isn’t surprising that Sid uses a “Rule of Thirds� (though he didn’t capitalize it). “One-third of the previous version stays in place, one-third is updated, and one-third is completely new.� (p. 228)
I hope those who read this little review summary find it to be both useful and entertaining as I did in reading Sid Meier’s Memoir! to begin with. Thank you, Jennifer Lee Noonan for putting Sid’s reminiscences together in such a delightful narrative, and thank you, Sid, for sharing some introspective thoughts and biographical anecdotes we’d never have otherwise known.
So, you can write off my high rating on this book as bias if you like. But if you care about computer games and how they evolved; if you wish you could get into a designer’s head as he performs summary (not detailed) post-mortems on both his great successes and great efforts; if you wish you understood how other elements in the industry and game technology drove release schedules and project choices; and if you wish you could have all of this delivered with Sid’s dry wit and low-key personal delivery, Sid Meier’s Memoir! is another of his major successes. Of course, just as Sid’s great successes have been tied to many collaborators over the years (Andy Hollis, Bruce Shelley, and Arnold Hendricks to name a few), this book has marvelous pacing and has not lost Sid’s voice in his collaboration with Jennifer Lee Noonan. At times, though, one gets the feeling that some of Sid’s notes were shoveled into the book in a bizarre historical present phase. For example, on p. 154, Sid talks about “still� having red caps around the office and wearing them for “good luck� just prior to going “gold� with a release, even though he had already established his own company different from Microprose by the time this volume was published.
Yes, I could just hear Sid lamenting (on p. 157): “My entire philosophy of gaming was that the player should be the star and the designer should be invisible, yet I was the guy who kept ending up on the box.� He meant it, too. Throughout the book, he gives credit to Dan Bunten/Dani Bunten Berry (calling M.U.L.E. “…which many consider to be one of the best computer games of all time, …� (p. 95), Walter Bright and Mark Baldwin (p. 190) for Empire: Game of the Century and how the way it uncovered the map influenced Civ (p. 190), Will Wright for his influence on Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon (p. 110), as well as Brian Reynolds for doing the “real� work on Sid Meier’s Colonization and Sid Meier’s Civilization II. I also have to give Sid “kudos� for his extremely accurate praise of Bing Gordon, one of the earliest pioneers at Electronic Arts and one of the smartest guys I’ve ever known in bridging concerns between marketing and gameplay (I still give him credit for being the guy who saved The Sims when it was on the cusp of success vs. failure, but that’s a different story.). [Amazingly, as powerful as he became, Bing was always one of the nicest guys I met in the industry. Lots of great people! Bing at or near the top of the list!]
There are so many jewels in this volume, even though I had a privileged seat through much of the history it entails, that I was delighted to find it and even had to take notes on many of the concepts. The ones I share here should not be taken as exhaustive or even thorough in any sense. These are just points that resonated particularly well with me. Indeed, I had only reached the bottom of page 2 when I wished that, when I had been teaching game design, I had been able to synthesize Sid’s approach to game design as well as he did when he explained that game design was an outward-looking mindset. As a result, “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, �.� Or, as Sid summarizes later in the book: “Good games teach us that there are tradeoffs to everything, actions lead to outcomes, and the chance to try again is almost always out there.� (p. 187) Again, “I think having a slightly obsessive personality is a useful thing. On the one hand, it keeps me focused on the quality of my work, but on the other, it provides critical sources of outside inspiration, which often contribute in surprising ways.� (p. 218)
During the process of building Sid Meier’s Civilization, I once harassed Sid about some of his design choices (Yeah, I know—the gall!) and he responded that they had tried many more choices but, ultimately, “It wasn’t fun, so we took it out.� I may not have the words exactly as he said them, but that’s the story I’ve told to design students over the years. He puts it significantly more elegantly in Sid Meier’s Memoir! when he talks about the dangers of giving players too many choices so that they become frustrated and quit. “It was my job, I thought, to whittle down the options and present only the best ones to the player.� (p. 73) He goes on to say, “So then: no wrong answers, and more than one right answer, but not too many.� (p. 73) Speaking of “fun,� his brutal awareness of a flaw in one prototype where he had provided a key to automate a function reads: “…if you have to offload the supposedly fun part of your game, that’s a pretty good indication that you’re confused about what fun is.� (p. 202)
I wish I had emphasized the “random� problem more vividly when I was teaching. I used to rant about “unfair puzzles,� but Sid cites the bridge problem in Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon where Bruce Shelley (yes, the same one who designed Age of Empired) kept complaining about his bridges being washed out. That was when, “The key difference between a gameplay challenge and a betrayal, I realized, was whether the player had a fighting chance to avoid it. So rather than eliminate the flooding, I introduced different kinds of bridges.� (pp. 113-114) And, having had many design students (well, design groups really) who tried to shoehorn too many different types of game mechanics together, I would loved to have been able to quote Sid as saying, “The notion that ‘one good game is better than two great games� was such a revelation that it became known in m mind as ‘The Covert Action Rule.� (p. 121) he talks about it in terms of finding a game’s center of gravity today, but I’m old enough to love its old name.
Interestingly enough, I had never really noticed an animation in Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon that was particularly important to Sid. Apparently, when trains are about to crash to their ruin because of washed-out bridges, the engineers and firemen always successfully bail out. I was probably so consumed by the disaster that I didn’t notice. But it is very consistent with Sid’s perspective on violence: “The world is often a very negative place, and I’d rather push it in the opposite direction whenever I can. There’s an argument to be made that by exposing the unpleasant reality of violence, you can inspire others to push against it, too, but this generally requires a removed perspective, rather than the inherent first-person nature of games. It’s hard to claim that our products are immersive, but somehow insist that the experience has no impact.� (p. 99)
Of course, I loved Sid’s philosophy about technology: “I generally saw technology in terms of progress, rather than limitations, and lived in a nearly perpetual state of excitement over what we could accomplish.� (p. 181) Another clever, but insightful, quip comes shortly after Sid confesses that he had even been late to his own meetings on the game because of playing the game: “The spectrum from interesting, to compelling, to addicting is long and nuanced.� (p. 196) The other side of technology was reflected when Sid wrote, “Most bug fixes are not about broken code, they’re about closing design loopholes that players refuse to ignore.� (p. 161) One “bug fix� that wasn’t a bug is described in detail concerning development of Sid Meier’s Civilization: Revolution. Even though it is possible to lose battles where you outnumber your opponent considerably, the code reduces the randomness so that one couldn’t lose at higher than 2:1 odds. But, when people complained about losing 2:1 battles in a sequence, they ended taking the previous battle into consideration so that you couldn’t lose a 2:1 battle twice in a row. “We made it less random, so that it could feel more random.� (p. 247)
I loved Sid’s admission that he thought Brian Reynolds was wrong when he opened up Sid Meier’s Civilization II for modding. Sid felt gamers would do a poor job of modification and blame the designers or, conversely, push the designers out of a job—limiting future possibilities. “I was so wrong, on all counts. The strength of the modding community is, instead, the very reason the series survived at all.� (p. 164) More importantly, he observed on the same page: “What I didn’t see at the time is that imagination never diminishes reality; it only heightens it.�
Another great observation in this book is so true to the Sid Meier I’ve known over the years. “The truth is I never really give up on anything. The ideas just sit in stasis, sometimes for decades, until I can figure out the right way to make them work.� (p. 201). One piece of wisdom I had forgotten, though either he or another Microprose veteran seems to have told me. That was the secret to making sequels in a series of games. Since life often follows the “Rule of Threes,� it isn’t surprising that Sid uses a “Rule of Thirds� (though he didn’t capitalize it). “One-third of the previous version stays in place, one-third is updated, and one-third is completely new.� (p. 228)
I hope those who read this little review summary find it to be both useful and entertaining as I did in reading Sid Meier’s Memoir! to begin with. Thank you, Jennifer Lee Noonan for putting Sid’s reminiscences together in such a delightful narrative, and thank you, Sid, for sharing some introspective thoughts and biographical anecdotes we’d never have otherwise known.
July 11, 2022
Ожидаемо, между строк читается "да, слова `Sid`, `Meier` и `Civilization` давно уже склеились в одно целое, но у меня были, есть и будут другие игры, вот, смотрите"
Довольно легкое чтиво, где Сид рассказывает про свои игры(оказывается, он написал авиасимуляторов) и немного останавливается на своих принципах.
Например, что краеугольный камень игр - решения. Случайные разрушения твоих построек ведут к паранойе и чувству беспомощности, а если это ощущает твой игрок - игра плохая. Можно в таком случае убрать разрушения совсем, а можно вплести в геймплей страховку от них и предоставить игроку решать, хочет ли он рискнуть или быть гарантированно защищенным. Или что люди очень странно понимают справедливость в компьютерных играх и у них вызывают возмущение случаи, когда кто-то(не они, а компьютер) выигрывает в схватке с шансами один к трем, ��ли когда игроку не везет два раза подряд. Так что игровой RNG вынужден делать случайные события не вполне независимыми, а иногда и скашивать распределение. Также Сид упоминает правило "камень-ножницы-бумага", которое помогало ему балансировать игры и делать их более интересными: если оптимальная стратегия - собрать всех воинов в кучу, то особо решений принимать не нужно, а вот если надо распределять юнитов по карте - уже другое дело. В идеале - как минимум три вида юнитов в каждой армии, которые успешно контрят друг друга, и хотя бы один из них дальнобойный. Вам вспомнился старкрафт? Верно, в книге он упоминается.
Книга добавила уважения к Мейеру как минимум тем, что он не ностальгирует по старым временам, а видит только новые открывающиеся возможности. Например, старые текстовые квесты он называет "препирательством с компьютером" и отмечает, что никто в его студии не хотел их делать, в то же время пытается экспериментировать с жанрами и инструментами, включая мобильные игры и микротранзакции. Ладно, это не очень хороший пример.
Избранные цитаты:
"Преступление никогда себя не оправдывает, ребятки. (Если только оно не помогает найти вдохновение и получить опыт для начала карьеры длиною в жизнь в одной из лучших областей деятельности из всех существующих � в таком случае еще как оправдывает, причем как в денежном отношении, так и в духовном)"
"...да и вообще большинство программистов не относятся к числу любителей пляжного отдыха"
"однажды я опоздал на совещание по Civilization, потому что играл в Civilization"
Почему оценка не пять - ну, коротковата книга.
P.S. Ядерный Ганди
Довольно легкое чтиво, где Сид рассказывает про свои игры(оказывается, он написал авиасимуляторов) и немного останавливается на своих принципах.
Например, что краеугольный камень игр - решения. Случайные разрушения твоих построек ведут к паранойе и чувству беспомощности, а если это ощущает твой игрок - игра плохая. Можно в таком случае убрать разрушения совсем, а можно вплести в геймплей страховку от них и предоставить игроку решать, хочет ли он рискнуть или быть гарантированно защищенным. Или что люди очень странно понимают справедливость в компьютерных играх и у них вызывают возмущение случаи, когда кто-то(не они, а компьютер) выигрывает в схватке с шансами один к трем, ��ли когда игроку не везет два раза подряд. Так что игровой RNG вынужден делать случайные события не вполне независимыми, а иногда и скашивать распределение. Также Сид упоминает правило "камень-ножницы-бумага", которое помогало ему балансировать игры и делать их более интересными: если оптимальная стратегия - собрать всех воинов в кучу, то особо решений принимать не нужно, а вот если надо распределять юнитов по карте - уже другое дело. В идеале - как минимум три вида юнитов в каждой армии, которые успешно контрят друг друга, и хотя бы один из них дальнобойный. Вам вспомнился старкрафт? Верно, в книге он упоминается.
Книга добавила уважения к Мейеру как минимум тем, что он не ностальгирует по старым временам, а видит только новые открывающиеся возможности. Например, старые текстовые квесты он называет "препирательством с компьютером" и отмечает, что никто в его студии не хотел их делать, в то же время пытается экспериментировать с жанрами и инструментами, включая мобильные игры и микротранзакции. Ладно, это не очень хороший пример.
Избранные цитаты:
"Преступление никогда себя не оправдывает, ребятки. (Если только оно не помогает найти вдохновение и получить опыт для начала карьеры длиною в жизнь в одной из лучших областей деятельности из всех существующих � в таком случае еще как оправдывает, причем как в денежном отношении, так и в духовном)"
"...да и вообще большинство программистов не относятся к числу любителей пляжного отдыха"
"однажды я опоздал на совещание по Civilization, потому что играл в Civilization"
Почему оценка не пять - ну, коротковата книга.
P.S. Ядерный Ганди
March 17, 2022
Nice wholesome biography about navigating life as a creative and making a living of it. Obviously a lot of the book is about game design but I think a lot of Sid’s general philosophies about what makes ideas worth pursuing, what to cut back on, etc; are quite universal for any creative pursuit.
This book spends an equal amount of time on successful ventures as it does on less successful ones, and comes across as honest and grounded because of it.
It was fascinating to read about the creative process that resulted in the game Civilization. Which to me, is probably the greatest video game of all time, and conceptually so left-field. If I think about the idea on paper and if it had been up to me, I would not have funded that endeavour lol
This book spends an equal amount of time on successful ventures as it does on less successful ones, and comes across as honest and grounded because of it.
It was fascinating to read about the creative process that resulted in the game Civilization. Which to me, is probably the greatest video game of all time, and conceptually so left-field. If I think about the idea on paper and if it had been up to me, I would not have funded that endeavour lol
August 24, 2021
Сид Мейер не только гениальный гейм-дизайнер, но еще и интересный рассказчик. Книга описывает его карьеру в индустрии (а он делает игры уже практически 40 лет), перемешанную с интересными историями из жизни. Можно узнать почему в начале карьеры у Сида было столько игр про самолеты, почему не получилось сделать игру про динозавров и, наконец, разрушение мифа о "ядерном Ганди". Восхищен его скромностью и преданностью своему делу. Пока одна из самых интересных книг про игровую индустрию, что я прочитал.
February 1, 2025
Early on in this book Meier discusses how people ask him what moment caused him to become a game designer, but that there is no singular moment and rather just a fact that almost inevitable happened over time. While a perfectly valid and understandable response for talking about his career path, unfortunately the book similarly reads as a inevitable march to the present to its own detriment. The memoir marches through Meiers' design history with chapters discussing the many titles hes developed and worked on in his career. While that has moments of interest and charm in remembering or hearing more about titles Ive played and thoroughly enjoyed, there is practically nothing more than that. It reads as a sort of timeline of Meiers career, but with little insight or intrigue to challenges or triumphs along the way.
Meiers notes his theory that good games are all about making interesting decisions, but the memoir comes across with very few if any interesting decisions. Even when discussing Meiers' decision to break away from MicroProse and create a new company, seemingly a pivotal moment in his career, its characterized as something that just made sense for everyone involved with little more discussion than that. Such matter of course descriptions are scattered throughout the memoir making it a book that flags the highlights in Meiers' career without adding anything beyond reporting that an event happened. Similarly, I felt that I learned little about Meiers the person despite reading the book. While there is some insight into aspects of his personality and I enjoyed reading about his time in Switzerland, significant events such as the end of his first marriage or death of a sibling are handled in such a brusque way that their inclusion as a one or two sentence asides in a chapter on a particular game is more shocking than their complete omission would have been.
This was a quick read for me and I enjoyed parts of it with the game design, but overall felt as though there was very little for me to take away from this book.
Meiers notes his theory that good games are all about making interesting decisions, but the memoir comes across with very few if any interesting decisions. Even when discussing Meiers' decision to break away from MicroProse and create a new company, seemingly a pivotal moment in his career, its characterized as something that just made sense for everyone involved with little more discussion than that. Such matter of course descriptions are scattered throughout the memoir making it a book that flags the highlights in Meiers' career without adding anything beyond reporting that an event happened. Similarly, I felt that I learned little about Meiers the person despite reading the book. While there is some insight into aspects of his personality and I enjoyed reading about his time in Switzerland, significant events such as the end of his first marriage or death of a sibling are handled in such a brusque way that their inclusion as a one or two sentence asides in a chapter on a particular game is more shocking than their complete omission would have been.
This was a quick read for me and I enjoyed parts of it with the game design, but overall felt as though there was very little for me to take away from this book.
September 21, 2020
Sid Meier’s Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games (2020) by Sid Meier is an account of Meier’s life and his work creating computer games. It’s a very worthy addition to the growing number of books about game creators and their games. It is a ‘just one more chapter� kind of book.
Meier recounts how he started making games at University and went on to start making games he could sell. He then met “Wild� Bill Stealey and the two formed Microprose. They made various games and made the Flight Simulators that Microprose became well known for. Meier programmed and designed the games will Stealey sold them. Throughout the book Meier writes about his life and how he came to the ideas that inspired his games.
The chapters in the book mostly describe a game or two that Meier was making at the time. The surprising and much loved Pirates! from 1987 is described as are the turns toward strategy first with Railroad Tycoon and then the superlative Civilization. Meier writes about how the various versions of Civilization have changed and how different people, with his advice, have changed each version of the game.
There are also some chapters on some little known creations of Meier’s such as CPU Bach that few but the most hardcore of fans would know about. There are also some fascinating insights into what players expect from random number generators and the odds they face.
Sid Meier’s Memoir is very satisfying for anyone who has played much of any of the Civilization games. It would also be well worth reading for anyone who is interesting in creating their own games. It’s a highly enjoyable read.
Meier recounts how he started making games at University and went on to start making games he could sell. He then met “Wild� Bill Stealey and the two formed Microprose. They made various games and made the Flight Simulators that Microprose became well known for. Meier programmed and designed the games will Stealey sold them. Throughout the book Meier writes about his life and how he came to the ideas that inspired his games.
The chapters in the book mostly describe a game or two that Meier was making at the time. The surprising and much loved Pirates! from 1987 is described as are the turns toward strategy first with Railroad Tycoon and then the superlative Civilization. Meier writes about how the various versions of Civilization have changed and how different people, with his advice, have changed each version of the game.
There are also some chapters on some little known creations of Meier’s such as CPU Bach that few but the most hardcore of fans would know about. There are also some fascinating insights into what players expect from random number generators and the odds they face.
Sid Meier’s Memoir is very satisfying for anyone who has played much of any of the Civilization games. It would also be well worth reading for anyone who is interesting in creating their own games. It’s a highly enjoyable read.
October 5, 2020
A nice read, if somewhat shallow. Would’ve gladly read a lot more on the details and anecdotes, but there really weren’t many.
July 14, 2021
Достаточно интересно и познавательно, но удивительно стерильно написано, будто ghostwritten автобиография президента какого.
September 16, 2024
Doom Guy may have ruined video game memoirs for me: this one had some good tidbits/rules about game design, but substantially less depth about both the game tech and the author’s life. Meier has had an incredible career though, so it was still interesting to learn about the overall arc, even if the emphasis of the book tended to land more on his individual obsessions and passion projects more than the projects most readers will tend to be interested in.
Also, probably not a huge surprise given his catalog of games, as well as the fact that said catalog has garnered some reasonable (and some not so reasonable) criticism from both sides of the political spectrum, but the author has some fairly cringy thoughts on cancel culture. Really unfortunate given that Meier comes across pretty reasonable and well intentioned through a lot of the book, but definitely a few eyebrow raises throughout.
Also, probably not a huge surprise given his catalog of games, as well as the fact that said catalog has garnered some reasonable (and some not so reasonable) criticism from both sides of the political spectrum, but the author has some fairly cringy thoughts on cancel culture. Really unfortunate given that Meier comes across pretty reasonable and well intentioned through a lot of the book, but definitely a few eyebrow raises throughout.
February 23, 2022
Очень тёплое и ламповое ощущение от прочтения. Чем-то даже вышло похоже на излюбленного "Торговца Обувью" от основателя Nike - Фила Найта. Всегда вспоминаю его в таких ситуациях.
"Жизнь в мире компьютерных игр" написана не ушлым маркетологом, а спокойным гиком с хорошим чувством юмора и самоиронией. Сид Мейер практически не рассказывает про прорывность и успешный успех, сбор команды чемпионов и суперкультуру - гораздо чаще его уносит в технические или дизайнерские подробности каких-либо удачных или неудачных решений. And I think it's beautiful.
Даже если вы вообще не про геймдев и при виде фамилии "Мейер" ваша рука автоматически не тянется к клавише F, чтобы выразить уважение одному из его отцов - это просто уютная история о том как искренне любить своё дело, стать знаменитым особо к этому не стремясь и разрабатывать игры, в которых много лет никто не погибал даже если это выглядело немного странно.
А еще это первая печатная книга, которую официально можно пройти на платину.
Я прошёл.
"Жизнь в мире компьютерных игр" написана не ушлым маркетологом, а спокойным гиком с хорошим чувством юмора и самоиронией. Сид Мейер практически не рассказывает про прорывность и успешный успех, сбор команды чемпионов и суперкультуру - гораздо чаще его уносит в технические или дизайнерские подробности каких-либо удачных или неудачных решений. And I think it's beautiful.
Даже если вы вообще не про геймдев и при виде фамилии "Мейер" ваша рука автоматически не тянется к клавише F, чтобы выразить уважение одному из его отцов - это просто уютная история о том как искренне любить своё дело, стать знаменитым особо к этому не стремясь и разрабатывать игры, в которых много лет никто не погибал даже если это выглядело немного странно.
А еще это первая печатная книга, которую официально можно пройти на платину.
Я прошёл.
June 2, 2025
If anything, this memoir made me admire Sid Meier a lot more. Even though I have no inclination to play Civ games, the Pirates! game was one of my all time favourites.
Meier’s approach to game design is very refreshing and a lot of studios out there would benefit from a voice of reason like his.
What really interests me and makes me curious about the newest Civ 7 game production, is that its loudest criticism revolves around gameplay solutions that Meier does not believe in himself (at least based on the views he presented here). In the light of these newest game this memoir really leaves you with a lot of questions.
Meier’s approach to game design is very refreshing and a lot of studios out there would benefit from a voice of reason like his.
What really interests me and makes me curious about the newest Civ 7 game production, is that its loudest criticism revolves around gameplay solutions that Meier does not believe in himself (at least based on the views he presented here). In the light of these newest game this memoir really leaves you with a lot of questions.
September 11, 2023
4.5 stars, rounded up
I've been a fan of the Civilization games for years, and also adored Sim Golf, never realizing it was also a Sid Meier creation. This reads as part memoir and part video game history. Even as a casual gamer, I was engrossed to the point that I had a hard time pausing the audiobook.
I've been a fan of the Civilization games for years, and also adored Sim Golf, never realizing it was also a Sid Meier creation. This reads as part memoir and part video game history. Even as a casual gamer, I was engrossed to the point that I had a hard time pausing the audiobook.
March 28, 2024
Even though I don't think I've ever played Civilization - maybe I or II back in the day - this was a lovely read by a passionate man that manages to express both why he loves his profession and why he's good at his job. I have fond memories of some of his other older titles, but I don't think you have to play videogames to enjoy this.
December 23, 2024
Not a bad memoir by any means, but actually as a baby-faced gamer I have not enough background on half the games this legend has made nor the times/and technology they are based on - feels like some of that was omitted for brevity but left me not on the same page, nor the appreciation I should have.
The casualness of old-school gaming business anecdotes is funny and charming but leaves me coping that humble indie development is so much harder.
Seems like a lovely guy with an awesome passion for games, I'll need to play Sid Meier's Pirates, Silent Service and a Tycoon at some point.
Overall quite a bit of stuff here to enjoy, but there were pages that I read and then there were pages that felt like Sid spoke to me for a few paragraphs and then returned to something else.
The casualness of old-school gaming business anecdotes is funny and charming but leaves me coping that humble indie development is so much harder.
Seems like a lovely guy with an awesome passion for games, I'll need to play Sid Meier's Pirates, Silent Service and a Tycoon at some point.
Overall quite a bit of stuff here to enjoy, but there were pages that I read and then there were pages that felt like Sid spoke to me for a few paragraphs and then returned to something else.
November 30, 2023
I think Sid is one of the greatest devs of all time. I think he makes such great points about why games are for everyone, and about the creative progress, not just in terms of focusing on video games, but also in general.
February 11, 2022
Touching, practical and rooted in practical game design, a pleasure to read with quite a few take aways.
November 7, 2020
Take the time to appreciate the possibilities, and make sure all of your decisions are interesting ones.
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