

"There is absolutely no design document whatsoever...[it] lives in Sid's brain." - DarkShikari
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=26064

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sunir
I'm interested why the journalist added the dynamic at the end of the article,
when stellar performers like Sid are contrasted against mediocre or non-
performers like the junior designer. The implication Sid is the bad guy
because he is deflating many careers.

It does really suck when you work the hardest you can, fail, and you find out
there is someone who is _just so much better_ than you who consistently beats
you. It often does create a caustic culture and a risky business environment
where the company is overly reliant on one person and has no one else on the
bench when the Truck Number gets called in.

But, one could easily argue that holding stellar performers back from
expressing their talents is worse since they are _just so much better_. Could
you imagine a world without Civilation because it made some people feel
inadequate?

~~~
Tichy
I'd also like to hear the whole story about this. Was the Sid-prototype really
created out of the blue, or had it been brewing in his head for quite a while?
And so on... Not saying that Sid isn't great, just saying that the comparison
might be a bit unfair. Also perhaps the junior designer was given a too
specific task, whereas Sid can just create whatever he fancies (he probably
has no "make a game where pirates shoot each other, but it also has to include
a fun treasure hunt" directive to follow).

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zzzmarcus
The key lesson is the last sentence:

"He knows that just because we can add something to the game, doesn't mean we
should."

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danteembermage
This sounds like release early, release often only in house. Pixar would be
another good example of this; they storyboard the whole movie and other
employees "watch" it with in house voice acting it until it's good enough to
animate.

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philwelch
Even Apple does this: that's the point of Steve Jobs' legendary tendency to
criticize in-house prototypes over and over until he's satisfied.

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gnoupi
Not sure Steve Jobs's tendency to criticize is specific to in-house
prototypes, though.

~~~
pmiller2
See
[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=More_Like_A_Porsche.txt&characters=Steve%20Jobs&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium)
for an anecdote about Steve Jobs and the design of the original Macintosh.
I've heard variations of this story for other products, too, so I suspect he's
got things structured so he has a final veto on any design.

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wglb
Interesting that Sid's code is "old school" and the C++ guys don't like it. I
wonder if he uses C.

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dtf
Funny, I read "old school" as a kinder euphemism for shoddy (with all due
respect to Sid's brilliance as a designer and hacker). Sometimes great people
write crap, unmaintainable code. I've known several types like this in the
industries I've worked in. You need a small army of programmers who can
respect coding standards to clean up after them.

As for C++, I've looked at some of the Civ 4 source and it seems fairly
industry standard "game style" C++. It uses templates, but not heavily, and
some boost to provide Python scripting.

~~~
pchristensen
I've heard the same thing - brilliant people can hold more in their head, so
they can read and manipulate more complex code. They don't need to simplify
and refactor as much as mere mortals do, and because they're so focused on
results, they get something out as soon as it's done.

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mdemare
Sid Meier is one of my programming heroes. I'd love to see a "Coders At Work"
with only game programmers (instead of mostly language designers).

~~~
gjm11
There are a lot of language designers in _Coders at Work_ , but it's not
"mostly".

Language designers: Brendan Eich, Joe Armstrong, Simon Peyton Jones, Guy
Steele, Dan Ingalls, Ken Thompson

Not language designers: Jamie Zawinski, Brad Fitzpatrick, Douglas Crockford,
Peter Norvig, Bernie Cosell

Marginal cases: Joshua Bloch, L Peter Deutsch, Fran Allen, Donald Knuth

which comes to 6/5/4. (Justifications for the marginal cases: Bloch does lots
of Java library work, but not AFAIK a lot of language design, and the language
itself certainly isn't his; Deutsch did some very important language
_implementation_ but that's not all the same thing as language design; Allen,
likewise; Knuth's TeX and METAFONT are both, in their way, languages, but
that's not primarily what they are.)

I wouldn't call that "mostly language designers".

(For the avoidance of doubt: I think a "Game Programmers at Work" volume could
be extremely interesting.)

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mbrubeck
mdemare was maybe thinking of _Masterminds of Programming_ , which was like
_Coders at Work_ but with only language designers.

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dbz
Especially the end. Really. They make him out to be the Chuck Norris of game
creation.

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pmiller2
I'm half expecting someone to post a list of Sid Meier facts now.

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ars
Sid has both pros and cons.

On one hand you can do amazing stuff, well sid can.

But it doesn't scale. And really successful companies figure out how to scale.

But the ones that do amazing work have a single person who is responsible for
it all.

It's too bad there are not more geniuses in the world.

~~~
Tichy
He seems to have created a lot of games, though. In what way should he scale -
then there would be 1000 versions of Civ instead of just 4 by now?

Since I consider games to be works of art: can art even scale, ever? Would
1000 albums by Radiohead be better than 10?

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maukdaddy
_shudder_ You just made me envision a world where there is EA Civilization
2009! With Pro-Tak!

Sickening thought...

~~~
csbrooks
That's pretty much exactly what happened with the Sims.

