
Interview with Sid Meier - aaronbrethorst
http://www.polygon.com/features/2016/3/4/11158134/the-man-who-made-a-million-empires
======
guard-of-terra
I think that Alpha Centaury is one of the best games and it also beats Civ
with all due respect (Disclaimer: never played recent Civ games, has dislike
for history and fan of Science Fiction).

It is very atmospheric. From all kinds of blurbs and cinematic linked to
scientific breakthroughts, buildings, projects and factions you assemble
puzzle in your mind which makes towards an awesome SF plot of dystopian future
on hostile planet with distinct characters, ups and downs, secrets and
revelations.

And the gameplay is awesome too, spent many months on it. Many things in this
game are configurable via text configs. Graphics are available for tinkering
too.

UPD: Having said all that, Master of Magic, non-Sid Meyer game, is still more
potent than everything he made. A true jewel, perhaps underappreciated. It has
turned 20 and I play it every few years and it never gets old. And I know
nothing about people who made it.

~~~
orionblastar
Master of Magic was about the best and I think they used the Civ engine as
well.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Magic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Magic)

Many attempts to remake the game failed.

It is like the Bard's Tale series, hard to remake. The Bard's Tale remake was
not as good as the original series for MS-DOS, Amiga, Apple //gs, Atari ST
etc.

~~~
Razengan
And if anyone was a fan of the Master of Orion series (as they should be),
it's getting a new game:
[http://www.gog.com/game/master_of_orion](http://www.gog.com/game/master_of_orion)

~~~
adwf
I'm wary of it, but looking forward to it at the same time. I'm hoping for
something like the XCom revival, but...

On the other hand, I recently started playing MOO2 again and it's just as
fantastic as ever. Brilliantly balanced, quick to play, lots of different
strategies, etc. I haven't found a 4X game since that really quite got _all_
of the things right.

~~~
eru
Try MoO1, a much better game. MoO2 is way too bloated for its own good.

(Get a recent fan patch for MoO1, if you play it.)

~~~
ino
Even though I've spent more hours in MOO2, I also agree MOO1 is better. The
mechanics make it a funner game.

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hutzlibu
"People remember the big incidents. They have memories of the time they had
this great big battle and finally captured that city, or Gandhi nuked them or
whatever" I remember that I had to choose between curing cancer(which would
have made my people happier) and some cool military technology for my next
invasion ... Well, my people were allready quite happy :)

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devonkim
Another important note is how Sid Meier was involved with the newest XCOM
games as a co-designer and mentor to Jake Solomon. The marketing and promo for
the games are centered a lot around Solomon as the figurehead for the game to
the point that people commonly complain about the numerous (not game-breaking
normally) bugs with "Jake, fix your game." Nobody really ever had that
attitude with the Alpha Centauri, Civilization, etc. games to my memory.

~~~
Alphasite_
Is this XCOM1 or 2?

~~~
eru
"Newest XCOM games" very likely means 1 and 2 of the reboot.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Is associating games with their designers a quirk of simulation games? I
associate Sid Meier and Will Wright heavily with their games, but I don't
really have this same association for other genres.

~~~
wodenokoto
You don't associate Doom with John Carmack? Or Monkey Island and Full Throttle
with Tim Schafer? Or Leisure Suit Larry with Al Lowe?

~~~
smacktoward
Sure, but it's one thing for people to associate Carmack with Doom and another
thing for Id to market the game as _John Carmack 's Doom._

~~~
mrec
How soon they forget: [http://kotaku.com/5541406/john-romero-is-so-sorry-
about-tryi...](http://kotaku.com/5541406/john-romero-is-so-sorry-about-trying-
to-make-you-his-bitch)

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wodenokoto

        > Concerned that this style of game was a significant 
        > departure for the brand, Stealey suggested adding 
        > Meier's name to the game's title, in order to get 
        > his fans on board.
    

While I get it was a marketing ploy, I still don't get the logic. Was Meyer
famous at the time? If so, why was his name needed when they departed from
their normal style, and not for the normal flight simulators?

~~~
sgift
He came to be famous for making military sims/flight sims. When they ventured
into a new genre with "Pirates" they wanted to get the people who only knew
their military sims on board, so they added "Sid Meiers" to the name and this
seems to have helped in getting people to consider a game in a completely
different genre, because they thought of him as someone who built good games
(and rightfully so, I may add).

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Negative1
The greatest thing I learned working with Sid was "Games are a series of
interesting choices" (not verbatim). So is life, and that's what makes his
games so great; they mirror the kinds of choices we make every day. His games
have gravity and it's this that makes you want to keep playing.

