Sid Meier: “I don’t think I could make Civilisation today” | Hacker News Reader

Sid Meier: “I don’t think I could make Civilisation today”

independent.co.uk

149 pointsdanso173 comments

Crux of it seems to be:

> It asks a lot of the player, and takes a while to work it out. You have to play it once in order to understand what's going on. You have to be willing to spend time with it, and that’s not where most gamers are these days.

However, there's plenty of games like this being made today. Paradox games all require hundreds of hours of playtime before you feel even barely competent at the game. Stellaris is one of the best games in recent memory for me. CK3 just came out and is pretty popular.

I don't think gamers today are more / less patient than gamers 30 years ago. You just have a larger, more varied audience but the type of people that are attracted to strategy gaming still exist in good numbers.

> Paradox games

One brand!

Look at Jon Shafer's experience with At the Gates. A Civilization designer. Changed too much, and got 3/5 star averages. A one-man show, a literal indie game, comparable in resources to Civilization 1. This is what Meier is talking about. Tossed out of Paradox, for that matter.

Firaxis's Beyond Earth has barely 1 person who played at least 1 minute for every 10 that bought the game. 9/10 buyers just handed over money out of nostalgia, never playing a minute, nostalgia was and remained the only compelling association with that product.

Okay, was it a bad game? Who knows, hardly anyone played it. That's the crux of what he's saying.

We've barely covered just Civilization-adjacent products.

Anyway, it's preposterous - that Sid Meier has never heard of Paradox, that he's unaware of their success, and that he hasn't contemplated it. It isn't about strategy games as a whole, it's about new games, about new experiences and changing 30% of the formula every year instead of 3% of it.

> Firaxis's Beyond Earth has barely 1 person who played at least 1 minute for every 10 that bought the game. 9/10 buyers just handed over money out of nostalgia, never playing a minute, nostalgia was and remained the only compelling association with that product.

I bought Beyond Earth for full price at launch out of nostalgia for Alpha Centauri (of course).

Unfortunately it had many flaws: - Much less interesting art direction and characters than Alpha Centauri. - Gameplay was very one note, with little meaningful deviation from a few defined paths. - On release, when you finished the game it showed a "finish game" button which unceremoniously dumped you back to the title screen. No opportunity to see stats or review your empire.

My impression was that it was rushed and had a limited budget, and I never felt like revisiting it. As sibling comments note, there is a sizable niche of mostly PC gamers looking for meaty experiences, and I believe Beyond Earth failed on its own merits.

> One brand!

That’s Strategy (and I don’t know if it’s true even there as most Strategy is RTS and I prefer turn based). There have been many deep and complex RPGs released, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Underrail, and Age of Decadence come to mind.

> Okay, was it a bad game? Who knows, hardly anyone played it.

Well, those who did play know it. And to me it was essentially a dumbed-down Civ V that, to make it worse, didn’t have the same amazing modding community behind it.

At the Gates had its own share of problems that wasn't just because it changed too much.

> Firaxis's Beyond Earth has barely 1 person who played at least 1 minute for every 10 that bought the game

It is common for a lot of people to "buy" games on steam that they will never play. Especially with less popular games.

There are a lot of extremely complex, demanding, and unique systems-based indie games which are very successful.

I think you have it backwards - At the Gates is a case of a game simply not being up to bar despite the recognizable name behind it (because the competition has gotten so fierce!), rather than people not bothering with complex games unless they have a recognizable name behind them, and only then for nostalgia reasons.

At the Gates isn't particularly novel, the problem with it was that it was boring. It is very similar to Thea: The Awakening but with a slightly different focus. Thea was developed by a couple of people on their free time and made them enough money to go full time for their next title, so it wasn't that At the Gates lacked budget instead it lacked a skilled game designer. Jon Shafer might be great on an AAA title with already decided direction, but it doesn't seem like he understands what makes a game fun.

> has barely 1 person who played at least 1 minute for every 10 that bought the game.

What's that number based on? Feels like taking some telemetry more seriously than it should be.

> Okay, was it a bad game? Who knows, hardly anyone played it. That's the crux of what he's saying.

I played it a few times when it came out. I had been looking forward to it. Unfortunately it was unbalanced with very obvious exploits. Maybe they fixed it later but I gave up on it.

Exactly. Europa Universalis 4 feels to me like Civilization on steroids. Less tech progress, but far more intricate, detailed mechanisms to understand. Even the most complex version of Civilization is pretty simple by comparison. And yet EU4 is very popular.

(Should I give Stellaris another chance? I got it when it just came out and was disappointed, but I imagine they put a lot of work in it since then.)

The problen with Stellaris is the 101 add-on pack sold seperately. It feels like they are milking the customer and getting all add-ons can be very expensive.

I'm used to that from Paradox and I'm fine with having to pay extra for more features and more options, but I would have hoped the basic game itself would have had a bit more game in it. I had fun with basic EU4 and basic CK2, until eventually I decided I wanted more, and paid for it. Basic Stallaris seemed to be devoid of any content. I mean, there were some events, some planets had an interesting resource, but it was nothing like the lively piece of history in action that EU4 and CK2 are.

But maybe it's gotten better since then. I tried it pretty early.

The DLC thing is annoying, and is a serious problem for EUIV, but for Stellaris the biggest dealbreaker for me was that each patch or update completely changed the game. Totally altered X/Y/Z, did away with transportation methods, total 180.

So then you have to relearn everything. And it's a slow paced, very abstract game to be begin with so it becomes a slog.

EU4 has also had a few of those updates. Not every update changed everything, but some did.

I don't really have a problem with that, though. These games, especially a new one like Stellaris, are also a search for the right approach to the game they want. Sometimes they realise (based on feedback most likely) that they took the wrong approach and have to make dramatic changes. Would you rather they abandoned the game and release a new game that does it right, or that they update the old one? I quite appreciate Paradox's approach. You get way more value out of the game than with most other games. And if they did that with Stellaris, that gives me hope, because the initial version of that didn't work for me.

And if you really prefer the old version, you can just continue playing that.

Also its important to add that a lot of the DLC content ends up in future patches.

They dont fix bugs only, they actually improve the game. For free.

There is so much detail in stellaris that i feel like i owe them the $10 some bucks when a good DLC comes out.

The amount of writing that goes into anomalies alone is worth probably a couple of books

The genre wouldn't exist without those add-ons. Since the market for grand strategy games is small this is their way to be profitable. That is how paradox sells all its titles.

Stellaris is a grand strategy game with random maps. If you go into it expecting a normal space 4x similar to masters of orion it is easy to get disappointed since many of those aspects are weak. Instead think of it as HoI or EU4 in space and it makes a lot more sense.

I went in hoping for EU4 in space, but instead I got glacial Master of Orion. That was my disappointment.

Maybe it would have been more interesting if, like in EU4, the galaxy was already populated. Maybe that's indeed what it is in newer versions, but not back when I picked it up.

Well, I quit Civilization on Civilization 3 because it was too much for me to handle. Same for Sim City at some point. It got more and more complex every version to the point it wasn’t much fun for me anymore.

So I “wasn’t there” 20 years ago already.

Civ 4 was the greatest Civ. Civ 5 and beyond tried to turn it into some kind of board game.

"Death stacks" happen in real life. e.g.: every human battle ever, including Normandy in WW2, I don't know why Civ 5 chose to remove them.

Civ 5 and 6 have nice features but it's no longer Civ to me. Plus, the excessive amount of $60 DLCs are a no-no.

I think the death stacks make it too easy to just steamroll over the opposition. One military unit per hex makes it more tactical. It works for me.

Civ 4 has ways to prevent excessive unit stacking. Mounted units, catapults, artillery and air strikes cause collateral damage. Nukes make death stacks useless.

I think the game was fine the way it was.

And still is, isn't it? I don't think they changed Civ 4. Nothing wrong with different people liking different games.

> Civ 4 was the greatest Civ.

Alpha Centauri enters the room ;)

Alpha Centauri was a great game. Its spiritual successor Civ Beyond Earth was not.

I spent most of today playing Civ6 which was on sale (I’m on vacation)

I played the tutorial and then one and a half games against the AI.

It took 8 hours and not much happened. It had a fairly overwhelming UI and was really slow for each turn (even on fastest speed, tiny map, two players).

I’ll probably never play it again, it wasn’t fun.

Perhaps Civ6 just isn't your thing, but your experience could also be exactly what Sid Meier describes: You have to grasp the different mechanics to get to the fun, strategic part of the game - which takes a while. Like in chess, where learning the game doesn't end, but actually only really starts once you know the basic rules of piece movement.

As a non-native speaker, I sometimes have a similar experience when reading English books written in a rather ornate style, i.e. where I don't know some of the vocabulary: I can follow along just fine, I get the story arc etc., but the book just isn't fun because lacking the vocabulary I can't grasp the fine details of the atmosphere, the character descriptions etc.

I think a big difference between Civ games and chess is that chess has very easy-to-learn mechanics. There are only a half dozen different pieces and the rules are pretty simple. A beginner can start playing almost immediately and have fun from the start. I think Civ’s mechanics are several orders of magnitude more complex.

Yes - chess has a relatively simple and limited ruleset, the complexity comes from the combinations possible.

Civ6 has a crazy amount of complexity to do basic actions - the complexity comes from the UI and all the rules, each city has a ton of things to build which each take many turns, there’s multiple skill trees of unclear benefits, there’s governments and policies, where you can build and what you need to build isn’t clear. During all of this kind of tedious action nothing interesting is happening.

I’d guess there’s a baked in assumption that people playing are already familiar with the game. The tutorial and in game recommended actions were not great.

I don’t mind some complexity (I like KSP, Starcraft) - Civ6 feels like a bad design problem.

> Civ6 feels like a bad design problem.

Definitely! Multiple core mechanics are downright broken. Religion for example is a complete waste of time, as it has practically zero consequences outside of the mechanic itself. I can routinely beat the game while completely ignoring religion.

Playing against a lot of AI opponents is part of the fun. I would start on some easy mode on a standard map with the standard number of opponents and city states . That will be much more representative of the actual game experience.

I've been playing Civilization V for ten years. I'm skeptical they're going to be able to build a new Civ that will pull me off of it. I consider it the nearly perfected version of the franchise (opinions widely differ of course). Maybe in another ten years. Everything I've read about Civ VI indicates the overall gameplay is inferior (although obviously not graphically), there's no great reason to move on to it.

I'm still playing Age of Empires and Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, so I may just be trapped in a time vortex.

Personally, I prefer a small map, to have some more players to interact with. Only one opponent seems boring to me as well

It may be stage of life too. RPGs seemed like work to a younger me. Yet that younger self got bored with action games and made mods and mini games for years.

Now I have less free time but enjoy the feeling of progression in lighter RPGs like Deus Ex.

Audiences change over time among with the game offerings.

Yeah, if a game looks like Excel today with lots of charts and stats, I won’t play it. Don’t have the patience anymore.

I only play games that require minimum investment. Ones I can play 10 mins at a time with resolution. Stuff like Fifa or racing games for example. The only game I invested serous time in completing in the last 5 years was GTA on iOS. They just suck up too much time that is better spent on other stuff like spending time with family or exercising. I'm really surprised at how many dedicated adult gamers there seem to be these days, especially employed ones, as I don't know where they find the time.

I only exercise in ways that require minimum investment. Ones I can do 15-30 minutes at a time with resolution. Stuff like HIIT or 5k runs for example. The only exercise I invested serious time in the last 5 years was a half marathon. Exercising just sucks up too much time that is better spent on stuff like spending time with family, or unwinding with a video game. I’m really surprised at how many dedicated gym members there seem to be these days, especially employed ones, as I don’t know where they find the time.

No doctor ever advised playing more video games. Exercise is a requirement for good health, especially for the more sedentary job types. I've noticed a lot of these types of comments popping up on HN recently. They aren't constructive. Instead they are willfully ignorant and don't add anything to the conversation.

So first you malign my choice of how I spend my leisure time with an implicit “my hobby is more wholesome than yours” and now you call me ignorant? I had hoped to add to the conversation by holding a mirror up to your silly “my hobby is better than your hobby” comments by highlighting that there is no “right” amount of time to spend on relaxing and taking care of your well-being.

As I’m sure you are aware, mental health is an important component of overall well-being, and you will find that doctors have prescribed treatments involving computer games in a wide ranging number of studies since their popularity began to grow in the late 1980’s. Picking one well cited example at random from a 30 second Google search https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.0026... .

“No doctor ever advised playing more video games” is such a broad brush statement as to be useless to refute. It is factually wrong, and the first statement in our sub-conversation that truly deserves the label “wilfully ignorant” - you can learn more about the topic with a few minutes of searching for “video games therapy”.

You are likely aware that not everyone is neurotypical. Some people come alive in their creativity in a video game but struggle to communicate face to face, or struggle with the fine motor control to draw, paint, or write. Video games like Minecraft can become effective communication channels. Doctors and researchers can and do prescribe video games as therapy ( https://psychcentral.com/news/2019/01/28/therapeutic-video-g... ).

I never maligned your hobby. I enjoy video games too. That's why I play them.

Did you read your comments? Your posturing was obvious and embarrassing

They are constructive at least by pointing out that there is a segment of the population that finds physical exercises boring, not pleasant at all. Work, not recreation.

> No doctor ever advised playing more video games.

No doctor ever advised reading more thermodynamics textbooks either. And that's because it's out of scope. Most of medicine deals with the body. A smaller part deals with emotions. There is no branch of medicine concerned with cerebral skills.

Exercise enhances cerebral capacity. More to my point is that exercise is a necessary maintenance activity. It can also be a hobby

I think this is perhaps the worst comment I’ve seen on ycombinator.

Not only do you start with a double negative which is both hard to read and an incorrect statement, but you then ironically don’t add anything meaningful to the conversation.

Edit> he edited his comment

You run half marathon with no previous exercising except 15-30 long HIIT and 5km runs? Frankly, bullshit. There is quite jump from 5km run and half marathon. Half marathon does require serious training investment. This quite apparent nonsense. Even as you are trying to make analogy, you are just showing how absurd the theory is.

And also, people dont spend as much time exercising as they spend gaming, not unless majority of that gym time is pure socialization. Body would not handle it for majority of people.

But yes, the few individuals that do exercising related activities all the time do have those interfering with jobs and families. With families complaining about about that and with people who decide to cut down on exercising for that reason.

That's a pretty weird thing to call bullshit on, even if the analogy wasn't a true one. I completed a Tough Mudder, which is 10 miles plus obstacles, with no HIIT or running training, only some biking (commuting) and yoga. Bert Kreischer is an overweight comedian, likely alcholoic, with no training regiment, and he completed a full marathon in 5h33m.

> Bert Kreischer is an overweight comedian, likely alcholoic, with no training regiment, and he completed a full marathon in 5h33m.

That is really sort of thing you should not do.

I guess you can walk most of marathon, marathon distance is not some kind of unachievable hike. But as of actually running it, you should not and would not manage to run.

If you pick the right pace, most healthy individuals can run half a marathon. Your knees will explode, you may get injured, but you can do it.

> Your knees will explode, you may get injured, but you can do it.

Ok, I took the whole "your body is likely to get damaged forever" thing as "can not and should not run".

And also, healthy non trained individual wont run half marathon. May walk majority of it, but wont be able to actually run that distance.

I ran a half marathon on sand with no training, find a pace you're comfortable with and stick to it. Knees were fine, delayed onset muscle soreness the next day was extreme but passed. (had I not had to turn back because of a river mouth I would have gone further)

I found the same, when we had kid I realized that games I used to play are really not made for people like me. It just was not compatible with the baby. And gaming culture I was encountering at the time was ridiculously hostile to the idea of easier low investment game and offensive to people who voiced such wish.

> I'm really surprised at how many dedicated adult gamers there seem to be these days, especially employed ones, as I don't know where they find the time.

Judging from people I know, they get time because they either dont have family/social life or simply dont spend time with them. If they have kids, they expect partner to deal with all child related care and housework, not really interacting with their children.

If you are alone or divorced, having hobby that actually immerse you and eats your time for hours is not a bad thing.

For some, gaming time replaces the time that could be spent watching TV/etc.- it's another way to spend leisure time, and IMO, gaming is probably better for your mental health than watching 3 hours of the news /etc.

My experience is the opposite, it got less complicated. It's not challenging anymore because it's becoming easier to play. Maybe because the internet made playing it less complicated because of the information available or I know the game play too much and there's nothing new to challenge my knowledge of the game.

Civ 2 ranks among my most played games ever, but I skipped Civ 3 and 4 entirely, only to pick up Civ 5 and 6 again. I like 5. 6 not so much.

Civilization is in a weird space. It's too complex now for many gamers and way too simple for the gamers who grew up with strategy games.

Agreed - an extreme example being Dwarf Fortress. :)

And popular games like Factorio or Satisfactory are far from simple. Also, in many survival games you can loose results of many hours of gameplay in an instant.

Minecraft is another example. Until a recent version there wasn't even a build-in recipe book, you had to either discover them by yourself or search about them online.

That was back when the number of recipes was less than half of what exists today.

Most of the problems we have today are signal to noise problems. The signal to noise ratio of nearly everything has gotten worse, but the raw numbers have gotten better. There is a huge market for people interested in very complex games, but that market is 1) already pretty saturated since there are already a good number of complex games available. This is to include all the old ones, (such as Civ 1-5, or whatever we're on currently) which are generally still fun to play. And, 2) Since the market for people who love complex games is a tiny fraction of the (now enormous) general gaming market, it can feel quite futile. In fact, I suspect that gaming in the 80s on PC was so niche, that the percentage of people who could learn a Civ type game was much higher than it could possibly be now. Especially if you consider smart phone games.

Further, this is just true in general. People say "games are so bad now," when what they probably mean is "per capita, most games are terrible because the market is so huge." However, there are more and better games available today than in any time in history. Again, this is true because for the most part all the old games remain available. You could extend this to almost any kind of media: books, movies, TV, music. There is simply MORE of everything, and so the mainstream center-curve feels more estranged.

Yep, CK3 is in the top ten games on Steam, hitting almost 100,000 simultaneous players most days: https://steamcharts.com/app/1158310

Interesting someone bought it on Steam for 50 EUR, given XBox Game Pass for PC subscription (despite the weird naming) lets you have it for a fraction of that price (together with a dozen other good names, e.g. the new Flight Simulator and Wasteland 3).

I bought it as a signal to Paradox, to keep making such games, even though I don't have time at the moment to play the game.

Various Microsoft game/whatevers on PC were such a shit show in the past (while on consoles it was great) I am probably not alone in just ignoring everything that comes out of microsoft on PC.

lets you have it^^^^^borrow

For comparison, Call of Duty: Warzone regularly gets 30 million players.

Ok, 100K simultaneous online players is nothing to sniff at for any game. That's a success, that's a hit. Might not be a triple platinum mega hit but a hit nonetheless.

Absolutely. It's a huge achievement. However, in a discussion about the tastes of gamers and whether or not there's as much appetite for complex games today as there was when Civ was released, it says a lot that CoD is more than 100* as popular.

Warzone is also:

1. Free to play. 2. Marketing budget in the 9 figure range. 3. Comes from a long established series with ~20 games. 4. Available on all platforms.

I'd be willing to bet there's more of an appetite for complex games today than when Civilisation was released from an absolute standpoint, just that there's also more people playing games in general so from a relative standpoint there's less.

Pac-Man was probably also more popular than Civilization. Hardcore complex grand-strategy games are simply not as accessible to as many people as more mainstream games, but Paradox proves there's definitely a market for it.

Are you sure?

COD sold 75-80 million copies [1]. Getting 30 million regularly implies that one of third of them are actively playing at the same time. That seems rather unlikely

[1] https://www.gamespot.com/articles/call-of-duty-warzone-sees-...

Call of Duty Warzone is free, the referenced stat was for last years COD title.

Paradox Games, Football Manager (not FIFA), etc - I don't think the market has died at all. There will always be a lot more players who play the mass-market games of course.

I have hundreds of hours into Deep Rock Galactic, and I still play it almost every day. And I'm no anomaly - and there are plenty of games in a variety of genres that players stick with for hundreds of hours.

Maybe Civ needs a little touch up in modern design - maybe the first playthrough is quick and easy, but "willing to spend time" with a game is definitely not a problem.

DRG is action coop run-based game. There is no complexity in it. H5 is tighter on resource management but it can't compare with grand strategy where plays could long for hours.

Which is exactly part of my point. I can play DRG for hours at a time, and it's a pretty one dimensional game. So there's no reason why something as complex as CIV can't thrive. His point that players don't have the attention span or a willingness to commit to a game these days is just wrong.

I think it's clear that there are complex games today that require a big time investment and thinking, but that section isn't the only relevant one, I think.

> In the book, Meier reminds us that the bestselling games of 1998 were Civ 2, Warcraft II, Myst, Command & Conquer and Duke Nukem 3D. Aside from the last, all require more thought and engagement than the [redacted] that dominate gaming today.

To avoid picking and choosing, what are the bestselling games of 2020, for comparison? How would we even determine that?

That's where I think he's saying things have changed. Four of the top five best-selling games of 1998 were more thoughtful, while today he offers up "Candy Crush" and "Fortnite" in contrast.

As I write this, the best-selling games of 2020[0] seem to be: Ghost of Tsushima, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Paper Mario: The Origami King, The Last of Us: Part II, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. If that's not a perfect comparison, maybe throw in the top paid app on iOS: Minecraft.

In terms of being one of the top five games, he's clearly right. There's not much room for something like "Civilization" on that list.

But that might be the wrong way to think about it. If I sell X units in 1998 and it makes up 25% of all units sold, and then I sell X units in 2020 and it makes up only 0.1% of all units sold, that might seem like what I'm selling is much less popular, but in fact I'm selling just as many. It's the overall market that has grown up around me. In my hypothetical example, it has gotten 250 times as large. In reality, it might be even more extreme than that.

Something like "Civilization" today might not be a best-seller the way it was 22 years ago, but that doesn't mean there's not a market for it.

[0] https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/top-10/video-game...

Yeah factorio hits a similar note and similar late bedtime routine for me.

Not sure if Stellaris is a good example though.

It might be hard to master, but I've had a lot of fun with my first game already, so it's easy enough to get into (I don't like 4X games usually and I hadn't even played any RTS/Sim games for many years).

I think the point was more "you're in for some work if you want to enjoy it properly". But if we're simply looking at the "playing to beat it/mastering aspect", then you're right.

Yeah. Well designed strategy games can capture the attention of even not great gamers. I've played like 50+ hours of slay the spire and I think I've won like 5 times, but I enjoy it nonetheless because the design is fantastic and the complex mechanics explain themselves.

I think most of the players playing Grand Strategy are veteran players who have been playing since the early Civs. I think Meier's point is that if grand strategy wasn't already an established genre then he wouldn't be able to make Civ today

One of the goals for CK3 was to dumb CK2 down in order to reach a wider audience. I honestly would not describe any of the newer Paradox games as complex (yes, even Stellaris).

CK3 has more systems out of the box than CK2 when it came out.

CK3 just just looks simpler because its presented in a lot better/cleaner way. (and the fact, that CK2 wasn't as complicated as EU4)

Hey don't forget Vicky II, which is mostly a complex spreadsheet simulator with sliders and a map.

My friend, let me introduce you to a game called Aurora 4x

here is some gameplay[1][2] and forum where development happens [3] . There is c# revrite comming ...

  [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXqBYDSno7w
  [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77mvpSvVu10
  [3]http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php

Have you played CK3? It's definitely not dumbed down.

I find it hard to imagine a Paradox game that could not be described as complex. Maybe some are not quite as complex as others, but they're definitely complex. Especially compared to any version of Civilization.

Maybe not, but they're vastly more complex than any Civilization game has been.

Paradox has been trending casual over their past few titles as well though. Hearts of Iron IV is far less sophisticated than HOI III for instance.

I think that's a trend that's reversed. From what I've seen of it so far, Crusader Kings 3 has the same depth and complexity as its predecessor.

It'd be a stretch to consider any of these games even remotely casual. I haven't played HOI3 or 4, but if they're as far on the extreme complexity end as EU4, then toning down on unneeded complexity may well be justified.

The goal is not complexity for its own sake; it has to serve a purpose. Some of the complexity does, some of it doesn't. Revisiting some of those assumptions for a new version makes a lot of sense. That said, these big Paradox games have a tendency to accumulate a lot of complexity over the years.

A lot of the complexity in EU4 consists of artificial mana mechanics, which HOI4 also has. HOI3 and Victoria II have complexity due to the underlying complexity of the simulation.

I agree with what you're saying here, and Paradox is a good example. Hearts of Iron IV has a solid modding community, and while it can have a steep(ish) learning curve, that's sort of the point. That variety of what can happen in-game helps keep gamers coming back for more.

I don't really buy the argument in the title. The demand for complex video games hasn't gone anywhere. The recent Civ games have all done well, along with dozens of other titles in the same genre as well as grand strategy, role playing, MOBA and more. Yes online shooters are popular, but the gaming market as a whole has grown substantially. Just look at the player numbers for EVE Online, Dota 2, X-COM, Starcraft, Crusader Kings, Total War series, Europa Universalis. Civ is comparatively pretty straightforward.

Kinda related, but "you couldn't make [XYZ] today" is for some reason a very frequent quote from artists, directors, authors, comedians etc., despite the fact that works far more brazen/offensive than what they did are being released every day, and there's definitely a market for it.

Back in the 90s when Civ was released for the Amiga 500 everyone played it. I was at school at the time, and almost everyone who had a computer had a copy. It was phenomenally popular.

For comparison, EVE Online has 300,000 monthly active players. Call of Duty has 30 million. That implies that about 1% of gamers are interested in the sort of games Sid Meier is talking about. The demand for "complex video games" absolutely has diminished dramatically as a proportion of the gaming industry.

The first Civilization game sold 1.5 million copies across all platforms. Super Mario World, which released in the same year, sold over 20 million. So things really haven’t changed all that much. Casual gaming will always have a larger addressable market.

Even otherwise, the crux is that the entire gaming pie has grown substantially. There are lots of new genes and platforms which have become popular, but demand for games like Civ has grown as well.

The first Civilization game sold 1.5 million copies across all platforms.

There were about 50 people in my year at school playing pirated copies taken from one original. The kid with an external disk drive and a copy of Cyclone was very popular.

As far as I'm aware piracy on PC hasn't decreased.

I was replying the point about Civ selling 1.5m and Mario selling 20m. There were a lot more people playing Civ than the sales might indicate.

Good point, although note that console game rental was also a thing at the time, it is easy to share cartridges (just not playing at the same time), and I'd guess there was a larger second hand market in console games as well. So there would also be more console game players than sales would indicate.

Yeah 90s with handful games available and rampart piracy its no wonder you could have been 'successful' back in the day. Meaning become popular game/brand.

Today people expect quality, and something that caters to them. And you have plenty to choose from. That's why you cannot make game that everyone will play and enjoy (except of Portal, everyone loves Portal).

Games are widespread form of entertainment now. a 1% now is worth beyond imagination what 100% in 90s was worth.

In a way its easier for a niche game to be financially successful.

> Yeah 90s with handful games available and rampart piracy its no wonder you could have been 'successful' back in the day. Meaning become popular game/brand.

Of my friends, I think only 2 of us had actually purchased Starcraft licenses, lol. Everyone played it, and everyone loved it but ere'one didn't pay for it...

Why does the proportion matter? Yes, more casual gamers entered the scene - this is to be expected as computers before more accessible, but the number of people willing to play complex strategy games has overall gone up.

I think this is the crux of the artists' complaints: you can't conquer a mature, diverse market with a one-trick pony. Back in the day, the 300k audience your game (or song, or art) had was a very large chunk of everyone that's into a new medium. Today, a sequel to that work could gather a 3M audience, but then the artists look at the market being 300M strong and weep, instead of being satisfied with "merely" 10x the audience.

EVE requires a subscription (has a limited version though, but many people have multiple accounts, so it evens out I guess), while Call of Duty does not, afaik.

That is a big factor, especially with younger audiences, but ofc it doesn't explain 300k vs 30m.

Also the golden age of classic MMOs is kind of past, look at World of Warcraft numbers 8-13 years ago and compare them today, even when lumping all "fantasy" MMOs together.

I'm not so sure everybody played it. A lot of people didn't. Many more casual games sold a lot more.

But in the market for complex strategy games, Civ was absolutely king. But that's because the market was far less saturated at the time; nobody else had made a game like that before. Now there's thousands of games trying to do things like that, so it's much harder to stand out.

I have a similar opinion. I have seen this news in other websites and I think the article sentence should be approached in other way.

- First Sid is not in his 20s anymore and he probably today has other games or genres he likes more other than complex strategy games. I speak for myself i used to love Starcraft, AoE and RPGs on my teenager years, nowadays i can only get myself to play action games. People change over time, plus some games need more time to get them to work than others.

- Considering the whole video game market. Games like Civilization are still played by many people, but not a huge hit like Fortnite, COD or League of Legends. There is no question there are still people looking for complex games: See Dota2, Escape from Tarkov or even BR games but games like Civilization are still hugely profitable ? I doubt, and video game publishers of course are interested in high profitability. Lets not forget about the mobile market where a huge number of people like to play mostly casual games, for natural reasons.

- As he said, back in the day it was the perfect game to be done in that time. PC gaming got better and people were looking for an immersive and complex game. Nowadays there are several titles which offer the same.

I feel like a lot of indie games today build with a more dated or limited graphics style and they sell just fine (as others have mentioned, Factorio looks no better than a 90s PC game). Maybe the expectations for a Sid Meier title are too high and he's a victim of his own success in that respect, but I don't think it's true that just because modern machines can do so much that people expect all games to max out their potential.

Civ games is not complex compared to other games like Europa Universalis, Crusaders Kings and EVE Online. I used to love Civ games but the newer versions are just not engaging for a long play time. It seems the permutation of outcomes are less compared to the other games or I know the result because I played hundred of hours so its less exciting.

Do you think they could make Blazing Saddles today?

Yes.

If you want a more elaborate answer, then yes there's really no question about it.

Everyone points to the use of racial epithets in Blazing Saddles as a reason that the movie couldn't be made today. Ignoring that Quentin Tarantino regularly makes movies with racial epithets today.

Blazing Saddles is profoundly anti-racist. It shows racism and bigotry in a negative light. The racist characters are boors or villains or both. The black sheriff is the hero and shown to be in the right nearly every time. Why couldn't it be made today?

I mean, they made Tropic Thunder more recently which is at least as offensive. I think it all comes in waves.

First example that came to my mind. There isn't a point in the last 30 years that that movie could have been made.

I agree that the Civ point is a little silly. But try to play the original X-Com now. I have fond memories of poring over strategy guides for that thing and starting to see a measure of success. But it's really tough to play after visiting the modern counterparts. And not because of the graphics.

X-Com Apocalypse is one of my favorite games. I can't stand the new ones. They have shiny graphics (which I generally like in most games) but they have streamlined stuff to the point where it doesn't even remotely feel like the same kind of game.

Part of the fun of X-Com Apocalypse was how detailed and overwhelming everything got. It was hard so success felt good.

> There isn't a point in the last 30 years that that movie could have been made.

Why not? Pulp Fiction was made in that time frame, features roughly as many racial slurs and even won awards.

Not generally, but maybe as "Borat In The Wild West"

>"For a long time we were pushing up against the limits of what the computer could do,” he says. “We were trying to get the most out of the available hardware and then tap onto the players imagination to provide the rest. That was the art of game design, to provide that stimulus. You would imagine being a fighter pilot, or a pirate, or the king of a great civilisation.” Where some games are more like films, gorgeous to look at but where many of the artistic decisions have been taken for you, Meier’s games are more like novels, inviting the reader to fill in the gaps. His maxims."

Leaving the rest up to imagination is the key part IMO. Rollercoaster Tycoon, Simcity 2 & 4 (never played 3000), Warcraft II (and too some extent, III), Baldur's Gate I/II.. the graphics are just enough to tell you what's going on, and your brain fills in the rest of the details. I feel the closer graphics approach reality, and the more details their are, your brain begins to filter out those details, and notices the flaws/unpolished pixels, which ends up taking away from the immersive experience.

You may be on to something. However, I think the biggest thing that detracts from many beloved franchises today is a design philosophy where everyone is hell bent on streamlining out all of the gameplay to the point where the gameplay isn't fun for people that liked gaming in the 90s and before.

Warcraft II was amazing because it had really great RTS mechanics. Warcraft III was a great game, but it introduced hero units so powerful the game ceased to be an RTS and became a hybrid of the genre it eventually gave birth to. It already felt like a MOBA half the time when players could just power-level their hero and come decimate your entire army almost single-handedly because you focused on building.*

*Not saying this was an optimal strategy vs really gifted players, I wasn't a WC pro and I only played on LANs back in those days.

Yeah they pulled that with one of the more recent SimCity games. I used to enjoy laying pipe, running electricity and setting up zoned grids on tiny squares, but they streamlined and oversimplified way too many of the enjoyable details from SimCity 2000 (best version in my opinion). Maybe modern game designers thought those were empty chores but I felt they added to the sandbox feel of the game.

> but it introduced hero units so powerful the game ceased to be an RTS

Interestingly, one of the criticisms of new total war games is similar to this. Sadly that series seems to be going down the drain.

If you really want to experience your imagination being talked to directly, try MUDs instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zctp972y_Eg&feature=emb_logo

We used to pay $6 an hour (~$14 an hour in 2020 dollars) to play MUD1 (British Legends) at 300 baud on Compuserve in the mid 80s (plus phone fees which were ridiculously high in the 80s).

I'm fine with nice graphics, they don't remove me from immersion any more than older, more basic graphics. My issue is when there is no substance to the game, when it's mostly eye-candy. As a Starcraft/Civ/Witcher gamer, I like complexity and decisions and which "era" of game graphics is mostly irrelevant. The mixture of games I play with pleasure spans from 1990's to 2020s, graphics are like music, atmospheric but not pivotal.

> “...the closer graphics approach reality, and the more details their are, your brain begins to filter out those details, and notices the flaws”

This is often called the uncanny valley:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

it's not just that phenomenon.

Daniel Dennett mentions an experience where a painting , with very little detail up-close, appeared to him to have all the detail of a photograph when viewed from afar[0].

It's not quite the same thing as the uncanny valley effect, for him it came about from his naive expectation of up-close detail being blown apart by his experience, when getting closer and closer to the painting, of realizing that the painting itself was almost incomprehensible up-close -- the detail was created by the way the abstract shapes created the illusion of detail from afar on a very large canvas.

It was sort of an artistic physical version of rendering LOD tricks.

He expresses it much better than I do, I recommend the TED talk or the Google talk where he highlights this example as a way to gain insight into what consciousness may be.

[0]: https://youtu.be/fjbWr3ODbAo

I thought the uncanny valley specifically referred to things that are so close to realistic that it physically creeps people out because they subconsciously know somethings wrong. Not necessarily realistic graphics taking away the magic. We aren't even close to the level of realism in games that's creepy IMO. Probably another few generations of GPUs away from that.

Yeah, this phenomenon is more like the hi-fi treadmill, where the closer your sound system is to perfect reproduction, the more annoying the remaining flaws get. And so you upgrade...

I still see examples of this in modern games. Overwatch chose cartoonish visuals while other shooters aimed for realism, and the result is both more appealing to my eye and more performant. A few more years down the road, I suspect Overwatch will still look good, while its contemporaries' attempts at photo-realism draw attention to their own shortcomings in light of what the tech of the day will be able to render.

Breath of the Wild is another example of stylized art instead of trying to look like a live action movie. It is imagination fuel in a way similar to a Miyazaki film. I think it will age well, too.

Wind Waker on the gamecube is a perfect example of what you're describing. Almost 20 years old and I still think the cel-shaded graphics look great, especially when compared to its more "realistic" contemporaries.

90s PC gaming was a golden era

Feels to me like right now/this last decade is a golden era as well. Factorio, rimworld, binding of Isaac, dark souls + sekiro, xcom, civ 6, Divinity, paradox games, Minecraft, subnautica, rocket league. To name a few of my favorites.

Today is absolutely the golden age. We stand at the point where making and selling a game is easier than it has ever been.

I think over the years, people will continue to move away from PCs as a gaming platform to mobile devices, and shovelware from the casual, pay-to-play game companies will keep the market so saturated that it will be hard to discover great indie titles.

PS. your list is missing Disco!

The term shovelware reminds me of the E.T. incident. A game so bad that Atari literally got out the shovels:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial

Really? I feel like any damage mobile could do has already been done at this point. Mobile is no longer novel and has been saturated for many years. I haven't built a new PC in years but recently with the fantastic AMD chips and some great titles that I want to explore, I plan on doing it soon. Plus it would be nice to have a system I could tether a VR headset to if I want.

I tend to agree with him (well, for me 95-2004 is the golden era) for the reason that it's mostly "been there, done that" nowadays. In addition, you have a lot of bad business practices such as microtransactions, lootboxes, terrible DRM (Denuvo, Steam etc), release of unfinished products and you can't even buy the games physically anymore. Apart from some indie games, nothing really seems worth it. As someone who started playing PC games at the beginning of the 00s, I'm mostly playing ones released in the 90s and early 00s. The main issue with older games is typically the UI and controls. Apart from that, they feel a lot more "fresh" due to its content and often times experimentation. In contrast, a lot of games these days stick to the same things and at best combine two genres into one (roguelites for instance). Or they take old ideas and just build on top of it. Very rarely you get something like "Return of the Obra Dinn".

Totally agree. Dark Souls threw every third person action game of the nineties down the trash. Same with the wargame series being the best rts game ever released, in complexity combined with real time and unit balance it's unparalleled.

The only 90 games worth talking about anymore are the rpg games, the space simulators/rpgs and Homeworld. As in that you would actually prefer to play it instead of a modern game for none nostalgic reasons.

And we still have games breaking new ground like Disco Elysium.

Eh, I think there are truly classic games from all genres from the 90s that are still relevant and played today. RTS games like StarCraft and Red Alert still have large followings. On the FPS side there’s the original Counter-Strike (well, “1.6” at least), Doom, Quake, and even stuff like Starsiege: Tribes which I’d say are still relevant and hugely influential. I have played lots of these games in recent years. I enjoy the relative simplicity of them compared to most modern day counterparts.

> Dark Souls threw every third person action game of the nineties down the trash.

I dunno. Ocarina still holds up today, or at least the 3DS remake does. I don't know about the original.

Yeah, the Zelda series is alright. And the Zelda games for all consoles are still worth playing.

Minecraft is the best game I have ever played in 25 years of playing games. Nothing like it. A masterpiece. Once in a generation masterwork. Created an avenue for creativity for a generation. It's for the history books.

Do you know Clonk? Minecraft is basically that, just in 3D and with some added things like a procedurally-generated world and stuff like hunger. But crafting, "blocks", extracting materials, mobs, multiplayer, creating new items, mechanics, scenarios etc for the game and so on were already there, many years before Minecraft.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Clonk-En...

https://cc-archive.lwrl.de/shots/7.jpg (with Stippel pack)

Seems like it's really hard to come by screenshots these days. Things like the Stargate pack with working portals, Goa'uld etc were just great.

Some of the added things you mentioned plus the 3d aspect are vital to what minecraft is. The game starts in survival mode and slowly switches to building mode which is a very well executed and satisfying transition. The 3d aspect of it is important and so is the hunger. Hunger is the first bit of horizontal progression, then the rest comes from unlocking building resources and convenience. Vertical progression in comparison is quick and 99% of the mobs soon pose no challenge.

Incredible. What a disappointment I did not come across these as a child. There's something to Minecraft, though, and I can't quite describe it.

Clonk is great but not comparable to Minecraft imo.

I think Minecraft is the only game I could conceivably nominate as objectively the best game ever. It's not my personal favourite (I'm more a Paradox guy), but it's the only game in this over-saturated market that literally everybody knows. Even out of the box there's already a lot of different ways to play the game, and then there's mods and custom servers with plugins that open up such an endless world of possibilities that nothing else comes close.

For me personally, I would add Hollow Knight to the list.

That is one of the few games I intend to always have installed on at least one machine.

Yeah. I think gaming market and the technology are doing just fine since it produced Hollow Knight. I really think it is one of the best games in history, and one of the greatest storytelling in an interactive, electric media. Such exquisite balance between simplicity and detail, music and visual, story line and game play, characters and background, etc.

Waiting for Silksong...

Then there's also Shovel Knight, Celeste, The Messenger, Stardew Valley, Undertale, and so on. We've never had it better as gamers!

The Last of Us Part II

Not for pc unfortunately!

Yikes, thought we were speaking generally

I'd argue it was a golden era for you as that's the best time of you to play game. My kids would say 2020 is the golden era of game as they started to enjoy minecraft and roblox now.

I played a lot of games as a teenager in the mid 2000s, and they kind of sucked. The graphics aged terribly compared to something like SNES or N64 games and the game play wasn't that great. 2010-2020 has undoubtedly been the golden age of gaming, thanks to Steam mostly. Without physical discs, lower indie price point games could be sold and still turn a profit.

From a quality and diversity standpoint, the last ten years have seen the best games ever made, a lot of them indies.

I'd suspect that might be related to when you grew up.

I'm a child of the late 80's, and nothing will ever beat the experiences of Zaxxon, Manic Miner, Paradroid, etc.

I do know gamers who were teens in the late 70s, and it's all about River Raid, Pole Position, Frogger.

My guess is that, just like music, what you experience as a teen shapes you.

> "I don’t think I could make Civilisation today,” Meier says. “I’m not sure even I would play it. It wouldn’t fit in the zeitgeist. It asks a lot of the player, and takes a while to work it out. You have to play it once in order to understand what's going on. You have to be willing to spend time with it, and that’s not where most gamers are these days. Civ came out at the perfect time. The PC had got beefy enough for us to make it, but weren’t inundated with so many possibilities. If it had been created two years earlier we’d only have had four colours and it would have been much shallower.”

I could agree with that, although on the other hand there are deep simulation games being released today

Well, Civilization 1 certainly wouldn't pass muster today, but that's because it's too simple, with too many shortcuts. There are far more complex games today that are doing very well.

It’s remarkable they changed the spelling in the title to match the British customs, one would think this is a proper and not a common name in this context.

Probably just someone running it through a spell checker. Or an over zealous editor who isn't familiar with the series.

I mean, Crusader Kings 3 seems to be doing well, and it's staggeringly more complex than Civ. I'm not sure what Sid Meier is talking about. Other complicated and successful games might include Factorio, Shenzen I/O, Exapunks, Europa Universalis, or Star Craft.

You can't just "do well"! You have to dive for the lowest common denominator until you're a unicorn!

Actual title of the article is: "Sid Meier: ‘I’m not sure I’d play Civilisation if it was released today’"

The title chosen by the OP is contained in the second half of the article:

> “I don’t think I could make Civilisation today,” Meier says. “I’m not sure even I would play it. It wouldn’t fit in the zeitgeist. It asks a lot of the player, and takes a while to work it out. You have to play it once in order to understand what's going on. You have to be willing to spend time with it, and that’s not where most gamers are these days. Civ came out at the perfect time. The PC had got beefy enough for us to make it, but weren’t inundated with so many possibilities. If it had been created two years earlier we’d only have had four colours and it would have been much shallower.”

It also represents a change in the mystery of computers and games. It was esoteric and fascinating to see stuff even happen on screen. This made people want to try and dive in.

I think this issue is even larger, the web also suffers from this. It's all streamlined and a commercial endpoint.. very very different from the beginnings.

To the complex game authors of the world: we love what you write! Don’t stop! Some of us may be busy but we haven’t stopped taking the time to play in the universes you’ve created!

Civ1 is one of those old games which I can still get lost in, almost 30 (!) years later (yes, I played it in 1991, I'm that old).

Interestingly, one of the things that puts me off playing anything even remotely modern is the graphics. Around the mid-90s it was decided that everything has to be 3D, everything should require the latest, most powerful graphics card, etc.

In contrast, what kind of a graphics card do you need to play chess? I think that Civ1 is a bit like chess, albeit more accessible, maybe a bit shallower, but endlessly fun. I can watch a fancy animation once maybe, then I no longer care. The gameplay, the balance, the complexity is what it is about for me.

You might be missing out on a lot of great games if you feel 'modern' games are ruined by graphics!

There are tons of pixel-art/2D/retro style games that rival the best of the oldies, but with 'modern' gameplay (or refined old-skool gameplay).

The market for these types of games is just as big as it was in the 80s. The existence of a bigger fish in the mobile market doesn't mean you have to make soulless crap.

I probably owe my interest in programming to this man. Civ 1 was one of the first games I played as a kid. What an imagination!

Just above the line that everybody else is quoting, the article says:

> "Despite its near-infinite replayability, Civ is not as easy to pick up and learn as many of today’s popular phone or console games. In the book, Meier reminds us that the bestselling games of 1998 were Civ 2, Warcraft II, Myst, Command & Conquer and Duke Nukem 3D. Aside from the last, all require more thought and engagement than the Candy Crushes or Fortnites that dominate gaming today."

I'm not so sure this is true. When my dad bought Civilization in 1992 (just at the start of my exams; great timing), I jumped straight in and learned everything while playing the game. My son plays Fortnite, and he sets up explicit training scenarios to practice certain skills he's decided he needs improvement in. There's plenty of engagement in modern games.

Games like Factorio demonstrate that there is still an audience for games that require thought - not just those we use to numb our brains.

...but at the same time, the gaming market has grown to the general populace, whereas in 1992, it was more niche. So maybe that niche group remained the same size, and the general population's craving for addictive numbing games has just dwarfed it.

I’ve been watching Potato McWhiskey on YouTube (his games, not streams). He plays Civ6 and talks about all his moves as he plays. It’s almost more fun to watch him play than it is to play myself. After watching his videos I pretty much know every mechanic in the game and it all makes sense now.

Without his videos however, I’d be clicking through and reading the Civopedia for hours.

Having a virtual mentor via video can turn impossible games into possible games, and the path to getting there is really fun.

When talking about complexity I was fascinated with this interview of one of the dwarf fortress developers explaining how the cats kept dying from alcohol poisoning due to emergent behavior caused by a bug https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VAhHkJQ3KgY

I played quite a bit but gave up because of the inscrutable UI and ASCII graphics, so I'm quite excited about the recent developments. Can't wait to play Dwarf Fortress again once it has actual 'graphics' and (ideally) a better UI!

> ...Meier reminds us that the bestselling games of 1998 were Civ 2, Warcraft II, Myst, Command & Conquer and Duke Nukem 3D. Aside from the last, all require more thought and engagement than the Candy Crushes or Fortnites that dominate gaming today.

It's no Myst, but Candy Crush?!

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