Sid Meier's Memoir | Hacker News Reader

Sid Meier's Memoir

sidmeiersmemoir.com

198 pointsanimationwill59 comments

This is a good light read. Working in game dev, I found some of his thoughts around prototyping, production, and design to be insightful and gladly would have read more of those. I also would gladly have read more about Sid Meier's CPU Bach, since that was ahead of its time and seems interesting algorithmically. His stories are a bit more interesting in the early years and the end of the book drags a bit, as he goes from Civ IV to Civ V to Civ IV.

Wonder if he logged his ideas and work significantly more for those later pieces of work than the former.

Ordered. Funnily enough I recently came across this GDC presentation by Sid and Bruce Shelley on the development of the original Civilization[0]. Highly recommended.

The influence of Empire as one of the inspirations of the game was obvious to anyone familiar with it. If you're interested there's an excellent updated implementation of Empire on the App Store[1]. I'd love to be able to get a version of Civ 2 on mobile. It's still by far my favourite iteration of Civ. Or Pirates!

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts

[1]https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/mother-of-all-battles/id425160...

This for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.windowsgam... or Windows: http://www.windowsgames.co.uk/mother.html ?

It's amazing to see them sharing the stage and talking about their first achievement with such dignity and depth.

It's even more mind-blowing when you realize that Shelley went ahead and started Ensemble Studios[1] that created the Age of Empires franchise which is still alive today[2]. And Civilization is today still under development and even more successful than ever before.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensemble_Studios

2. https://www.ageofempires.com/games/age-of-empires-iv/

Edit: Formatting and grammar

I bought The Settlers 7 purely because I knew Bruce Shelley worked on it. It was a nice game, interesting take on the "casual economic sim" genre

People who liked these tips might also like:

Bruce Shelley was on Soren Johnson's podcast Designer Notes (ep. 9, 2015). Sid Meier is in episodes 23—25 (2016).

And Brian Reynolds did two episodes as well. All recommended if those names are interesting to you.

As long as you're referring to the original version of Pirates, it works great on phones in an emulator (I've used the NES version)

Based on the title of this thread, I was disappointed that the title of his memoir did not end in an exclamation mark, but then was happy to discover that it is indeed titled "Memoir!"

Only a few of the games had bang in the name, e.g. Sid Meier's Civilization or Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon are bangless.

Still, I find the cover of this book so delightful!

True. But we were all thinking Pirates! :P

SMAC is also bang-free (and the best games IMHO).

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Flip the "i" in "Centauri" upside down and there's your bang.

I don't know why I love this comment so much.

“Sid Meier's Alpha Centaur!” sounds like a game I would play, but also like a brand of ebook smut.

There can be only one (centaur).

Some how Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri was a 4x game that had one of the most interesting stories / atmospheres in video game history, even if it was just from a few clips and quotes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24OXzIRIiMQ

For someone who’s bored with combat-focused games and misses the open nature of games like Railroad Tycoon, who’s following in Meier’s footsteps? I was thinking that if there was a rebooted RT2 I’d buy it in a second but fell off the Civ train due to wanting either less or more plausible combat, not to mention QA.

Actually working on a non-violent indie 4X right now, called Slipways [1][2]. It's set in space, but I do owe lots of inspiration to Railroad Tycoon and Transport Tycoon, and the core of the game is about connecting places together so that goods can flow from place to place.

It's a much more condensed experience than either of these - 40-60 minutes per playthrough depending on playstyle.

[1]: https://twitter.com/krajzeg/status/1304447134209585152

[2]: https://slipways.net

Oh, neat – I'll take a look tonight!

Why use ESDF instead of WASD

Fun game btw.

The web version is a PICO-8 game. PICO-8 is a very constrained fantasy console (posted here on HN a few times). ESDF are actually the "player 2" keys of the "console", so they're easy to access from within, unlike the actual keyboard - letting me save precious code tokens (you only get 8192 for the whole game on the PICO-8) for actual gameplay.

I love the PICO-8 version as a way to spend time when waiting for a compile to finish. Thanks for making it!

Take a look at OpenTTD, Banished, Tropico 5, Cities Skylines and Frostpunk. It's a diverse list, but they all fit your open non-combat strategy criteria.

Thanks – I've definitely heard good things about Skylines before but went on a hiatus for the last few years after my son was born.

Banished... I probably think about this game at least once a month, but am unable to return to it since "solving" the core loop. Once you figure it out, it's easy. But the climb to the solution is... steep to say the least. It took me a few failed runs to survive the winter easily.

What a great game. There's a lot of mod content out there, but it all just felt off to me, so I never really explored outside of vanilla.

I hope Shining Rock's next game is along the same lines and as good, if not better!

The sound track is especially amazing during the storm. It captures that feeling of hope interwoven with despair and a will to survive.

You might want to give Europa Universalis IV, Crusader Kings 2(free on steam), or Crusader Kings 3 a try. Definitely more of a learning curve than Civilization, but can be really fun.

I would also add Stellaris to this list.

Yes and in fact, that might be an easier start to a Paradox Interactive game. My first PI game was Stellaris which I quickly racked up hundreds of hours in and despite several major changes by the devs in mechanics it's still easy to jump back in to. I feel like it's a worthy successor to SMAC with its own uniqueness.

But EUIII, EUIV, CKII, HoI? Considerably steeper learning curve, IMO! I've spent over a hundred hours just trying to take over Ireland (the traditionally newb scenario) in CKII.

I would not suggest jumping from a Civ to any Paradox title except Stellaris. There's enough of Paradox's goofiness in the space combat ("whaa... I slaughtered the enemy, how do I not get their planets... war exhaustion, wtf is that... oh that kind of makes sense") and lots of visual feedback to keep you interested without making you cry too much.

Transport Fever 2 scratched the itch for me when I last had the urge for makin' trains

Transport Fever is a very satisfying train game. The early game is all about making the business profitable. After that, resources are basically unlimited. The end game plays like a giant tabletop train simulator, with a focus on fitting to terrain while minimizing gradients and tight turns.

Factorio also has a very satisfying train mini-game, with a focus on complex signaling and dynamic pathing. Thankfully, there are dials to tune down combat. I like to use the "rail world" preset, which disables enemy expansion.

"Indie" games is the genre you are looking for. Maybe "Simulator"

I've been having a lot of fun in Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo by Frontier recently. Highly creative games and give a good rest from higher paced genres.

Alternative to Amazon:

https://wordery.com/sid-meiers-memoir-sid-meier-978132400587...

Bought it the other day. Still waiting for Stripe Press to not be Amazon exclusive as well.

I love the web 1.0 design. Gandhi might deploy nuclear weapons!

I recently finished Sid Meier's Memoir! I found it fascinating and highly readable. If you like games you will like this book. Meier's inspirations and insights into what makes a game fun make this memoir well worth it to anyone who is interested in game design.

I wish this was on Audible. It's a bit strange that the only audio option is a $30 CD

Just finished the hardback. Great read. It was interesting to learn that the nuclear Ghandi stories about an integer causing an overflow was totally made up. Also it was overwhelming to read the many many games and prototypes he developed.

I was really hoping this was somehow a new game.

Same, I saw the headline and thought this was gonna be Sid Meier's version of the Sims

the Amazon category is "microprocessor design"!

At Barnes & Noble it was tucked away near the D&D books. Impossible to find without floor staff help.

Grabbed one of the signed copies. I'm not sure when I'll get the chance to read it, but Sid's games were some of the first computer games I played, and definitely influenced me towards a career in computers. Much respect and appreciation to Sid. Thanks for the time well wasted :)

If it's truly a Sid Meier product, once you start, you'll keep doing one-more-page until it's suddenly sunrise :)

He recently did an hour-long interview/panel about it and his career for PAX Online, should anyone be interested in watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blah1hNDmdA

Book looks interesting but I'm curious... how do we know this is Sid Meiers's site and isn't just a site with a bunch of affiliate links on it?

Sid links to it on Twitter.

This reminds me of a comment a friend made over dinner last week about Civilization. Totally bought us each a copy, thanks for sharing this.

No plain ePub option?

Doesn't Barnes and Noble sell ePub versions? (They call them "Nook Books".)

Readable without using their app or so?

The site matches the style popular when Civ2 came out!

This is a great book! Just finished reading it.

does the book go into details about how the games were marketed and sold, and bootstrapped to market, on almost no budget?

Thanks for sharing, just ordered my copy !

interesting that nobody here talks about how Sid sold and marketed his games

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