Transcription
So, allegedly, there's a bug in my code where Gandhi is set up to have a very low aggressiveness rating. Something happens in the game to reduce that a little bit; it wraps around to become the largest integer number, making him very aggressive and leading to a nuclear confrontation. It's possible I put a bug in there, but it wasn't intentional.
Hi, I'm Sid Meier, the creator of Civilization. This is how we built a game that makes you want to take just one more turn. Microprose actually started as a flight simulator company. After a while, I felt we had exhausted that genre and wanted to try new things, so we did. We made Pirates, Covert Action, Railroad Tycoon, and then eventually, Civilization.
Civilization evolved from a couple of previous projects, primarily Railroad Tycoon. It was our first so-called god game—a game more about building than blowing things up. Bruce Shelley and I were on a train to New York for some event, and we said, "That was fun; what should we do next?" It was like, "What's bigger? What's more epic? What's cooler than railroads? How about the story of all civilization?"
Civilization is a game that lets you experience 6,000 years of history, starting small with your first city. You control a civilization, explore the world, interact with other leaders, develop technology to expand your options, and engage in military operations. It sounds complicated, but everything is done understandably. It starts small and adds elements as the game progresses, keeping you in control.
The idea for a tech tree, unique and original to Civilization, came from a book with a timeline of history. It laid out political advancements, social policies, and military developments. I went through that book with my yellow marker, thinking, "Bronze working is here, iron working, gunpowder…" That almost became the template for the tech tree. It felt like an easy way to show how things are connected, giving players insight into the future and goals to look forward to. Two steps down the tech tree, I can get to this—it was something to hang the game's structure on; something simple that would grow and grow.
Every game is different; every game is your unique story about guiding your civilization from antiquity into the Space Age. We have this phrase, "the valley of despair," that every project seems to go through. Halfway through, you think, "This game is not fun; nobody likes it; I can't figure out how to make this work; nobody likes me; this is terrible." Civ went through that in the transition between the real-time and turn-based versions.
Our first approach to the grand topic of civilization was inspired by SimCity—the idea of zoning parts of your map to build a new city. Creating a zone for farmers, watching everything happen in real-time. You're ready to zone this; maybe you want to zone this area for mining. In the first prototypes, you did these things and sat back. It was okay, but it didn't engage you enough. So we put that prototype away for a while and completed Covert Action, which I'd also started and put away. Bill's, our president, said, "You need to finish that Covert Action game," which was probably a good thing. That took us away from the real-time, zone-based version of Civilization.
The conceit behind Covert Action was creating an interactive story—a story that would turn out differently each time, controlled by the player. Interactive literature, an interactive spy story. What we derived from Covert Action was what we call the "Covert Action Rule." A failing was that the action sequences were intense and immersive enough that you forgot the plot by the time you finished them—what was going to happen, what you were trying to prevent. It was almost like two good games in one package, conflicting with each other.
It's interesting to think what would have happened if Civ had never become turn-based. Age of Empires is a good example. At the time, we couldn't have that many units running around on the screen; we didn't have the technology. Had we had that technology, maybe we would have gone in that direction. But it's interesting to compare Age of Empires with Civilization. Age of Empires focuses on a smaller area; individual decisions are more minute. To keep complexity under control, it focuses on a shorter period and a smaller area of the map. Those are smart decisions. There's a certain amount of complexity a player can enjoy before it becomes work. A real-time version of Civ covering the expanse of the turn-based game would be overwhelming.
The turning point for Civ was switching from real-time to turn-based. That only happened because I finished another game, put the real-time version on the shelf, came back to it with fresh eyes, and had the idea of making it turn-based, giving a lot of things to do and control over individual units. That made the difference. Playing Empire, which had the characteristics of unveiling and exploring a map and moving individual units, triggered that. Those "aha" moments of, "Enemy units shown up; they're over there; I see how this is going to work"—the immersion of moving individual units was missing from our original prototype. We slammed it in, and magic started to happen.
Civilization is now known for the "one more turn" phenomenon. I'd love to say we knew that on day one, but we didn't realize it until the game was out and we got feedback. We got letters like, "I couldn't stop playing; it was 3 a.m." We had to figure out what was going on. It was the game giving you short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals. You might complete a short-term goal, but another pops up, and you're still working on a medium-term goal. You never completed everything; you're always looking forward—when I get that new technology, I can do this; when I explore that new continent, this will happen. You're anticipating what's happening; you're playing into the future, and that future is just one more turn ahead. We created a phenomenon we didn't anticipate but are now proud to claim.
My advice if you're in the valley of despair is to try something new and different. We have another rule: the "double it or cut it in half" rule. If you're going to make a change, make it dramatic. If a number's wrong, don't add 10% or take away 3%; double it or cut it in half. If you try a lot of dramatic changes, something will stick, show you a new direction, and help you climb out of the valley of despair.
When the 25th anniversary of Civilization rolled around, I realized we had some original computers in our basement. I thought it would be fun to resurrect them. There were two Compaq Deskpro 386 computers I'd saved. We brought them in and tried to fire them up. One exploded when we plugged it in; dust around the power supply caught fire, and the fan blew flames out the back. We shut that one down, but we were able to fire up the other. The battery had died, and we couldn't boot it without power. We finally managed to do that with a floppy disk, but now we can't turn the machine off because we won't be able to turn it back on again. It's been running for over a year. This is the computer the majority of Civ was done on, running the fabulous DOS operating system. I'm going into the directory called "civilized" and running this early version of the game. Here are the options; this is where it starts—start a new game, Earth. This is the beginning of Civilization. We'll start a new game.
An early version of our intro sequence. We did this to make the game feel epic. These are temporary graphics I did with DeBaak; we later hired a real artist to replace them. To me, this is the classic Civilization visual: that first settler, the tiny bit of the world revealed, and the rest to explore. Basically, anything can happen from this point on. Where do you place your city? What's going to happen next? It's all ready to unfold in the epic saga of Civilization.