[HN Gopher] Sid Meier's Memoir: A Life in Computer Games
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Sid Meier's Memoir: A Life in Computer Games
Author : diggan
Score : 69 points
Date : 2023-12-25 15:28 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wwnorton.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wwnorton.com)
| WoodenChair wrote:
| I wrote a review of this here:
| http://www.observationalhazard.com/2021/06/book-review-sid-m...
|
| In short, I think it has some great tips if you're an amateur
| interested in game design.
| auselen wrote:
| It is from 2020/2021 though first time seeing it. I ordered one,
| thanks!
| colechristensen wrote:
| Likewise. Recommendation algorithms do a real bad job. Audible
| rotates between about 50 titles it thinks i should read and
| that's mostly it.
| samstave wrote:
| Ill get it with the audible free trial - then cancel.
| christkv wrote:
| I got it as a gift last year definitively a fun read
| considering how many hours I sunk in Pirates, Civilisation,
| Railroad Tycoon and Colonization.
| boo-ga-ga wrote:
| Not a new book. But I definitely recommend it, as well as The
| Making of Prince of Persia by Jordan Mechner. Interesting reads
| about fascinating times.
| leshokunin wrote:
| As a huge fan of Prince of Persia, I enjoyed the book, but it
| did sour me on Mechner's views at the time. He comes across as
| entitled and dismissive. He makes the game and expects
| millions, but really doesn't care about shipping or even the
| company he's working with. He's meant to make great movies and
| this game is just a stepping stone. He comes off as a scattered
| young adult. It's fine, and I appreciate Mechner for the
| honesty and vulnerability. It did change my view of this mad
| genius who coded everything and did rotoscoping and bit
| shifting and made a game through sheer will. Interesting read.
| acheron wrote:
| I read this when it came out. It's fun if you remember the
| Microprose games, or I suppose if you don't and want to know what
| it was like.
|
| Also Sid debunks the nuclear Gandhi thing once and for all.
| frankfrank13 wrote:
| Really enjoyed this book! He's a little braggy, but I guess
| deserves to be. I think about this philosophy a lot (quote from
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/10/the-road-to-civilizat...):
|
| > Meier said Firaxis has adopted a "rule of thirds" for new
| Civilization entries: "one-third traditional gameplay, one-third
| is improved from the last version, and one-third is brand new."
| But the team also has to be careful with everything they add.
| "We're now at the point where for every new feature we put in we
| have to take something out, because it's very easy to overwhelm
| the player with complexity or detail or things like that."
| acheron wrote:
| I feel like he honestly tries to be humble about everything,
| but with everything he's done it's awfully difficult.
|
| One thing about the book, it's very much "a life in computer
| games" as the title says, and not a full autobiography. Events
| outside of the games don't come up much. I think he meets his
| wife and gets married within the space of a paragraph.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Events outside of the games don 't come up much_
|
| This is the way like my biogrpahies because, let's face it,
| there's no reason to think there's anything interesting about
| his personal life.
| acheron wrote:
| Ha, and I'm sure that's how he thought of it too.
| samstave wrote:
| I am currently attempting to build in Farthest Frontier early
| access - and My village starves to death quite quickly.
|
| The complexity granularity of control resources (down to
| managing soil quality for fields yield) management appears to
| be deep in this game, but I cant live long enough to find out
| yet.
|
| Sid deserves one of the top seats in the Video Game Hall of
| Fame. Carmack, Sid, Garriott, and (press) F for others.
|
| Video games built my career, and then in my career I helped
| several of these studios build out so they could build more!
|
| Video games are the fabric of modern computing's woven tapestry
| history. (A tapestry by the old wire weavers would be amazing)
| Animats wrote:
| > My village starves to death quite quickly.
|
| You need two screens. One for the game, and one for the
| spreadsheet.
| samstave wrote:
| haha.
|
| When "Masters of Orion" came out in the early 90s - and
| advanced... I had gotten the latest version of the time and
| lost interest quickly - and a friend asked why I didnt like
| it - and i replied " _I don 't like playing a spreadsheet_"
|
| So there was an article back a few years ago, there was an
| article about a guy who lived in the mission in SF and he
| was basically the accountant to a guild on EVE and he did
| NOT play the game - he made 100K $USD Real IRL money being
| paid to manage the finances of some huge Eve guild's in
| game assets....
|
| He said all he does all day is build spread sheets. Wait
| until someone make the GPT assistant or agents for these
| games.
|
| Jarvis and "Computer" will be real soon for in game massive
| fleet management.
|
| --
|
| Wait until we connect a game to IRL infra - and you can
| design an workflow with a factorio-like interface powered
| by a GPT mortar to managing the actual execution and api
| connects.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| As to your last comment. Factory design, at the cutting
| edge, still seem very complex, with surprisingly many
| parameters. The designs I have been involved with (not
| that many) have a depth of complexity at the minute
| detail, that something like Factorio does not reflect.
| Everything is assumed to be interchangeable parts, but
| IRL they aren't and often a lot of effort has to be spent
| just sourcing the right components, which then aren't
| available and you get alternate components with slightly
| different specs. Fun!
| Animats wrote:
| > accountant to a guild on EVE
|
| Some of those guilds are big operations. At one time, a
| World of Warcraft guild was responsible for OpenSSL
| maintenance.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| Alpha Centauri was a game that defined my childhood, along with
| Civilization 1.
| ACS_Solver wrote:
| Should be noted that Alpha Centauri was a game from Brian
| Reynolds, who is a totally brilliant strategy designer.
| ofrzeta wrote:
| Also none of the Civs after 1 were developed by Sid Meier.
| Not to take anything away from him. I enjoyed the Memoir as
| well.
| ACS_Solver wrote:
| Sid's a very interesting game designer, he's phenomenal at
| making fun games - in any genre - but his games are
| fundamentally simple ones. If you take Civ 2-4, or SMAC,
| the strategic depth largely comes from the likes of Brian
| Reynolds and Soren Johnson. The mechanics they've designed
| are more complex than what Sid does, but Sid started it
| with his genius intuition for what makes a game fun.
|
| For those so inclined, CivRev, the game that was basically
| "civ on consoles" is an actual Sid Meier and an interesting
| window into how he would have continued the series (the
| latest Designer Notes podcast goes into some length on
| this). CivRev is simpler, faster paced and dispenses with
| most of the detail of the PC games, but can be fun, even if
| not deep.
| svec wrote:
| If you like his games, or that book, check out this great
| interview with Sid Meier as part of the Designer Notes podcast:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/designer-notes-23-sid-...
|
| It's 4 episodes long (episodes 23-26). It's an overview of Sid's
| career, and so it's very similar to his autobiography, but I
| enjoyed listening to Sid talk about it in a different way than I
| enjoyed reading the book.
| acheron wrote:
| Seconded. There are also great interviews with Bruce Shelley
| and Bryan Reynolds there. The most recent episode with Jake
| Solomon involves a lot of Firaxis stories as well.
| christkv wrote:
| Thanks for the podcast suggestion. I look forward to listening
| to the interviews. Looks like there are quite some other
| interesting interviews there as well.
| leshokunin wrote:
| It's a great read. Sid is one of the all time best. In the end,
| after all those years, he summarizes his philosophy as: find the
| fun.
|
| He likens it to the opposite of "I picture the statue and removed
| the bits that didn't look like it". He has no idea, maybe a gut
| feeling. Playtesting is the only way. He goes in great detail
| describing a game like civ with dinosaurs that sounds fun on
| paper, but he was never able to make it fun.
|
| Wonderful insights.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Amazing C64 programmer and game designer - Pirates!, Railroad
| Tycoon, Gunship and the odd Red Storm Rising.
|
| I tuned out of sims by the time F19 Stealth Fighter came around.
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