Sid Meier's Memoir!
Ratings12
Average rating4
15
Ratings12
Average rating4
The life and career of the legendary developer celebrated as the “godfather of computer gaming,” and creator of Civilization. Over his four-decade career, Sid Meier has produced some of the world’s most popular video games, including Sid Meier’s Civilization, which has sold more than 51 million units worldwide and accumulated more than one billion hours of play. Sid Meier’s Memoir! is the story of an obsessive young computer enthusiast who helped launch a multibillion-dollar industry. Writing with warmth and ironic humor, Meier describes the genesis of his influential studio, MicroProse, founded in 1982 after a trip to a Las Vegas arcade, and recounts the development of landmark games, from vintage classics like Pirates! and Railroad Tycoon, to Civilization and beyond. Articulating his philosophy that a video game should be “a series of interesting decisions,” Meier also shares his perspective on the history of the industry, the psychology of gamers, and fascinating insights into the creative process, including his rules of good game design.
Reviews with the most likes.
Sid Meier is a genius. Pirates! remains a masterpiece and I've lost chunks of my life to his strategy games and even his flight sims. All that being said, Meier's Memoir is a bit like the common of experience of Civ:
- enthralling early game with nostalgia inducing looks at the other side of the games that shaped your youth and the industry.
- bit of lost momentum in the middle where you start wondering if Meier will expand more on conflict in his career given what you know about things coming to a head at Microprose, etc. (he doesn't)
- a slog of an endgame where you realize even his attempt at answering critiques of the genre he defined (the whig history baked into Civ) is completely unsatisfying.
Sid Meier's games remain great. His perspective on his career and any meaningful conflict in his field is surprisingly shallow. For someone who acknowledges his own myth as being built around creating interesting decisions, his retrospective doesn't touch on any issue being within his control. Reflections on momentous decisions like splitting with Bill Stealey or consideration of the effects of “the crunch” on developers' lives just float by like a cloud on the Spanish Main. This book is just such a disturbingly uncritical look at Meier's “Greatest Hits” that you're left wondering why a mind capable of such great and creative analysis couldn't apply the same scrutiny to his own career?
Thoroughly enjoyable memoir from a man responsible for a lot of games I've loved. I didn't expect to be so fascinated by all his commentary about the nature of gaming and how games have progressed. Definitely recommended for anybody who loves gaming, especially computer games.
