YouSaid · the spoken record

Sid Meier

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59
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2021-07-31
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2021-07-31
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1
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  1. “Felt more like a fun project. Remember, he started out the section saying, I don't believe in viewing the past as some inevitable march to destiny. His whole thing is that I learned something. It led me to a next experience. I learned something else. I just kept building it over for extremely long career. And in the introduction, he talks about that. Every game that I made influenced the next game I made. So he sees his career as a series of not only interesting experiences, but interesting decisions and taking what he learned and applying it to the next project. I think it's a huge part that he's trying to convey to the reader in this book. So he says, at the time, it felt just like a fun project, but not any sort of life-changing decision. The North Left myself, I should have read to you earlier, a life-changing moment that doesn't feel that way at the time. The big moments rarely do, I think, and the dangers of retroactive mythologizing is what makes it, oh, this is so important. I underline this choice.”

    2021-07-31 · Founders · #195 Sid Meier (Computer game designer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “So they wind up going around, they're talking the whole night, they go to an arcade, and Bill's like, you know, I'm a pilot. They wind up playing a World War I flight simulator. The game is called Red Baron. So Bill goes first. He's like, look how good I am. And then Sid gets on and kind of kicks Bill's ass. So he says, this was my turn to play. Then it was my turn to play. How did you do that, Bill Sputtard, staring wide-eyed at a final score that was roughly double his own? I'm an actual pilot. How could you have possibly beaten me? I shrugged. While you were playing, I memorized the algorithms. You did what? I'm a programmer, I reminded him. The AI of the enemy planes is very predictable. I could design a better game in two weeks. Then do it, he insisted. If you can do it, I can sell it. And there's that one sentence completely summarizes their partnership in the very beginning of their business, which is going to be a wildly successful business. If you can do it, I can sell it. And so we began. At the time...”

    2021-07-31 · Founders · #195 Sid Meier (Computer game designer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Important sentence in the life of Sid Meyer. I really want to get into selling games, he said. This is the future. Remember, it's 1982. I told him that I actually just sold my first game to a small publisher named Acorn Software. Again, he was just doing this for fun, doing on the side, did not think of it as a career. Oh, suddenly Bill looked very keen. We should start a business.”

    2021-07-31 · Founders · #195 Sid Meier (Computer game designer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “My creativity on the world, or even thinking very hard about the future of the industry. At best, you could call it a state of ignorant bliss. There was no such thing as a retail computer game. Only free bits of code passed between hobbyists. So it would have been difficult for me to harbor secret dreams of becoming a professional computer game designer. There was no such thing at that point. And so he gets into, well, okay, well, how did I wind up becoming a game designer? So he's working for this company called General Instrument. They're having this company-wide, I guess, get together or seminar in Las Vegas. And so it's a pretty big company. He's sitting down. I think they're at a bar of some sort. And this guy he doesn't know, he vaguely kind of familiar to him, but they work for the same company, but they don't work in the same department. And this is going to be his future co-founder. And so the Noy left myself on this page is meeting the perfect co-founder. And I think that's another main lesson in the book because Bill, which is going to be his co-founder, is this super aggressive.”

    2021-07-31 · Founders · #195 Sid Meier (Computer game designer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “At the time he's working as a system analyst. And the really interesting part about this whole section is the fact that when he starts out designing games, he's just designing them for fun and then eventually realizes, hey, I would love to make a living at this. There was no such thing as a retail computer game when Sid started. So he's at the very, very beginning of this industry. And he says, I'm not a fan of viewing the past as some inevitable march to destiny. At the time, it didn't feel that way at all. So now he's writing this book as a man in his 60s looking back at the mindset he had when he was in his late 20s when he stumbled upon what it was going to be his life's work and his greatest passion. She says, I began my career as a systems analyst, installing networked cash register systems in retail stores, working with computers was satisfying, and I was grateful to have what amounted to a very good job for a recent graduate.”

    2021-07-31 · Founders · #195 Sid Meier (Computer game designer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “rather than the rule. If my gravestone reads Sid Meyer, creator of civilization, and nothing else? I'll be fine with that. It's a good game to be known for, and I'm proud of the positive impact it's had on so many players' lives. But it won't be the whole story. This is the whole story.”

    2021-07-31 · Founders · #195 Sid Meier (Computer game designer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Often asked in interviews when I got interested in games, usually with the implied hope that I'll identify a moment in my childhood when I suddenly knew I was a game designer But from my perspective, there was no turning point. I never made the conscious decision to embrace gaming because as far as I can tell, gaming already is the default, straightforward path. Not only does a span of billion hours of history, ancient Sumerians, were throwing dice as early as five thousand BC, and cruder games almost certainly go back as far as Neanderthals, but it's a deeply embedded human instinct. Everyone starts out life as a gamer, and I was no different. First I laughed at peekaboo, then I lined up toy soldiers, then I played board games, then I made fun computer programs. To me it seems like the most logical progression in the world. The question when did you start would be better framed as why didn't you stop? But even then, I won't have a good answer. I find it mind boggling that a life spent dedicated to gaming is the exception”

    2021-07-31 · Founders · #195 Sid Meier (Computer game designer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “What follows is a largely chronological examination of all the games I produced over my lifetime, from the wildly successful to the completely unheard of, whether they took a billion lines of code or less than a hundred. There is one thing every game in this book has in common. They are fundamentally comprised as all games are, of a series of interesting decisions. We are surrounded by decisions and therefore games in everything we do. Interesting might be subject to personal taste to some degree, but the gift of agency, that is the ability of players to exert free will over their surroundings rather than obediently following a narrative is what sets games apart from other media. Without a player's input, there can be no game.”

    2021-07-31 · Founders · #195 Sid Meier (Computer game designer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “and twelve editions, not to mention the expansion packs. To imagine the hours devoted to all the incarnations of civilization since nineteen ninety one is well incomprehensible. I wouldn't want to try. What's more, any fair assessment of civilization's success would have to include all the other games I've crafted along the way, including titles like Pirates and Railroad Tycoon, which were popular series in their own right, but also overlooked projects that started strong but fizzled early, because sometimes it takes a misstep to figure out where you should be headed. Each game taught me something. Each game was both painful and gratifying in its own way, and each game contributed to what came after it.”

    2021-07-31 · Founders · #195 Sid Meier (Computer game designer) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source