Classic Game Postmortem: Sid Meier's Civilization
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN recommends it as a great account of how Civilization was made and as a source on perceived fairness in game design.
What it is
A 2017 GDC postmortem in which Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley tell how Civilization came together from board game design and sim game experience. They cover its development history and design decisions, including fairness and luck.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 5 different months, 2017 to 2021.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec simonh · 2020-10 · on “Sid Meier's Memoir”
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] [this video] [1] [LINK]
Strong rec simonh · 2021-09 · on “Sid Meier and the meaning of ‘Civilization’”
Check out this great GDC talk by Sid and Bruce on the history of the development of the game. [this video] They mention Empire as an influence, and there's a really nice modern implementation of Empire available for Windows and iOS. [LINK] [LINK]
Recommends eriknstr · 2017-07 · on “Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy”
> I made a chatbot that rolled dice, and it was constantly criticized for being "broken" because four 3's would come up in a row. > These accusations would come up even though they (all being computer science majors) know it's possible (although unlikely) for these events to happen. They just don't trust the black box. This reminds me of a talk [1] given at Game Developer's Conference (GDC) about the game Civilization, in which the Sid Meyer -- creator of said game -- spent a bit of the time talking about the difference between fairness and perceived fairness. The talk is only an hour long and worth watching. [1]: [this video]
Recommends cpeterso · 2018-03 · on “The Game of Everything, Part 1: Making Civilization”
Here are videos of two GDC 2017 talks about Civilization that I enjoyed: Classic Game Postmortem: Sid Meier's Civilization (with Civilization creators Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley): [this video] Absolutely No Pressure: Continuing a Successful Game Series with Civilization VI (with Civilization VI lead designer Ed Beach): [LINK]
Recommends codetrotter · 2019-03 · on “How Designers Engineer Luck Into Video Games (2017)”
> The anecdote about Sid Meier hard-coding a guaranteed "win on the third attempt" for a battle with a 1/3 victory probability was very interesting. You might enjoy these videos as well: [this video] [LINK]