Civilization Chronicles Interview with Bruce Shelley

Thunderfall

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About a month ago we posted an interview with Brian Reynolds which was conducted by journalist Troy Goodfellow. Today we received another interview from 2K Games, this time with Bruce Shelley, the assistant designer on the original Civilization. The interview includes 5 questions and 11 anecdotes related to the making of the original Civilization. Here is a quote:

No game before Civ had that kind of scale. How important is the "epicness" in the appeal of Civ?

I have remarked before that being assigned to work with Sid as his assistant designer was like going to a game design university. I believe one of his principles of game development is to choose a big topic, perhaps an epic topic. I don’t know if he came up with that before or after making Civilization. I don’t believe that big and epic are necessary conditions for success, but they can be very helpful, especially for games based on history. The rise of civilization covers a lot of material and from that it was fairly easy to pull out parts with which to build a game. The narrower the topic, the less there is to borrow. Big epic topics generally come with a story that can be easily turned into a simple vision. Great games put the player in the position of the hero and guiding a civilization from the Stone Age to the Space Age was big, interesting, and heroic.
>> Read the full interview!
 
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