GDC Wrapup of Sid Meier's Keynote

This past Friday, Sid Meier gave the keynote address at the weeklong Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. His speech, entitled "The Psychology of Game Design (Everything You Know Is Wrong)", offered some insight into his personal philosophy in creating popular and influential video games. Here is some media coverage of the address:

From Gamasutra:

From VentureBeat:

Ginger_Ale said:

I never get letters from players who say, I won too much in your game."

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I think he is just asking for TheMeInTeam to start sending a letter every day.

Well - lets hope he will not apply his philosophy to the CIV V. It will be sad to see CIV reVolution 2 insted of continuation of classic civ series.

Ginger_Ale said:

Meier also said, "Any kind of randomness needs to be treated with a lot of care. Whenever something random happens to the player, paranoia sets in. ... The player feels like the computer rolled that random number just to be difficult." Small doses of randomness, however can be helpful -- just make sure that it seems fair to the player so he doesn't feel cheated.

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I quite agree with this, so it seems odd that of all strategy games Civ has always had a combat system with a high degree of randomness. As Sid says, small doses of randomness can be nice, even necessary, but all the combat systems of Civ have always involved chance too much. Hopefully Civ 5 will correct this.

Mr. Meier, please explain Railroads.

Sincerely, a longtime, loyal fan.

EDIT: What I mean by the above is "I felt like an observer in railroads, not an active participant."

After watching this all the way through I think there are two big issues that I have with it.

First: Mr. Meier says a lot of things as if they are absolute facts when they are actually opinions. Yes gamers often share psychological responses or similar states of mind but I think his theoretical framework of player psychology and game design isn't as broadly applicable as he seems to think. I'm sure he has spoken with many, many players in his time but he hasn't spoken to all of them and there are subtle but important differences of opinion about what makes the perfect game.

Second: Mr. Meier seems to be listening to players a little too much. "I lost and I don't think that's fair" is the 'me' generation's way of saying please hand me my win or I will cry loudly right here in the store! The big thing that defined games as an artistic / experience medium in the past was the level of complexity (greater than that of say, a movie where the good guy wins) and the interactivity and therefore creation of consequences for player actions. Sometimes the player makes a bad choice and they need to lose when that happens. I think selling out on this point is more profit driven than attempt to further the greater cause of good game design. World of Warcraft is making a similar mistake right now. As they make the game easier and easier by orders of magnitude, there is less incentive to play if you have even a passing familiarity with the game. Nothing feels worth it after changes like that. This feeling of "why bother?" sets in.

The vast majority of people are terrible at everything, including games. That's okay. No judgments. Play at a lower difficulty. What isn't okay is that they want to buy success and apparently designer's like Mr. Meier want to sell it to them. (Just for the record, I consider myself a below average Civ player and I'm okay with that. If you're bad, that's what noble difficulty is for).

In summary, I have enjoyed the Civilization games for years and years now and I think Mr. Meier has done a LOT for the gaming world. But that world is a complex one and there's more than one song to sing, more than one picture to paint. Unfortunately every game seems to drift further and further toward mediocrity under the banner of "accessibility" (mass market appeal) and I’m afraid V might follow too closely in Revolution’s footsteps.

Civilization is a niche game for a niche market. It's not going to translate well into something else. Not everyone likes their Civ as crammed full as I do, but a lot of us can’t envision it any other way. Please keep that in mind.

These things that I have said here are the same as what Mr. Meier said during his keynote. They are opinions from a single perspective. I didn't design the game that defined the 4x genre, but I sure did play it a LOT so I think I'm similarly qualified to express my feelings on the matter.

Here's to Sid Meier and the Civilization series. I eagerly await Civ V and all the new discoveries and hours of joy it will surely bring. Release day buy for me for sure.

Please, please, please Mr. Meier, don't allow your great franchise to sink too deeply into simplicity or mediocrity. The designer's vision and intelligence make the game world and play experience awesome just as an author's do in the world of a great novel. Players may participate and even help to create, but in the end they are only visitors. The nebulous knee-jerk reactions and psychological pathology of game players are obstacles to be overcome, not guideposts to the creation of a genuine experience.

Wait, so is THIS why the AI in Civ has always been so bad?
Honestly I thought Revolution was far too easy. It's fun the first two games, but after that it's like being spoon-fed.

And yes, I do stop to scratch my head and wonder what's going on when a randomly placed goody-hut gives me three technologies immediately.

I really don't like the way this is going... It seems they're trying to please someone else than the fans. We don't want easy!!

Auncien said:

Mr. Meier, please explain Railroads.

Sincerely, a longtime, loyal fan.

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What did u mean? I liked SM Railroads a lot. It was better than the classical Railroad Tycoon at least.

Linoran said:

I really don't like the way this is going... It seems they're trying to please someone else than the fans. We don't want easy!!

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I agree SM seems to care about wrong guys' ideas.

We know that the big portion of civ gamers are (like other gamers) are the ones who care more about superficial features like gfx etc; let'S call these "wrong guys". only long time fans like this forum's posters care about game depth and overall quality. so maybe SM has been getting letters mostly from the wrong guys which motivates him in the wrong way.
But forum sites are for this anyway; uniting the guys caring about game depth and quality, pushing game developers, reminding game developers not to sacrifice game qualities.

OTOH, I am more or less satisfied about what I heard of civ5 until now. I still want to believe SM won't sacrifice game quality.

Afforess said:

I think he is just asking for TheMeInTeam to start sending a letter every day.

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xDDDD


I'm really hoping they don't go the civ revolution route for civ5. Looks a lot like it from several quotes.

Intersting that you guys share the same concern as me. Everything makes me thinking the CIV V is to be sold to the widest possible spectrum of players - even to these ones not really into strategy games. I've seen some CIV revolution hands on and will never wase neither money nor time playing this nobrainer - this is just sort of arcade game imo - you can play this using joystick !!!! - What about WII version ?? So prepare for a lot DX11 hype + nice looking yet cheesy graphics. BTW - I've never seen some of CIV IV animations even after spending years playing it - mostly multiplayer. Also seeing some of CIV V screenshots first thing I'll do will be to switch off battle animations + enable single unit graphics.

Only hope the game will be highly configurable as to certain extent the CIV IV is. That it will let you to choose wether you want to be gratified with 3 free tech for taking a hut or one tech the most in 10 attempts. Should allow you to switch off all the cheat prone options as tech trading etc too.

At the end of the day I don't mind how poor and chalangeless will be the single player. Hope the game will sort out all CIV IV multiplayer problems and will be a good base to play against human players. That's where the fun begins.

Sid Meier is a smart guy, no wonder Civ series have been so good and successful.

SM is smart, noone argues that. but for what he will use his smart mind is the issue. we expect a good civ5 game from him.
if he wants to be very rich, he can use his mind in making the game a best-seller.
or if he wants to remain an example of quality (and real creativity) in games, he can use his mind in that way and continue as he did until today.
that's the case.

it is the game's depth and fans loyality which had brought it today. you need very solid positive sides to make a 5th series of a saga (plus smac etc.)

see below comparisons and you will understand what i mean.
* civ saga has many more features and dynamics than real time strategy games.
* civ saga requires micromanagement, only guys above an IQ level likes it.
* RTS games are more famous and popular. because everybody can play it, everybody can like it.
* everybody has heard "age of empires" but most gamers never even heard the civ game.
* RTS games don't have loyal fans, civ saga has.
* addiction to RTS games passes fastly while civ games can be played many years.
* RTS is like pop&rap while civ saga is like rock,jazz,blues,classical music

etc etc

so we like the civ saga as it is and want it to remain special.

camarilla said:

* civ saga requires micromanagement, only guys above an IQ level likes it.
* RTS games don't have loyal fans, civ saga has.
* addiction to RTS games passes fastly while civ games can be played many years.
* RTS is like pop&rap while civ saga is like rock,jazz,blues,classical music
etc etc

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The first three of these claims are obviously not true:
- in fact micro is what RTS is all about.
- last time I heard starcraft was the national sport of Korea, and it's over 12 years old.

And it's funny that you included rock in your second group. There really isn't much of distinction between rock as such and pop, I'd say.

But apart from that, yeah, obviously, we don't want our game to become just another popular series.

camarilla said:

SM
* civ saga requires micromanagement, only guys above an IQ level likes it.
.

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Some of your previous points have been adressed.

As for this one ...... well...... i'm not sure where to begin, consider myself as relatively smart, in fact the last IQ test I took had me above average (i'm no genius though unfortunately). Yet I hate micro to me the fun part is deciding what to do with the empire, where to go tech wise who to ally with who to attack and plan the attack.

I never ever pre-chop any forests, never pre build a fort in order to have it ready when my oil well is bombarded. I let the city advisor assign tiles to my citizens (I visit only after a few pops growth).

That MUST mean I am one dumb .

Edit : The happy faces replaced the 4 letter word I had there, but that'S allright, it's probably better that way

I don't get why you guys are worrying. Sid Meier isn't in charge of Civ5, so what he says here will have little effect on the game. If Jon Shafer came out and said the same thing, then I would worry.

I totally agree with everything said in the articles. The player does ultimately have to win to enjoy the game. I would say that means that on the default difficulty level, most people should win without save scumming. There's nothing wrong with that in my opinion.

Games can be too easy, but I think people only complain about that under certain conditions. For a good recent example, Napoleon Total War has a problem with it's battle AI. Basically you can often start a battle and win without giving any player input. I would argue though, that the failure here is not that the game is too easy, but rather a failure to suspend disbelief.

camarilla said:

* everybody has heard "age of empires" but most gamers never even heard the civ game.

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Someone who's never heard about civ is sure not a gamer .

Are there video streams of GCD speakers anywhere??

The GCD video of Sid Meier's keynote speech is here.

http://gdc.gamespot.com/video/6253563/

i don't want to go out of topic but i didn't understand why what i listed was questioned. i wanted to highlight civ saga's better sides and qualities against RTS and other more popular game types.

The_J said:

Someone who's never heard about civ is sure not a gamer .

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in turkey, it is just about education level, isn't it in germany? high school graduated gamers probably never heard of civ and they play mostly RTS/FPS while maybe 1 quarter of college graduated gamers have heard of CIV saga. and half of that only plays it.

HypnosTene said:

The first three of these claims are obviously not true:
- in fact micro is what RTS is all about.
- last time I heard starcraft was the national sport of Korea, and it's over 12 years old.

And it's funny that you included rock in your second group. There really isn't much of distinction between rock as such and pop, I'd say.

But apart from that, yeah, obviously, we don't want our game to become just another popular series.

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don't understand why you argue, what i listed was very obvious. RTS games, FPS games target all gamers while turn based strategy games, RPG games only target more intelectual guys. just look at the fan profile you will see.
i think the comparison of rock/pop was also very obvious. i like some pop stars but i am a rocker
pop rock comparison was both about popularity and permanence; pop songs are more popular but forgotten suddenly.