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April 20, 2007

| Cruel 2 B Kind >>

Civilization

There’s a great paean to the computer game ‘Civilization’ over in The Weekly Standard. Be sure to flip to the second page; there’s some fun material on Sid Meier, Civilization’s creator. In particular I liked this bit:

Meier cites the strategy board game Risk as one of his major influences. “Conquer the world. All those cool pieces. You felt like you were king. It gave you a lot of power.” What about the game Diplomacy? “You had to have friends to play Diplomacy so that kind of left me out.”

There’s also this:

“We don’t get into glorifying the violence and the gory stuff,” says Meier. “That’s just not the games that we like to do. I’ve raised a son and I know all the messages, all the influences, all the things that come into a young person’s life, and we’re responsible for a part of that. I mean, as game designers, we want people to play our games, so I think we need to take some responsibility for the content and the messages that come through our games.”
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Posted April 20, 2007 at 10:48 | Comments (2) | Permasnark
File under: Briefly Noted, Recommended

Comments

So instead we're teaching our children that it's good to sit in your underwear all night, playing Civilization and drinking Mountain Dew until the sun comes up?

But Peter, if I just play for like ten more turns, I'll be able to finish THE HANGING GARDENS!!

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