Sid Meir's Memoir - Micro Review

Sid Meir’s name is well known to most gamers mostly because his well known titles all start with the words, Sid Meir. It is a publicity device used by only a few other titans of the video game development scene, such as Tom Clancy and American McGee.

It would be natural to assume that such a person would be insanely egotistical, but Mr. Meir’s 300 page memoir tediously depicts himself as a decent, peaceful and thoughtful person who would like nothing more than to be left alone to make video games and spend time with his family and friends.

Like all of the publicity he has ever done, putting his name on his games was not his idea, but he was smart enough to recognize that those selling his games knew more about marketing than he did.

The book spends a lot of time on his early life, and while this would be useful to a psychologist trying to help him, it really is not that interesting or revelatory to his design influences. The tagline of the book, “by the creator of Civilization!” indicates that most readers will come to the book to learn more about the games he has made rather than what made Sid Meir. Those readers will come way disappointed, but there are still enough revelations in the book to make it worthy of a read to those who are dedicated scholars of video game culture.

This photo was also not his idea.

My main takeaway was that every single great game Sid Meir made was influenced entirely by a pre-existing board or video game (or one of his co-developers previous work on a similar concept). This was always mentioned every several tens of pages into the descriptions of the game as a small matter not worth focusing on (but he did at least mention those facts).

Combining this along with the omission of his his co-writer—Jennifer Noonan’s name does not make the front cover—does start to reveal perhaps a more egotistic side of Mr. Meir’s personality that he has not shown to the public, but then again, perhaps I’ve been lulled by the book into playing the role of an armchair therapist.

Sid Meir’s Memoir is required reading for enthusiasts of Microprose, Firaxis or video game generalists but don’t expect a compelling read for this full-price and professionally published book.

• Phil Fogg

Game Under Podcast 135

Tom and Phil review Ken Williams' book about Sierra Online, the beta of Sky: Season of Assembly, Super Hot, I Dream of You and Ice Cream and also talk about Phil's Trivia Quiz.

Thanks for Listening

Ken Williams Book About Sierra Online - Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings

Ken Williams, the founder and CEO of Sierra Online is clearly an intelligent person with strong opinions or he and his wife Roberta would never have been able to turn Sierra Online into the dominant PC game developer and publisher of the 20th century.  With hit series as diverse as King’s Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest, Phantasmagoria and Leisure Suit Larry as well as leading the charge for sound cards, Sierra Online was powerhouse of creativity and commercial success.

It’s clear, however, from Ken Williams’ 408-page self-published book, that he has not been told “no” very often in his life, and if he has, he has not listened. This is a great and necessary trait if you are going to lead an industry for 20 years, not so much if you are writing a book.  This is Williams’ only book on the subject of his much-loved company, one that met a vicious and unnecessary demise after a Wall Street takeover, and as such it is an important document of what happened. 

Unlike other self-published autobiographies the book does not get bogged down in unimportant details that are only of interest to the writer, but the book does fall down where the author has chosen to intersperse chapters on non sequitur topics ranging from management philosophy to how programming code should be arranged. While a few of these are interesting, others have an extremely targeted audience, or are just so different in tone that it takes away from the rest of the book.

The only other negative, (besides the odd and sporadic use of clip-art) is that the last 15% of the book is made up of lists of games and other reference material. This is helpful to someone who does not have access to Wikipedia, but otherwise gives the reader the impression that the book is going to be much longer in substance than it is.

Which is a shame because the book, when on-topic, provides Williams’ compelling and unique view on his company, his professional life with Roberta and the other developers and artists at Sierra Online. It is certainly worth a read if you enjoyed PC gaming through the 80’s and 90’s, work in business management or are younger and want to research this period of game development.

• Phil Fogg

Ready Player Two

The sequel to Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, predictably named Ready Player Two, came as a surprise to me as I had not received any advance notice of it’s arrival. The sequel picks up right from the end of the first book with the same protagonist, Wade Watts.  In contrast to the underdog role he played in the first book, he is now all powerful as he takes on a challenge to his personal utopia (while the earth’s population is still suffering through poverty and environmental collapse -- despite the distractions his virtual reality devices provide).

The adolescent fiction, Ready Player One, was warmly received by the gaming community which then turned on the book once it became popular outside of the hobby. It is most routinely criticized for a strong reliance on making references to popular culture (or at least popular culture as seen through the eyes of someone with the same experiences as Ernest Cline). 

Cline does have a knack for engaging the reader’s interest and for the first third of the book it’s a real page-turner which is hard to put down. Once the play is revealed however the pace drops considerably. The format of the first book is repeated by once again relying on a “fetch quest” for a plot.

The book then paints a giant target on it’s back for it’s critics by concentrating the popular culture references  to a single topic for entire chapters, such as Lord of the Rings or the musical performer Prince.  If you have no interest or knowledge of the reference material, entire chapters become incomprehensible laundry lists of meaningless winks and nods.  Reading the Lord of the Rings chapter I recalled a lady who came to church and would turn every conversation (within seconds) into long soliloquies about genealogies from the bible (her name was Jean).

Ready Player One begat Ready Player Two begat a page-turning adolescent reading experience that I could have done without. Wait for the movie.

• Phil Fogg

Game Under Podcast 134

Tom and Phil discuss Sony PSVR 2, Rocket League Season 2, Donut County, Super Hot, Game Dev Story, Magic the Gathering, The Gardens Between, Stubbs the Zombie and plenty more.

Thanks for listening.

Game Under Podcast 133

Tom and Phil discuss Cyber Punk 2077, Space Court, The Medium, Coffee Talk and Mindscanners. Phil also talks about his PC upgrade.

Listen Here.

Tom Towers Read 425 Books in 2020, Vol 2

Even the offices of the future are full of literature!

In the second instalment there is, unfortunately, no colourful language; though Tom does, candidly, detail the sexual fantasies that 300 inspired in him, including precisely what he’d like to do with Frank Miller’s dashing fedora.

Everyone here at the Game Under podcast hope he was joking—but who can tell; it might be best to keep your hat firmly on your head if you ever meet him in person: it’s much safer.

If you dare, you may read all about the dangerous sort of degeneracy the best and the worst things he read last year inspired in him, just click here.

Even if you don’t read any of it, it’s well worth taking a look some of the beautiful imagery from Jung’s illuminated manuscript. Other than post-modernism being virtually indistinguishable from new nationalism, nothing is a more comical refutation of Spengler than the fact that Jung, a psychologist, is unquestionably the West’s greatest prophet since Blake and Dickinson.

What kind of a soulless hack is obsessed, spiritually, with fucking Goethe (let alone Nietzsche ffs), anyway? I suppose it’s better than believing Shakespeare was the inventor of the modern psyche.

But all of this is irrelevant, as it’s not like Tom read The Decline of the West last year!

Maybe it’ll feature next year, when he’s read 500 books!

Tom Towers Read 425 Books in 2020, Vol 1

In the future, the population will be so literate that clubs will have literature available in VIP booths .

What a fucking nerd.

In volume 1, he reviews two perennially relevant American books: Gone With the Wind and The Better Angels of Our Nature, as well as listing without commentary everything in the middle-ground worth noting: the good, the disappointing, and the pleasantly surprising.

In volume 2, he will cover the best and the worst!

Check vol. 1 out here, but be forewarned: the Gone With the Wind Review gleefully uses the colourful language of the novel itself, and Mein Kampf is listed under “disappointments”.

Make of that what you will!

PC + CP

Coffee Talk on PC. Not at all ripping off Midnight Diner.

My inimitable co-host Tom Towers tricked me into upgrading my PC by laying out the temptation of a new gaming experience in the form of VR. The promise of virtual reality, a pledge bestowed by our forebears in the late 1970’s, has arrived, and all you need is an Oculus Quest 2.

Oh and a new CPU. Oh and a new GPU. Oh and A THOUSAND YEARS WORTH OF PAIN AND SUFFERING TO GET THOSE TWO COMPONENTS WORKING ON YOUR ANTIQUATED PC.

But more of that in our next podcast.

In the interim I’ve been playing games that in no way take advantage of the new GPU, like Coffee Talk (above) and 11-11 a game from Aardman, the company behind the 4 frames per second plasticine hits Wallace and Grommit and Shawn the Sheep.

20 years after a Dog’s Life, in 11-11 you can finally “chase the cat” bow-wow-wow-yippee-oh-eye-yah.

But more of that in our next podcast.

- Phil Fogg.

One of the rare occasions where V is wear anything clothes. This is Cyberpunk, after all; a genre which separates itself from Sci-Fi only in that its computer viruses are transmitted both via wi-fi and the male-to-female (or any combination of sexes) ethernet interface, and that its hard element are also its core.

Maybe some impressions of Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt RED’s photography simulator, as well.

And, for the record, all you need to play VR games on the Quest 2 is the Quest 2…and a Facebook account.

- Tom Towers.

Sky: Children of Light's Season of Dreams Beta Impressions

The new Christmas table and the reindeer horns are pretty snazzy, too!

The Season of Dreams takes place in a ski village, complete with ski-lift airboats. The titular dreams are those of a young skater, and the season’s narrative follows her as she is mentored by several spirits in order to prepare her for a performance in the Valley of Triumph’s coliseum. Unlike the narratives in previous seasons, there is no ambiguity or obscurity in the spirits’ memories, but reliving them is a joy; as learning their emotes and watching them teach the young skater to skate has the player learning some fancy new skating moves themselves and the simplicity of the story makes for a more immediately affecting story; albeit one that is a little less lyrical than previous seasons’.

The village itself, while a little awkward to navigate before all the ski-lifts have been activated, is beautiful; the slopes are a joy to skate down, particularly while reliving the memories of the young skier learning her craft, and the villages’ buildings are reminiscent of Tibetan architecture (think less extravagant temples and more modest houses), and the costumes are as colourful as Peruvian aguayo—with dope hats to complement them, and something that looks like a bigfoot cosplay!

This is why you need the ski lifts!

By involving the player in the skater’s training, it’s a strong follow-up on the originality in the gameplay of the Season of Prophecy, and thematically it manages to do something different in the way that the Season of Sanctuary did, while still weaving itself into the narrative tapestry of the main game and other seasons in a way that Season of Sanctuary failed to.

Bring on the full release!