Some of Civilization’s designers, including the man himself, Sid Meier, got together at DICE this week to talk on stage about the game’s 25th anniversary and the history of the game’s development.
First, the numbers. Civilization first released in 1991, and in the 25 years that followed, the game has seen 66 iterations, which combined have sold approximately 33 million copies. A sizeable 8 of those millions are accounted for by the most recent release, Civilization 5. Extrapolating from Steam data, the folks at MicroProse and Firaxis have estimated that Civ has been ruining lives to the tune of a billion hours. (I just grabbed a calculator and I figure that is equivalent to nearly 2,000 complete human lives.)
The talk featured Bruce Shelley, a designer on the original Civ, Brian Reynolds, the lead on Civ II, the original Colonization, and Alpha Centauri, Soren Johnson, programmer on Civ III and lead designer of Civ IV, and of course Sid Meier, lead designer of the original, and whose name the franchise still bears.
Taking inspiration from SimCity and building on the success of MicroProse’s Railroad Tycoon, Civ was born of trying to think of a more epic topic for simulation. Turns out that the history of human civilization was an idea epic enough to work. “The core was a number of simple systems: economic, combat, growth,” said Meier. “Everything was understandable on its own. Once it all interacted, the decisions for the player became very interesting.”
The original Civ destroyed its initial sales projection of 38,000 copies, and its “one more turn” addictiveness carried its success for another quarter-decade, even as the games had to reinvent themselves to stay relevant in the modern market. (Thanks to Dean Takahashi at GamesBeat for his full write-up of the talk. You should definitely check it out for more details.)