Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey everyone, and welcome to a
Speaker 1: tech stuff on Jonathan Strickland and I'm Lauren foc Obaum
Speaker 1: the day. We want to do the first of a
Speaker 1: two part series on a particular developer of video games.
Speaker 1: I mean an actual video game developer, not not a
Speaker 1: company a company, but a person and uh uh kind of.
Speaker 1: I mean this is someone who has a really interesting
Speaker 1: take on the design of video games and he his
Speaker 1: work has been incredibly influential. He's talked about as a
Speaker 1: revolutionary or a hero to other game developers. I think
Speaker 1: he was named in the top five and one survey
Speaker 1: from two thousand nine, right, and he has won numerous awards.
Speaker 1: We are, of course talking about sid Meyer. Uh And
Speaker 1: so anyone out there who has played a lot of
Speaker 1: computer games, you've probably heard sid Meyer's name, particularly since
Speaker 1: his name is often it's part of the brand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's featured on the actual game titles. So before we
Speaker 1: get into this, I want to give a shout out.
Speaker 1: We grab our our information from numerous resources while we're
Speaker 1: researching our topics, but one article in particular for this
Speaker 1: this part of the podcast was incredibly helpful. And that
Speaker 1: was an article written by Jason Schreyer over at Kotaku,
Speaker 1: and it was called sid Meyer The Father of Civilization,
Speaker 1: So civilization civilization being one of the many titles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: anyway that I would say, that's a must read if
Speaker 1: you are interested in sid Meyer and the story of
Speaker 1: civilization as well as just the story of the companies
Speaker 1: that sid Meier has been a part of. Go check
Speaker 1: out that article. It was based on a series of
Speaker 1: interviews with UM with sid Meyer, UM, a fellow named
Speaker 1: Bill Steely and Um one of the other participants in
Speaker 1: the companies, but a series of interviews from so so
Speaker 1: it's all really great fresh information. Um. There's another really
Speaker 1: terrific article I wanted to mention and um uh an
Speaker 1: article in Ghana Sutra called the History of Civilization that
Speaker 1: was written by BENJ. Edwards and it was based on
Speaker 1: a sid Meyer interview as well. And both of these
Speaker 1: were just terrific instrumental, Yeah, fantastic stuff. You guys should
Speaker 1: go read those and and the civilization centric article will
Speaker 1: become really important for the second part of our podcast.
Speaker 1: But this first one we're going to focus mostly on
Speaker 1: sid Meyer's background and his early years in computer game development.
Speaker 1: He was born on February nineteen fifty four in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, this guy's Canadian okay shows over must
Speaker 1: that must explain why he's why he's so nice. That
Speaker 1: does explain why he's so nice, and and that's not
Speaker 1: us being silly or anything. He's been called one of
Speaker 1: the nicest video game developers by multiple people. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems like everyone who works with him, who has given
Speaker 1: an interview that we could find on the interwebs was
Speaker 1: was just full of nothing but nice things to say
Speaker 1: about the man personally. I've watched several interviews with him
Speaker 1: where he, you know, he was being interviewed by other people,
Speaker 1: and again, he just comes across as sort of a
Speaker 1: very genuine personal guy who loves to design games. So
Speaker 1: it's gonna be really hard for me to be snarky
Speaker 1: in this podcast, But I find places. I think you
Speaker 1: will find a way. So um So. He he went
Speaker 1: to the University of Michigan and graduated with a degree
Speaker 1: in computer science. This was back when you know, that
Speaker 1: wasn't really a common thing. Yeah. In fact, back in
Speaker 1: those days, he was programming computers through punch cards. So,
Speaker 1: if you've listened to earlier episodes of tech Stuff, I
Speaker 1: mean way back in the day, you've heard of us
Speaker 1: talk about these punch cards that were uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it was a painstaking process. Your your your program might
Speaker 1: consist of more than a hundred punch cards, and you
Speaker 1: had to keep them in a precise order for the
Speaker 1: program to work properly. If you were to have an
Speaker 1: accident and you had not numbered your punch cards, that's it.
Speaker 1: Your programs ruined. So yeah, um, this the first computer
Speaker 1: that he used was at the University of Michigan. It
Speaker 1: was an IBM three sixty main frames. Um learned how
Speaker 1: the program in fortran as I recall, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he at some point used this I mean you know
Speaker 1: that this was all time sharing and and uh you
Speaker 1: had to sign up for for use of the thing.
Speaker 1: And at some point he designed a tic tac toe
Speaker 1: game for it, supposedly and almost got kicked out for
Speaker 1: wasting computer time right right, essentially, from what I understand,
Speaker 1: one of the administrators of the program called up the
Speaker 1: person who was responsible for securing that computer for the
Speaker 1: university and said, do you have any idea what the
Speaker 1: student is doing? He is wasting valuable resources on games?
Speaker 1: Who would ever waste a computer on games? As it
Speaker 1: turns out, that was probably one of the silliest things
Speaker 1: that someone could say. Also, when he was a kid,
Speaker 1: he had already grown interested in the concept of games.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, he was a very imaginative child.
Speaker 1: He talked about how he would play with little toy
Speaker 1: soldiers and reenact battles with them. And he credits the
Speaker 1: gift that was given to him, a book called the
Speaker 1: American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War, as getting
Speaker 1: him interested in history, and that obviously becomes very important
Speaker 1: with some of the titles that he would produce. So
Speaker 1: right right, I also remember reading that he played a
Speaker 1: lot of risk as a kid. Yes, so he he
Speaker 1: liked games, he liked history. These were things that really
Speaker 1: interested him. And he loved computers and it still does
Speaker 1: love computers and programming. So when you look at all
Speaker 1: three of these factors, the computer programing, genuine verd urged
Speaker 1: to conquer the world. That's but in a nice way.
Speaker 1: You know, he's doing it for your own good, Lauren.
Speaker 1: It's it's not that he's got any malice. He just
Speaker 1: it's through the development of technology, which we all know
Speaker 1: is a terrific way to win. As Dr Horrible would say,
Speaker 1: the world's mess and he just needs to rule it.
Speaker 1: So anyway, uh yeah, he began to wonder, would it
Speaker 1: be like if you could go and you know, with
Speaker 1: your own abilities, if you were to be able to
Speaker 1: go back into history and take control of some massive
Speaker 1: force that had been instrumental in a battle, and and
Speaker 1: you were to control them and make different decisions, what
Speaker 1: would be the outcome? And this was kind of the
Speaker 1: seed that would be planted in his head later on
Speaker 1: down the road. So, uh, he loved programming, he loved
Speaker 1: hacking electronics, and he he would build his own version
Speaker 1: of of games he saw out there, and yeah he
Speaker 1: had at eight and um would yeah program his own
Speaker 1: kind of versions of like Space Invaders I think is
Speaker 1: one of them in basic. Yeah, he said that that
Speaker 1: was one of the earliest games that he developed for
Speaker 1: the personal computer. The eight hundred, by the way, had
Speaker 1: sixteen kilobytes of memory. Yeah yeah, so, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure Space Invaders probably was stressing that machine out
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah. Probably. I am being a little
Speaker 1: silly snarky there, but uh but yeah, he he started
Speaker 1: making these. He began to work for General Instruments Corporation
Speaker 1: as a programmer, and he also would occasionally bring in
Speaker 1: some of the games he had created and put them
Speaker 1: up on the offices network, and you know, would eventually
Speaker 1: have to have them taken down because productivity in the
Speaker 1: office would take a dive. Yeah, it turns out his
Speaker 1: manager would call up that old university guy up and say, hey,
Speaker 1: do you know what your former student is doing. Actually
Speaker 1: that that's not entirely true, but the same sort of thing.
Speaker 1: He was creating games and sharing them and taking enjoyment
Speaker 1: from other people, having a fun time with his games.
Speaker 1: And he met someone at General Instruments Corporation who would
Speaker 1: become instrumental in those early early days. Uh. A guy
Speaker 1: who has a great nickname is John Wild. Bill Steely
Speaker 1: usually just called Bill, yeah or wild Bill or wild
Speaker 1: but yeah, this this was a guy who had been
Speaker 1: UM major in the Air Force. Yeah. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think at the time he still was an active major.
Speaker 1: He was a former fighter pilot. So, um, if you
Speaker 1: guys don't know what fighter pilots are like, I recommend
Speaker 1: watching the documentary Top Gun. Now, keep in mind that's
Speaker 1: Navy pilots, not air force pilots. What you're just staring
Speaker 1: at me like like in judgment. I can't I can't imagine.
Speaker 1: Why do you not have the need the need for speed?
Speaker 1: All right? So, anyway, according to that Kotaku article we
Speaker 1: talked about said Meyer, Meyer and Steely both attended an
Speaker 1: electronics trade conference and while they were there, they just
Speaker 1: kind of were exploring and they apparently found a room
Speaker 1: full of old arcade machines. Actually at that time they
Speaker 1: were new arcade machines, right right, Um, they started playing
Speaker 1: a bunch of them, and Meyer was just beating Steely's
Speaker 1: but at all of Steely was getting a little frustrated.
Speaker 1: And then they found the red baron. The red baron
Speaker 1: being a flight sim yeah kind of yeah, it was, yeah,
Speaker 1: for for what it was at the time, sort of
Speaker 1: a flight simulator. It is kind of a shooter that
Speaker 1: was a World War Two based air airplane shooter end up.
Speaker 1: And Steely takes one look at it and he says,
Speaker 1: this is me. I got this. I'm a fighter pilot.
Speaker 1: I am going to rule this. And so Steely stepped
Speaker 1: up to the box first and uh and and got
Speaker 1: like like on the top three of the Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think he actually managed to land the high score, you know,
Speaker 1: like like points something like that. So yeah, And it
Speaker 1: turns to Myron's like beat that torp, and Meyers steps
Speaker 1: up and calmly takes control of the arcade machine. What happened, Lauren?
Speaker 1: He doubled Steely's score. Yeah, And then Steely looks and
Speaker 1: and says, wait a minute. I am a fighter pilot.
Speaker 1: I am a major in the United States Air Force.
Speaker 1: How did you manage to do that? Meyer says, well,
Speaker 1: while you were playing, I just memorized the algorithms that
Speaker 1: the computer was using. Yeah, that's something you know. I
Speaker 1: actually used to do very similar things when I was
Speaker 1: at the arcade. I would my dad watch the way
Speaker 1: the computer reacted to other people. I would watch and
Speaker 1: watch people play for a good half hour to an
Speaker 1: hour before I would ever put a quarter in, so
Speaker 1: I could see what was happening. And I wouldn't just
Speaker 1: wander in blind because the quarters I had were few
Speaker 1: and precious to me, and I did want to play
Speaker 1: these arcade games, but I wanted to make the experience
Speaker 1: last as long as possible. Now, I will go ahead
Speaker 1: and tell you my algorithm recognized recognization skills are really
Speaker 1: minor compared to what Meyer was able to do. Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's fair. I think. I think being worse at
Speaker 1: s admire than at computer algorithms is it's probably okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't have to feel like I don't have to
Speaker 1: have some sort of inferiority complex over that. No, no,
Speaker 1: But so so according to the story, um at there
Speaker 1: after this debacle, um, you know, Meyer kind of casually
Speaker 1: throughout like, you know, this was a pretty okay game,
Speaker 1: but I could totally write a better one. And Steely's like, uh,
Speaker 1: if you can do that, I can totally sell that game.
Speaker 1: And so Meyer did it. Meyer went home and over
Speaker 1: the next few months designed a a fighter pilot game. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, depending upon which version of the story you see,
Speaker 1: and there are different versions, I mean, keep in mind
Speaker 1: that a lot of the information about these early days,
Speaker 1: this is stuff that people are talking about decades after
Speaker 1: it happened. Oh sure, and it's it's all it's all
Speaker 1: very kind of colloquial, and everyone was kind of joking
Speaker 1: around about it and remembering it fondly. But you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: so so get a little fuzzy with the details. But
Speaker 1: depending upon whom you ask, It was like a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks beforehand. Then he came back. And again this
Speaker 1: also gets a little confusing because, um, there are different
Speaker 1: reports on what the very first game Sidmyer made what
Speaker 1: it was called. But according to the Kataku article, the
Speaker 1: one that they settled on as being this is the
Speaker 1: game we're going to try and sell was called hell
Speaker 1: Cat Ace. That was a World War two combat flight simulator.
Speaker 1: And it was more than just a shoot them up,
Speaker 1: you know, top scroll game or something. This was a
Speaker 1: game that actually allowed you to take control of World
Speaker 1: War two aircraft and do some advanced piloting maneuvers, things
Speaker 1: like impleman turns and loops and you could stall your
Speaker 1: plane out or roll it and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And so they started with with supposedly like like dollars
Speaker 1: in startup and you know, self printed copies of the
Speaker 1: game and like xerox copies of the instruction manual and
Speaker 1: put them in zip block bags and and started taking
Speaker 1: them to hobby stores around town. Yeah. In fact, this
Speaker 1: was in Baltimore, Maryland, right right, Yes, uh, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was Baltimore, Maryland is where they were based out of.
Speaker 1: Because that's where General Instruments had their headquarters. And this
Speaker 1: is not this is not an unusual story, by the way.
Speaker 1: This is how early computer games really got started. You
Speaker 1: had programmers who are working out of their homes usually
Speaker 1: most of the time. They were doing this on their
Speaker 1: own time. It was not a full time gig yet,
Speaker 1: and they would produce stuff, put them in these bags,
Speaker 1: and then sell them at a computer store. And the
Speaker 1: computer store would would then mark up the price or whatever.
Speaker 1: And often you would walk in and there'd be a
Speaker 1: bulletin board on the side of the wall in the
Speaker 1: computer store. Because keep in mind, these were not computer
Speaker 1: game stores. These were stores that sold computers and computer components.
Speaker 1: This was just something else you could buy in that store.
Speaker 1: So you would go and there'd be a bolton board
Speaker 1: and there would be thumb tax that would have these games,
Speaker 1: you know, tacked to the side of the bolten board
Speaker 1: and going you basically you would base your your purchase
Speaker 1: decision on what the artwork look like on the xerox
Speaker 1: sheet that was showing through. Yeah, yeah, and I mean
Speaker 1: and this was all in the early eighties. I'd say
Speaker 1: eight to eighty one probably is when all of this
Speaker 1: was occurring. Yeah. Yeah. This is at the very dawn
Speaker 1: of the personal computer revolution, and of course at this
Speaker 1: time the people who owned the personal computers are in
Speaker 1: large part hobbyists. There are we're starting to see other
Speaker 1: people by personal computers by the early eighties, but it's
Speaker 1: largely still hobbyists. It's a niche market. So um, what
Speaker 1: I love is the story about how Steely would convince
Speaker 1: stores to carry Hellcat a ce. See. He would actually
Speaker 1: travel all the way from New York down to Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. That was the area that he would consider
Speaker 1: his territory, not just Baltimore. So I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: him from the Kotaku article. Now, this is actually what
Speaker 1: Steely told the reporter. He said, I would call computer
Speaker 1: stores and ask to buy Hellcat Ace, and when they
Speaker 1: didn't have it, I would yell and scream at them,
Speaker 1: what kind of computer store are you? And then I'd
Speaker 1: hang up. I would do that three times in three weeks,
Speaker 1: each time pretending to be a different person. And the
Speaker 1: fourth week I'd call and say, hello, this is John Steely.
Speaker 1: I'm a representative with micropros this I've got this game
Speaker 1: called Hellcat Ace, and they'd say, hey, whoa whoa everyone's
Speaker 1: been calling about that. Can you help us get that game?
Speaker 1: Nice one? Steely? Yeah, and you can you can? You
Speaker 1: know this this illustrates the kind of relationship that Steely
Speaker 1: and Meyer had at this time. You know, Steely was
Speaker 1: very much the public persona and very much the get
Speaker 1: him a salesman. And as it turns out, I mean again,
Speaker 1: if you read interviews where you see interviews with Meyer,
Speaker 1: you learned that this is exactly the way Meyer wanted
Speaker 1: things to go. Because Meyer was a business guy, you know,
Speaker 1: he he wanted the freedom to be able to develop
Speaker 1: the games that he thought would be fun and and
Speaker 1: this was a great arrangement. He didn't have to worry
Speaker 1: about the business side. He that did not interest him
Speaker 1: at all. I mean, he certainly wanted to make a
Speaker 1: living off of it. That was his dream job, but
Speaker 1: he did not want to be the one to have
Speaker 1: to handle all those details. That's not his strong suit.
Speaker 1: He just wanted to concentrate on making the And this
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot. I mean, Lauren and I both
Speaker 1: have a lot of friends who are artists, who are
Speaker 1: actors or musicians, and many of them on you know,
Speaker 1: wish that they could do that that they could have,
Speaker 1: and some of them do have managers or whatever that
Speaker 1: you know. That's that's I hear. I hear that all
Speaker 1: the time, like someone just going like, why can't someone
Speaker 1: just market this for me? I just want to write
Speaker 1: another thing. Why can't someone else book me for the
Speaker 1: next gig? Because because it's already pouring your love and
Speaker 1: energy into what you want to do, that that's that
Speaker 1: takes up a lot, you know, and then too, on
Speaker 1: top of that, be the one who's responsible for all
Speaker 1: the business side can be absolutely draining. So Maya really
Speaker 1: had a great thing going here. He had he had
Speaker 1: the guy who was going to do all the legwork
Speaker 1: and he got to do all the development work. So
Speaker 1: it's a great relationship for both guys at this time.
Speaker 1: So um. At first the two continue to work exclusively
Speaker 1: for general instruments and they would sell these games and
Speaker 1: time and their free time. But eventually Steely was making
Speaker 1: enough money doing this that he could try and create
Speaker 1: his own company. In fact, according to Steely, at the
Speaker 1: height of this, before he had even founded Micropros, they
Speaker 1: were making about two hundred thousand dollars a year just
Speaker 1: on computer game sales and and and micropros Uh. Jonathan
Speaker 1: mentioned this name, and that quote from Steely was they
Speaker 1: had already started calling themselves micropros Um, which would be
Speaker 1: the name of their company in our next bullet point.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that, but um, but yeah, they had
Speaker 1: not actually founded any kind of official company yet, right,
Speaker 1: it was. It was kind of a name because otherwise
Speaker 1: you'd say, we're two guys who are wanting to sell
Speaker 1: this game to you, and that just doesn't work quite
Speaker 1: as it doesn't doesn't have that ring to it. So yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So they're still working for General Instruments at that point,
Speaker 1: but that would quickly come upon a time where Steely
Speaker 1: realized this is something we can do ourselves and we
Speaker 1: don't need a day job anymore, or at least Steely
Speaker 1: didn't at first. So Steely makes a big jump and
Speaker 1: decides to leave General Instruments in order to work full
Speaker 1: time on the micropros project. Now, there's a lot more
Speaker 1: to talk talk about with MicroProse, but before we do that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break and thank our sponsor. Back
Speaker 1: to the show, all right, So we've got Steely. He
Speaker 1: has left to found micropros himself. Now for the first
Speaker 1: year and a half or so of Micropros. This is
Speaker 1: two by the way. For that first year and a half,
Speaker 1: Meyer was still working at General Instruments as a full
Speaker 1: time employee and producing games in his off time. Uh,
Speaker 1: Steely was concentrating full time on selling the games. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't until about midnight three that Meyer felt comfortable
Speaker 1: leaving General Instruments and working full time for Micropros. It
Speaker 1: was also that was about the time when Steely could
Speaker 1: actually afford to hire him on as a full time employee. So, uh,
Speaker 1: now we've got this, this whole company that's starting up,
Speaker 1: and it's it's good now to talk about what Meyer
Speaker 1: thinks is important when you're making a video game, because
Speaker 1: that informs all all of his decisions moving forward as
Speaker 1: far as game design is concerned. Right, and um, Meyer
Speaker 1: talks a lot about um, you know, a good game
Speaker 1: being a series of meaningful choices, give the player interesting choices,
Speaker 1: choices that are meaningful and interesting, and that is what
Speaker 1: makes a game fun. And and I think that that's
Speaker 1: you know, it's such a simple philosophy. It's one of
Speaker 1: those things that's the that it's deceptively simple, because creating
Speaker 1: something that actually feels like a meaningful choice to a
Speaker 1: player is easier said than done. But but Meyer was
Speaker 1: was really adamant about He says that if it if
Speaker 1: it feels like it doesn't matter what you choose to do,
Speaker 1: or or if what you do has little to no
Speaker 1: impact on the game, it's not that satisfying. It might
Speaker 1: be challenging to play, but it's not necessarily a satisfying experience,
Speaker 1: right And and he also um he He also talks
Speaker 1: a lot about wanting to to give players the choice
Speaker 1: to create their own storylines, to not direct the storyline
Speaker 1: to directly right right. He didn't want it to have
Speaker 1: like his games to have a linear plot for example.
Speaker 1: So we think about a lot of games. We talk
Speaker 1: about games all the time on tech stuff in the
Speaker 1: other shows that we do as well. Yeah, we actually
Speaker 1: just did an episode on forward thinking about storytelling, which
Speaker 1: this was reminding me of so much, right right, So,
Speaker 1: so for example, we talked in that episode of forward thinking.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you guys are not watching and
Speaker 1: listening to forward Thinking, go check it out. I think
Speaker 1: you would really dig it. If you enjoy tech stuff,
Speaker 1: you'll totally enjoy forward thinking. Yeah, I write a friend
Speaker 1: Joe joins us for the podcast, and he's just terrific.
Speaker 1: He is, and he has that the the ax that
Speaker 1: he brings to every podcast. He has a mystical ax. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the plastic. Yeah, just don't worry. We're not in danger right, well,
Speaker 1: no more so than usual at any rate. In that podcast,
Speaker 1: in the Storytelling podcast, we talked a lot about the
Speaker 1: the video game The Last of Us, which is out
Speaker 1: for the PlayStation three now. The Last of Us is,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, a wonderful video game. I love it
Speaker 1: very much. However, it is somewhat linear and you could
Speaker 1: argue that the choices the player makes do not in
Speaker 1: the end impact the story that much, which is not
Speaker 1: the approach that Sidmyer likes to take. He likes to
Speaker 1: take a different approach. This does not mean that one
Speaker 1: approach is automatically better or worse than the other. They
Speaker 1: are different with different goals. So yeah, my favorite quote
Speaker 1: from Meyer about this is I prefer games where the
Speaker 1: player can lead the game in the direction that they
Speaker 1: want and then they kind of end up with that
Speaker 1: unique story that only they can know, right, And that's
Speaker 1: you know that that is a very valid point of view.
Speaker 1: It's also very challenging to do in a way that
Speaker 1: it's a designer, right, because letting the player come to
Speaker 1: those conclusions for themselves is very tricky. Yeah, because if
Speaker 1: you just give a player an open world and no
Speaker 1: direction at all, then it's really hard to get something going,
Speaker 1: to make something happen. Uh. You might be able to
Speaker 1: make some tiny thing or or temporary thing happen, but
Speaker 1: there's if there's not enough to tie a game together,
Speaker 1: then it's again more confusing than satisfying. So finding that
Speaker 1: balance is really tricky. But but he did it well
Speaker 1: enough that the next year when the video game industry
Speaker 1: crash happened. Yeah, oh, and how it happened, it happened
Speaker 1: a whole bunch um. Uh. You know that there were
Speaker 1: just so many, so many games that were not great
Speaker 1: that we're being pushed out very quickly by development teams
Speaker 1: for for the Atari, right, Yeah, especially things I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously we've talked about this so many times, but but
Speaker 1: titles like ports like pac Man for there, or of
Speaker 1: course the one that everyone always quotes, including myself, et
Speaker 1: the Extraterrestrial, the the game that was so bad that
Speaker 1: they grounded up and buried it in the desert Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you know, these were these were games that that
Speaker 1: flooded the market. It diluted the market, It made everything
Speaker 1: less valuable. Plus you had lots of different consoles hitting
Speaker 1: the market all at once, and it just there was
Speaker 1: just too much and it could not support itself. And
Speaker 1: eventually the industry collapsed in on itself. And you would think, okay,
Speaker 1: so they tiny throw it up from the previous year.
Speaker 1: That doesn't look good for them. But but they but
Speaker 1: they lived through it. Um they continued selling games. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Part of it was that they were developing computer games,
Speaker 1: not console games, and a lot of people were moving
Speaker 1: toward computers and they were feeling you know, kind of
Speaker 1: like exactly, so in a way, they were in the
Speaker 1: right place at the right time. Plus with sid Meier's
Speaker 1: philosophy of you know, you're you're taking this simple approach
Speaker 1: and then adding complexity, and that makes a simple game
Speaker 1: into a very deep and compelling game. But you make
Speaker 1: it you add that complexity in a way that the
Speaker 1: player can can uh grow and learn with as opposed
Speaker 1: to just throwing everything at them at once. This approach
Speaker 1: really worked out well and so uh, one of the
Speaker 1: games that was released and I actually found gameplay video
Speaker 1: footage of this. I remember this one. I remember Floyd
Speaker 1: of the Jungle. You remember Floyd of the Jungle. I
Speaker 1: very dimly have this man until image. Yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: it's a platformer game, a side scrolling platform were not
Speaker 1: even side scrolling, it's just a side view but the
Speaker 1: platform or game kind of similar to the old Donkey
Speaker 1: Kong game. And your character could run around, jump and
Speaker 1: climb up vines to try and rescue other characters from
Speaker 1: impending jungle doom. And up to four people could play
Speaker 1: at the same time, which made it, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of a remarkable game. This is a computer game where
Speaker 1: you four people are all playing. Uh, they're all trying
Speaker 1: to race around and and save this vaguely feminine figure
Speaker 1: from doom, the more feminine blob it's opposed to the
Speaker 1: more masculine block. Yes, well you you were you knew
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be a princess. But the idea
Speaker 1: was that, uh that you know, you were competing against
Speaker 1: these up to three other players to try and rescue
Speaker 1: her first, and they are all these other obstacles and
Speaker 1: dangerous animals in the way. That's a that's a terrific
Speaker 1: gender normative thing right there. That's anyway, that's simpler times.
Speaker 1: It was three anyway. Um, So I remember the eighties,
Speaker 1: So it was around then that that Meyer started going
Speaker 1: to game developer conferences. There was one in particular out
Speaker 1: in San Jose, Um where he met up with with
Speaker 1: people like Will Wright who would go on to create
Speaker 1: some city um and uh Dan Bunten of Mule. So
Speaker 1: anyone who's played Mule that was ah. That was a
Speaker 1: very popular game in the early eighties as well. And
Speaker 1: mostly these guys would meet up and they talked about
Speaker 1: how they liked each other's games a lot. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: sounded like they all just would just nerd out, like
Speaker 1: I like your game, you like my game, I like
Speaker 1: your game. Yeah, But there was no real collaboration. In fact,
Speaker 1: Meyer would say, like, you know, we admired each other,
Speaker 1: we thought that the games were fun, and I think
Speaker 1: that they influenced each other, um indirectly, you know, take
Speaker 1: sure parts of each other's work that they admired, and
Speaker 1: they would look at something and say, wow, I never
Speaker 1: thought that a computer game could do that. How did
Speaker 1: they do that? How how could we use something that's
Speaker 1: similar to that? So it wasn't so much like like
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it's plagiarism, but it was certainly taking
Speaker 1: inspiration from the work of others. Uh yeah. And and
Speaker 1: Meyers said that they were all kind of really focused
Speaker 1: on what they themselves were doing to the point where
Speaker 1: they didn't really want to share it with anyone else.
Speaker 1: They wanted to be able to build it themselves and
Speaker 1: then release it and kind of continue this this uh,
Speaker 1: this trend of oh, that game you made was really great,
Speaker 1: as opposed to come here and help me make this
Speaker 1: really great game. So it's kind of there's like a
Speaker 1: little bit of competition and a little bit of showmanship
Speaker 1: going on, but it was it was a lot of
Speaker 1: mutual appreciation as well. So by five a game called
Speaker 1: fifteen Strike Eagle, another another combat combat flight sim um,
Speaker 1: had had been released and went gold yep. And then
Speaker 1: you got the game called Silent Service, which was a
Speaker 1: submarine simulation game. Now, these simulation games, this is what
Speaker 1: Steely wanted to seize, especially military based right right, because
Speaker 1: he this was this made sense to him. This was
Speaker 1: the stuff that he thought had a strong following in
Speaker 1: the in the computer game world, and as a member
Speaker 1: of the armed Forces. It was something that spoke directly
Speaker 1: to him, so he was fully behind this, and in fact,
Speaker 1: Meyer would say that there were times where where Steely
Speaker 1: essentially just one admire to churn out, not continue making
Speaker 1: flight sims over and over and over. Right, churn out
Speaker 1: is probably a too too harsh a term, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exact Meyers too polite to say that, but I
Speaker 1: feel like that's how he was probably feeling. Right. So
Speaker 1: sid Meyer creates a game that goes outside this realm
Speaker 1: of the military simulator, and it's the game I alluded
Speaker 1: to back in the when I was talking about Pirates,
Speaker 1: because sid Meyer's Pirates comes out Pirates with an exclamation point.
Speaker 1: This game, Oh, I will never forget the exclamation point. Okay,
Speaker 1: I owned a game a version of this game. I
Speaker 1: want to say I even owned it on the Apple
Speaker 1: to E, which was probably a port of Pirates, because
Speaker 1: he would he programmed most of his games on the
Speaker 1: IBM PC once he moved away from the Atari eight hundred.
Speaker 1: So Pirates is ah it's a game where you take
Speaker 1: the role of an aspiring pirate. In fact, at the
Speaker 1: very beginning of the game, you are I think a
Speaker 1: stowaway aboard a pirate ship, and you end up challenging
Speaker 1: the captain for the control of the ship, and you
Speaker 1: have a duel with the captain. Presuming that you win
Speaker 1: the duel, you then go on to captain a ship
Speaker 1: and you try and make your name in the Caribbean,
Speaker 1: and you can do things like uh, sack towns. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you can become a privateer for a particular nation. So
Speaker 1: you might sign a letter of mark with the British
Speaker 1: and now you can act upon behalf of the British.
Speaker 1: And so if if if Britain is at war with Spain,
Speaker 1: you can pirate Spain all you want. Yeah, and you can.
Speaker 1: You can get credit from the Brits while Spain is
Speaker 1: shaking its fist and going out there. I want my
Speaker 1: silver back. But Sish Yeah noah bla Spano unfortunately. So
Speaker 1: but anyway, it was a whatever I look, I speak.
Speaker 1: I speak English and I speak it poorly anyway, so uh.
Speaker 1: It was very much kind of a swashbuckling sort of
Speaker 1: pirate game. It wasn't meant to be a historically accurate
Speaker 1: depiction of pirates, although it was set between the years
Speaker 1: that people generally think of as the Golden Age of piracy.
Speaker 1: You could play very early on, like in the fifteen
Speaker 1: sixties if you wanted to, but it was more challenging
Speaker 1: because there were fewer reports to actually work with. So
Speaker 1: if you ticked off a faction, you quickly find yourself
Speaker 1: hard pressed to get rid of all that filthy luker
Speaker 1: you managed to get. Like, you know, when you were
Speaker 1: piating ships, you would end up with um with massive
Speaker 1: amounts of various goods, and so it wasn't just money.
Speaker 1: You had to find a way to offload the goods,
Speaker 1: and you wanted to find a good sell price, which
Speaker 1: meant that you know, you didn't want to take everybody off.
Speaker 1: So I take it that you were a fan of
Speaker 1: this game. I liked it. I played this game a
Speaker 1: lot and uh and and there have been multiple revisions
Speaker 1: of this game. We're not going to talk about every
Speaker 1: single game Sidmyer has had a hand in, obviously, and
Speaker 1: especially not the all of the sequels, because that that
Speaker 1: would be exhausted, but so so Pirates was literally that
Speaker 1: would be exhausting. That's the word that I was looking for. Anyway,
Speaker 1: exhaustive and exhausting. It's yeah, it's it was a great game.
Speaker 1: Obviously I loved it very very much. Uh and they
Speaker 1: you know, re released it a couple of times with
Speaker 1: the revisions, including an Xbox version which I also owned.
Speaker 1: Um So, anyway, that this was a departure from those
Speaker 1: military combat simulators. Um and and it was such a
Speaker 1: departure that the decision was made at some point to
Speaker 1: put sid Meier's name on the box, call it sid
Speaker 1: Meier's Pirates because previously um his you know, just to
Speaker 1: be like, hey, this developer that you like also had
Speaker 1: a hand in this one, right right, maybe you want
Speaker 1: to buy it? It was it was sort of the
Speaker 1: the establishment of a new brand, sid Meyer as a brand,
Speaker 1: not just as a person. According to steely Um, this
Speaker 1: was a suggestion that happened at a dinner of the
Speaker 1: Software Publishers Association that Robin Williams made. Robin Williams was
Speaker 1: hanging out at the time and apparently made them laugh
Speaker 1: for like two hours straight, and then eventually he turned
Speaker 1: to stealing and said, what you should do is put
Speaker 1: this guy's name on the box and make him a superstar.
Speaker 1: So again, your mileage may very people have different stories
Speaker 1: about why sid Meyer's name was attached to this this title,
Speaker 1: but the fact is it was, and that became kind
Speaker 1: of a kind of a trademark. Well, I mean really
Speaker 1: literally it is a trademark, but it kind of became
Speaker 1: a trademark in the sense that you would see a
Speaker 1: lot more games come out Sid Meyer's blah blah blah
Speaker 1: whatever the whatever the game title was, and um, you
Speaker 1: know it was. It was interesting also because it gave
Speaker 1: Meyer another challenge besides just building something that wasn't a
Speaker 1: a combat simulator. Uh. He had to work within the
Speaker 1: technical challenges of developing a game that needed to look
Speaker 1: very lush and beautiful but within such limited processing power
Speaker 1: for the time or at the time. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: began to develop some some pretty cool approaches to that,
Speaker 1: so he actually pushed the video game development process forward
Speaker 1: just by innovating in that way. Um. In development for
Speaker 1: what would become Civilization started, um and and you know,
Speaker 1: like with Pirates, Steely really wasn't excited about the game
Speaker 1: um And in the beginning, and development would wind up
Speaker 1: getting delayed multiple times so that other projects could be
Speaker 1: pushed to the forefront. Yeah, we'll tell We'll tell the
Speaker 1: whole story behind the development of Civilization later on in
Speaker 1: the second part. Of this, right, it is it is
Speaker 1: you know, I think that that's the part that's certainly
Speaker 1: the two of us are very interested in, and so
Speaker 1: we wanted to break it off. And and it's devote
Speaker 1: a lot of time too. It's it's so much stuff,
Speaker 1: and and it kind of overlaps with a lot of
Speaker 1: the other things that are happening in this timeline. We
Speaker 1: figured to make it more of a cohesive story if
Speaker 1: we just grouped it together. But by that's when Sid
Speaker 1: Meier's Railroad Tycoon comes out, and this was another big departure. Right.
Speaker 1: This was a business simulation game, not a combat simulation game,
Speaker 1: and it was a real time strategy game where you
Speaker 1: were trying to build railroads across the US and Europe.
Speaker 1: Um uh. This was also the year that um Myer's
Speaker 1: first son, I think only son, maybe Ryan, was born
Speaker 1: to his first wife, um And it was also around
Speaker 1: this time that um that Steely bought out Myers Shares
Speaker 1: and MicroProse Um. This this was a voluntary move. Meyer,
Speaker 1: you know, knew that the company was starting to head
Speaker 1: into the direction of of consoles and arcade machines, and
Speaker 1: he wasn't really interested in pursuing that. He wasn't comfortable
Speaker 1: being tied down to a company that was making some
Speaker 1: choices that he felt were limiting his ability to create games.
Speaker 1: That was you know again, that's all he was really
Speaker 1: concerned with. Yeah. Yeah, So so a new VP of
Speaker 1: Development took over from Meyer at Micropros um and and
Speaker 1: this new VP didn't receive personal bonuses on Myers releases,
Speaker 1: so which ended up being part of the sticky situation
Speaker 1: that they would get into this civilization with that that
Speaker 1: that led to the de prioritization of some of these titles. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because he you know, Micropros was developing other games that
Speaker 1: Sid Meyer did not have a hand in, because there
Speaker 1: were there were more people working for Micropros now than
Speaker 1: just Steely and Meyer, and they were they were putting
Speaker 1: out a lot of games actually either um personally developing
Speaker 1: or porting from from smaller companies, right, or they were
Speaker 1: publishing stuff that was being developed by other companies. So
Speaker 1: Micropros is not just a developer but also a publisher.
Speaker 1: So they were publishing some games that were developed by
Speaker 1: other developers. And so you know, the VP of Development,
Speaker 1: he's getting bonuses on games that were developed by Micropros,
Speaker 1: but not on games that were developed specifically by Sid Meyer,
Speaker 1: like because sid was a was a contractor at the time,
Speaker 1: so he didn't have a technical control over this. Yes,
Speaker 1: so that uh, we're getting a little political, and we'll
Speaker 1: get more political when we get into the full civilization story. Um.
Speaker 1: But ninety that also was the point where, uh, the
Speaker 1: civilization work really starts to kick into high gear. He
Speaker 1: was coding it on an IBM PC at the time.
Speaker 1: And then nine one, Uh you get to a point
Speaker 1: where civilization actually publishes, um, and uh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's a strategy game where you're actually trying to start
Speaker 1: with a very basic unit of a particular nationality and
Speaker 1: build a civilization and all that that entails almost prehistoric,
Speaker 1: early historic. Yeah. Yeah, to the point, well, civilization you
Speaker 1: haven't developed, you haven't developed reading and writing yet, because
Speaker 1: that's one of the first that's one of the first
Speaker 1: technologies you can develop in the game. Yeah. So you
Speaker 1: start off as a nationality. You can choose which one,
Speaker 1: and they have different advantages and disadvantages. Uh. You start
Speaker 1: on a randomly generated map, although of course in later
Speaker 1: versions of Civilization, if you wanted to, you could start
Speaker 1: on the world map. Yea. The Earth's map at a
Speaker 1: varying sizes depending upon which version of civilization you're playing UH,
Speaker 1: and your goal was to try and create a civilization
Speaker 1: winning the game. There were multiple ways to win. You
Speaker 1: could either when based on points, the game would end
Speaker 1: once it hit a certain year. I want to say,
Speaker 1: it's like twift UM then UH if you had the
Speaker 1: most points at that point. If you had the most
Speaker 1: points at that time, you would end up winning. Or
Speaker 1: you could getting points by UM by conquering and developing
Speaker 1: technologies yep and UH and creating UH improvements to your cities,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, so you know your population. Lots
Speaker 1: of different factors would would be involved in creating your
Speaker 1: final score. You could also take over other civilizations and
Speaker 1: if you managed to do that to everybody, you know
Speaker 1: one because there was no one to compete against UM.
Speaker 1: There was another way of getting UH winning by being
Speaker 1: the first to to send a space exploration colony out
Speaker 1: to Alpha Centauri. Right. Because the you know the concept
Speaker 1: of the game if you've never played them or never
Speaker 1: really heard that much about them, is is that you
Speaker 1: are you are developing all of the technologies necessary for
Speaker 1: the civilization and it extends beyond the point where we
Speaker 1: currently are now into hypothetically, if you get there, you
Speaker 1: would eventually get to especially in things like Civilization too.
Speaker 1: You would develop all the technologies in the game, and
Speaker 1: then you because that part of the game would continue.
Speaker 1: You know, you could continue to develop technologies. But because
Speaker 1: it went beyond what we are currently able to do,
Speaker 1: they would just call it future technology one future technology
Speaker 1: to future because you had gone beyond what you could
Speaker 1: actually do in the game. Uh. And anyway, there were
Speaker 1: multiple ways of winning this game, and and that was
Speaker 1: part of what Sidmire thought would make it really compelling
Speaker 1: was the idea that you had multiple nationality, so that
Speaker 1: gave you a lot of incentive to play it in
Speaker 1: different ways. And there were multiple ways of winning, so
Speaker 1: that meant that you could choose different strategies every time, right,
Speaker 1: um and uh and succeed it did, um despite despite
Speaker 1: the company not really giving it that much marketing power,
Speaker 1: it sold more than eight hundred thousand copies. Um. You
Speaker 1: know before the Internet, right, yeah, the Internet existed, but
Speaker 1: no one the Web didn't. There was no Web yet,
Speaker 1: and hardly anyone who even knew about the Internet had
Speaker 1: access to it because again This was mostly uh, colleges
Speaker 1: and research institutions that had access to the Internet. The
Speaker 1: rest of us we might have email. That would be
Speaker 1: about the extent of it. So yeah, the fact that
Speaker 1: that this game had to succeed mainly they didn't get
Speaker 1: a lot of marketing behind it either. They mainly succeeded
Speaker 1: on word of mouth. And then eventually the magazine started
Speaker 1: to review it, right because magazines existed. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: a thing. Do you remember those um so around or so. Uh,
Speaker 1: Like I had said, MicroProse was trying to get into
Speaker 1: um into a lot of arcade arcade stuff, actually creating
Speaker 1: arcade cabinets based on old titles. In particular, they had
Speaker 1: tried to do a version of that fifteen Strike Eagle.
Speaker 1: How that turn out poorly, really poorly, so poorly that
Speaker 1: um that they they did an I p O and
Speaker 1: initial public offering just for cash, I mean just it
Speaker 1: was like one of those desperate bid for cash kind
Speaker 1: of things. The company was falling into debt. Steely was
Speaker 1: starting to feel the squeeze from a financial standpoint, and
Speaker 1: uh eventually yeah. So so the next year he would
Speaker 1: wind up selling Micropros to Spectrum Hollobight Micropros is acquired
Speaker 1: by Spectrum Hollobight, and uh Steely would stick around until
Speaker 1: nine and then he leaves Micropros. You know, this was
Speaker 1: a tough time for for the company. I mean already
Speaker 1: obviously Meyer had started to feel a little disenchanted, which
Speaker 1: is why he went to the whole tractor right right.
Speaker 1: And it was around ninety three that Meyer started backing
Speaker 1: off of development entirely. You know, he was he was
Speaker 1: a I think, um, trying not to stress himself out
Speaker 1: over creating the next Civilization after Civilization came out and
Speaker 1: was so popular. Um, and uh if you end up
Speaker 1: developing a music application called a cpu bach yeah, And
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that a little bit later because that, uh,
Speaker 1: it comes out a little after ninety three, but that's
Speaker 1: when he started working on it. And uh, actually ninety four,
Speaker 1: that's when Brian Reynolds, who was another developer over at
Speaker 1: UH Micropros, ended up being the lead developer for sid
Speaker 1: Meier's Colonization. I also played this game, and Colonization was
Speaker 1: a game where you, as a European explorer, would and
Speaker 1: with your band of Europeans, would come over and subjugate
Speaker 1: Native American tribes and build colonies and spread smallpox, except
Speaker 1: in a cheerful way. I'm sure that smallpox wasn't actually
Speaker 1: part of the game. Um wasn't. I don't remember smallpox
Speaker 1: being a part of the game. But you could, and
Speaker 1: you could choose different routes, right, You didn't have to
Speaker 1: you know, you didn't. Yeah, you didn't have to slaughter
Speaker 1: everybody if you didn't want to. You could trade with them,
Speaker 1: you could try and build relationships. Sometimes they would react
Speaker 1: poorly to those relationships, which would just kind of make
Speaker 1: you want to go through the whole slaughter approach. Uh. Plus,
Speaker 1: those those Mayans had a lot of gold Man But anyway,
Speaker 1: um uh, it was a you know, it was a
Speaker 1: very kind of focused approach to that same sort of
Speaker 1: civilization feel, but specifically under the New World colonization. And
Speaker 1: at that point you started seeing other games coming out
Speaker 1: under Micropros, some of the other games from other developers,
Speaker 1: not just Micropros, so things like dark Lands, which was
Speaker 1: a role playing game, or The Master of Orion, which
Speaker 1: was a space strategy game. And now we're getting up
Speaker 1: to nineteen nine six, this is where we're going to
Speaker 1: We're going to conclude this part of the podcast with
Speaker 1: this year year, because this was the year that sid
Speaker 1: Meyer and uh and and Reynolds and another fellow by
Speaker 1: the name of Jeff Briggs left Micropros. Uh. This was
Speaker 1: they were feeling like the company was just moving in
Speaker 1: a direction that they didn't really care for. There were
Speaker 1: a lot of layoffs that were going on at this time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Spectrum was was managing them from the opposite coast. They
Speaker 1: were out west, and uh, you know, just yeah, no
Speaker 1: one felt like they were really meeting. They felt that
Speaker 1: like the magic of those group of people who really
Speaker 1: loved to make games was being sapped away by all
Speaker 1: the rest of the stuff that has to happen for
Speaker 1: business to work, or at least for business to work
Speaker 1: in this particular setup. And so they left Micropros and
Speaker 1: founded a new company. But we're going to pick up
Speaker 1: from that point in our next episode, where we'll talk
Speaker 1: about the second half of sid Meyer's career, which is
Speaker 1: still going right now. Uh And guys, if you have
Speaker 1: any suggestions for topics that we should cover in future
Speaker 1: episodes of Tech Stuff, come on let us know about it,
Speaker 1: because if you just shout, unless we happen to be nearby,
Speaker 1: we're probably not gonna hear you, and maybe we don't
Speaker 1: even know what you're talking about, So rise an email. Alright,
Speaker 1: this is tech stuff at Discovery dot com. Or drop
Speaker 1: us a line on Facebook or Twitter. You can find
Speaker 1: us with the handle text stuff H S W. Lauren
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you again really soon. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit house
Speaker 1: staff works dot com