Edge Online recently got to do an interview with Sid Meier. They talked about the educational values of games, the future of game design and the new platforms like Facebook. The lack of new original IPs, Civilization V, and Sid Meier’s role at Firaxis.
Jesse Schell’s talk at DICE explored the idea that the concept of playing games works so deeply within the player that he sees gaming being further integrated into daily life as a technique to encourage people to learn, consume – anything the designer wants. Do you see things going that way?
Well, we’ve certainly seen plenty of examples of games being used in education and having a lot of success, if used creatively. Games can make anything more fun and more interesting; the problem is that once you start to mould games into a specific purpose, the player becomes less important. If the player doesn’t want to go in that direction, you haven’t created the game they want to play. Introducing those kind of constraints to gaming isn’t going to pay off the way people think they’re going to; you can’t transfer the compulsion to play Civilization to the compulsion to buy potato chips. The value of gaming is in the freedom of the player to explore whatever they want to explore to their own ends; once they’re being pushed in a certain direction it’s no longer a gaming experience, it’s manipulation.
Fredrik 'Grey Fox' Henriksson is an avid Civilization and StarCraft 2 player as well as a wannabe game designer. When he isn't playing games or working on mods he likes to paint digital art, watch tv-series, a movie or just hang with good company. 