Discussing Humanity's Future with the Father of Civilization

[Buster's Uncle]

Interview with Sid at Gamespot:  Discussing Humanity's Future with the Father of Civilization


The bit I found most interesting:

Why the choice to bring back an Alpha Centari-style game today?

When I talk to fans at conventions, they always ask for Pirates, Railroads, and Alpha Centauri. They're already getting Civilization, and that was probably at the top of their list. It's been quite a while since Alpha Centauri came out. We've got a lot of new ideas, have learned a lot, and there’s so much new stuff we can do with a science fiction setting. The Civilization series has come so far and we can do a lot of new stuff now that we couldn't do before. We had an opportunity with people [at Firaxis] who had some great ideas on how to put this together--and it just all came together! We're happy to be able to have a chance to do it.


How would you compare the tone of Alpha Centauri versus the Civilization series?

I think whenever you go into a futuristic, or a hypothetical, or change from a historical to a non-historical type of setting, certain things change. There are certain things you can do there that you can't do with a historical topic. I think Alpha Centauri did a great job of taking advantage of what the new possibilities were of a science fiction setting through its characters and with the very interesting history. It almost created its own pseudo-history to explain what was going on--a plausible connection from where we are to today to the setting of Alpha Centauri.

I thought [Alpha Centauri] did a very good job of creating a sci-fi future that was something players could relate to. That's always been the strength of the Civilization series: relatability. If you run into Gandhi or Genghis Khan you have some expectations of what his personality might be. If you’re inventing the wheel or electricity these are concepts you can kind of understand intuitively. You don't have to go read the manual to figure out what the point of this is. I think Alpha Centauri also did a good job of introducing you to concepts that made sense even though they weren't, perhaps, historical concepts. You could kind of play with your intuition as opposed to trying to read the manual and figure out what the game was all about.

Maybe it's my own preconceptions talking, but this seems a bit like he wasn't all that involved with AC...

[BlaneckW]

I'd let him pretend to have been involved in Alpha Centaur if he made it's equal.  Anyway, it's nice to hear Sid talk about... nothing, apparently.

[Unorthodox]

Interview with Sid at Gamespot:  ]Maybe it's my own preconceptions talking, but this seems a bit like he wasn't all that involved with AC...

Ive got that impression on a lot of things with his name on them...

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah; really a mistake to let Brian Reynolds get away...

[BlaneckW]

Oh I have no doubt that Sid has no interest in Reynolds.