Thanks again to Matt Musick at Motherboard.tv for sending me this segment they did on Sid Meier—the acknowledged greatest game designer of all time (he’s most famous for the game “Civilization”—“Pirates” and “Alpha Centauri” are two other favorites). The video follows Meier as he judges a contest to create a video game in 48 hours, apparently the video game equivalent of the 3-day novel and 24-hour comic book.
The master behind Civilization I through IV, Pirates!, Railroad Tycoon, and dozens of other titles, Sid Meier is one of the most acclaimed game designers of all time. Always a true believer in the idea that games will someday rule the world, Meier wants to inspire a new generation of game designers. Namely, the ones from his alma mater at Michigan, where he returns in this episode of Motherboard, in order to judge and of course participate in the “7th Annual Wolverine Soft 48 Hour Game Design Contest,” which pits coders and designers against each other in a race to create a game in two days.
Sid first used a computer as an undergrad at Michigan, when punch cards and time-sharing meant that one mistake cost hours of time. It was on that early IBM mainframe that Sid designed the first tic-tac‐toe game, a use for which he was chastised and nearly kicked out.