作者：Kris Graft

Sid Meier仍然认为自己拥有世上最好的工作：制作电子游戏。这位《文明》之父已经拥有数十年游戏制作背景，但却毫无停步的迹象。

最近的市场变化为其带来了持续制作游戏的新机遇，尽管这一行有许多元老已经变身为不再插手游戏制作的管理层，今天的Meier仍然像过去一样，事必躬亲地参与游戏开发工作，并在上周向苹果App Store推出了免费iOS游戏《Ace Patrol》。

Ace-Patrol(from digitalspy.com)

他坦言，“这些平台让我们得以更直接地制作游戏，我编写的代码可以直接导入游戏，五分钟后就能看到效果，这是一种非常紧凑的开发循环。”

Meier在其与他人联合成立的Firaxis工作室中担任创意开发总监，尽管并未参与一些游戏（包括《文明》系列以及《幽浮：未知敌人》）的日常决策，但会过问工作室中的一切事务。

“我站在开发工作的前线”

但最近，他选择直接参与的项目却为其带来了新挑战：《文明变革》为主机用户引进4X战略；《文明世界》则需针对社交网站进行调整。

《Ace Patrol》为Meier带来了另一项挑战：将基于hex，类似于桌游的战略游戏引进移动平台，用免费增值模式。虽然《文明变革》已经进入移动平台，但《Ace Patrol》才是该工作室第一款针对手机和平板电脑而设计的移动游戏。对Meier而言，直面这些挑战就是一种乐趣。

他表示“有些项目，我只负责创造原型，然后移交给他们‘这就是游戏运行的方式’，之后就不怎么再干预游戏的制作过程了。现在，我是位于开发的前线，编写运行游戏的代码，也就是玩家与之互动的元素。”

《Ace Patrol》是由包括Meier在内的8、9人核心团队制作而成。他自己负责编写游戏玩法和AI，“在小规模团队中，我们的会议更少，更有时候制作内容，所以这很有趣。”

Meier自上个世纪80年代起就开始制作电子游戏，并于1982年与他人联合创立了Microprose。针对当前小型团队和小预算游戏的复兴现象，他发表了自己于2013年与80年代游戏开发相似性的看法。

“我们现在看到了更为民主化的游戏开发过程，更多样性的游戏风格、主题和题材，新设计师也获得了制作游戏的大好机遇。当前的游戏开发与80年代确有一些共通之处，即小预算的游戏拥有更多机遇和风险。现在也有一些杰出的AAA游戏。现在涌现了真正多种多样的游戏，我们不必再受限于三四种游戏题材。此外，我们可以自由尝试创新，这一点也同80年代颇为相似。”

“一系列有趣的选择”

sid-meier(from joergspielt.de)

Meier多年来一直坚持自己对游戏的定义：“一系列有趣的选择”。他称人人都有自己的游戏定义，但他自己的定义仍能够经受时间的考验。

他称“这种定义对我仍然很适用！有时候，这就是我们看待游戏问题的方式。如果有什么情况不妥，那就可以归结于哪些决策不对，我们可以由此查看这些决策究竟是否可行。这是看待游戏的简便方式，通常你若再多看一眼，事情就会更为明朗。”

那么他所指的“有趣的选择”是什么意思？Meier对此回应称，“你希望玩家看到每个路径的一切可能，但根据他们一次所能够完成的目标来看，只有一个选择是有意义的。”

新平台和新运营方式扩展了Meier持续制作电子游戏的机遇，我们很难想象他会止步不前。“我可能已经拥有世上最好的工作，制作游戏是创意与科学的绝佳组合。看到游戏的成长与进化也许是最令人满足的事情——也就是看着游戏从模糊的理念转变为具体而有趣的内容，看着它获得生命并超乎自己的想象。正是这种逐日的进步感让我对这一行永葆激情。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Sid Meier’s still making stuff, and he’ll probably never stop

By Kris Graft

Sid Meier still says he probably has the best job in the world: making video games. The man behind games like Civilization and Pirates has been making games for decades, and he’s showing no signs of stopping any time soon.

Recent shifts in the market have afforded him the opportunity to constantly be making stuff, even as so many veterans eventually find themselves as hands-off managers. Today, Meier is as hands-on with game development as ever, most recently heading up creation of the free-to-play iOS game Ace Patrol, launched last week on the App Store.

“These platforms let us work on games more directly,” he tells us. “The code that I write goes right into the game. I can see it five minutes later, and it’s a very tight development loop.”

Meier pretty much has free reign at Firaxis, the studio he co-founded, where he serves as director of creative development. He has his fingers in everything at the studio, even if he’s not involved in day-to-day decisions, from the Civilization series that still bears his name, to the successful XCOM: Enemy Unknown.
“I’m right here on the front lines”

But nowadays, the projects he chooses to be directly hands-on with offer him new challenges: Civilization Revolution was about bringing 4x strategy to a console audience; Civilization World was about adapting the series for social networks.

Ace Patrol offers Meier a another challenge: bringing hex-based, board game-like strategy to mobiles, within a free-to-play business model. Though we’ve seen Civilization Revolution come to mobiles, Ace Patrol is the first game made specifically for phones and tablets. Taking on these challenges first-hand is part of the fun for Meier.

“On some projects, I’d create a prototype, then hand it over and say, ‘This is how the game ought to work,’ and have less of a direct connection with how the game turned out,” he says. “Here, I’m right there on the front lines, writing the code that actually runs the game, that the players are interacting with.”

Including Meier, Ace Patrol was made by a core team of eight or nine. He programmed the gameplay and the AI himself. He says, “With smaller teams, there’s a lot fewer meetings, and a lot more work time to create, so that’s fun.”

Meier’s been working on video games since at least the early ’80s — he co-founded Microprose in 1982. With the resurgence of small teams and smaller-budget games we ask if he sees any parallels between game development in 2013 and in the 80s.

“We’re seeing a little more democratization of gaming, and a wider variety of game styles and topics and genres, and new designers really getting an opportunity to make games,” he says. “There are some parallels there to the ’80s, when somewhat smaller budgets made it possible to take more chances and some more risks. That said, there are great triple-A games as well. There’s a real variety of games, and not the sense that we’re locked into three or four genres. That also hearkens back to the ’80s, when we were free to try new things and just see if they worked.”

“A series of interesting choices”

For many years, Meier has stuck with his personal definition of games: “A series of interesting choices.” He says everyone has their own definition, but over time, this still applies to his type of games.

“It still works for me!” he says. “It’s a way we look at game problems, sometimes. If something doesn’t feel right, it has to do with drilling down to what the decisions are, to examine if they are really working. It’s a pretty simplistic way of looking at games, but often if you look at it for a second, some things will become clearer.”

So what does he mean by an “interesting choice?” Meier says, “You want the player to see possibilities in each path, but based on what they’re trying to accomplish in one moment, one of those choices makes sense.”

New platforms and new ways to do business will afford Meier to keep on making video games. Talking to him, it’s hard to imagine he’ll ever stop. “I have probably the world’s best job. Making games is a really cool combination of creativity and science, or certainty. Being able to watch a game grow and evolve is probably the most satisfying thing — to see it change from a vague idea to something that’s concrete and fun, to see it come to life hopefully better than you imagined. That day-to-day sense of progress keeps me coming back.” （source：gamasutra）