So when you come up with your ideas for new games, you start with the set-
ting of the game instead of with a gameplay genre.
I think a good example of
that isPirates!The idea
was to do a pirate game,
and then it was, “OK,
there’s not really a genre
out there that fits what I
think is cool about
pirates. The pirate movie,
with the sailing, the
sword fighting, the stop-
ping in different towns
and all that kind of stuff,
really doesn’t fit into a
genre.” So we picked and
chose different pieces of
different things like a sailing sequence in real-time and a menu-based adventuring sys-
tem for going into town, and then a sword fight in an action sequence. So we picked
different styles for the different parts of the game as we thought they were appropriate,
as opposed to saying, “We’re going to do a game that’s real-time, or turn-based, or
first-person, or whatever” and then make the pirates idea fit into that.
I think it’s interesting thatPirates!was designed with all those mini-games, but
you haven’t really used discrete sub-games so much since. Did you not like the
way the mini-games came together?
Well, I think it worked pretty well inPirates!It doesn’t work for every situation. One of
the rules of game design that I have learned over the years is that it’s better to have one
great game than two good games. And, unless you’re careful, too many sub-games can
lose the player. In other words, if you’ve got a good mini-game, then the player’s going
to get absorbed in that. And when they’re done with that, they may well have lost the
thread of what your story was, or if any game is too engrossing it may disturb the flow of
your story. Frankly, the mini-games inPirates!were simple enough that you didn’t lose
track of where you were or what your objective was or what you were trying to do. But I
wrote a game a couple of years later calledCovert Actionwhich had more intense
mini-games. You’d go into a building, and you’d go from room to room, and you’d throw
grenades and shoot people and open safes and all that kind of stuff and you’d spend
probably ten minutes running through this building trying to find more clues and when
you came out you’d say to yourself, “OK, what was the mission I was on, what was I try-
ing to do here?” So that’s an example for me of the wrong way to have mini-games
inside of an overall story.
22 Chapter 2: Interview: Sid Meier
Pirates!