I’ve read thatCovert Actionwas one of your personal favorites among the games
you designed.
I enjoyed it but it had that
particular problem where
the individual mini-
sequences were a little
too involving and they
took you away from the
overall case. The idea
was that there was this
plot brewing and you had
to go from city to city and
from place to place find-
ing these clues that would
tell you piece by piece
what the overall plot was
and find the people that
were involved. I thought it was a neat idea, it was different. If I had it to do over again, I’d
probably make a few changes. There was a code-breaking sequence, and circuit
unscrambling, and there were some cool puzzles in it. I thought that overall there were
a lot of neat ideas in it but the whole was probably not quite as good as the individual
parts. I would probably do a couple of things differently now.
SoCovert Actionseems to have had origins similar toPirates!You started with,
“I want to do a covert espionage game...”
Right, what are the cool things about that. And unfortunately, the technology had gotten
to the point where I could do each individual part in more detail and that for me
detracted from the overall comprehensibility of the game.
InPirates!andCovert Action, the player can see their character in the game,
and the player is really role-playing a character. By contrast, inRailroad Tycoon,
Civilization,orGettysburg!, the player does not really have a character to
role-play. I’m curious about that shift in your game design, where the player
used to be a specific character and now is more of a godlike figure.
It’s good to be God. I think that’s really a scale issue more than a specific game design
choice. It’s fun to see yourself, and even in a game likeCivilizationyou see your palace,
you do tend to see things about yourself. But the other thing is that a pirate looks cool,
while a railroad baron doesn’t look especially cool. Why go to the trouble to put him on
the screen? I’ve never really thought too much about that, but I think it’s probably more
of a scale thing. If you’re going through hundreds and thousands of years of time, and
you’re a semi-godlike character doing lots of different things, it’s less interesting what
you actually look like than if you’re more of a really cool individual character.
Chapter 2: Interview: Sid Meier 23
Covert Action