A very interesting interview with Sid Meir back when he was much younger. He mentions some things you do not hear anywhere else today such as designing games to make the player ‘comfortable’ meaning surrounding the player with things he or she recognizes (like history themes). When asked about the bad graphics for Civilization, Sid Meir turns it around and calls it a feature. “It makes you use your imagination.” He also dismisses the ‘realistic’ design as harming imagination. No one says anything like this today.
Games used to be designed to ignite people’s imaginations. Now, games are being designed to ignite the developers‘ imagination. Sid Meir hasn’t lost this theme of imagination as he repeats it even with his excellent GDC 2010 speech about the ‘dancing elephants’.
The reason why Shakespeare is Shakespeare is because his craft is exciting the imagination. His craft of writing and craft of play writing was to target people’s imaginations. Interestingly, it was not his imagination he focused on. It is intentional that the plays get bawdy (because our imaginations work more with such themes) or that every line twists itself into a metaphor (metaphors use imagination).
And this is why one can say that the old games are better. They were ‘better’ in that they more successfully zeroed in on the imagination. This explains why the old games live on (because they use our imagination) where new games with their ‘realistic graphics’ age like milk.
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