Book Review: Sid Meier's Memoir!

I’ve played far too many hours of Civilization throughout my life. If you haven’t, or you’re not an aspiring game designer, then you may find large sections of Sid Meier’s Memoir! hard to appreciate. But I do love Sid Meier’s games and I do dabble in making games as a hobby. So, I really appreciated this memoir that takes you through Meier’s entire career as well as some of his rules of game design that have made him so successful.

This book is not a deep dive. Each chapter, which generally covers a game or two, provides some insight about how a game was developed and why it worked (or did not work) for the player. But the chapters are short, and many of them concentrate on just one aspect of the game or Meier’s philosophy. The two things I found most interesting were the inspiration behind each game, and the gameplay rules that Meier learned over time.

It’s not a tell-all, and it doesn’t cover much about the video game business. You won’t get a play-by-play about the development of Civilization VI. Meier says that he left much of the business side to his partners. Instead, this is a book about the creative process.

Meier touches on enough of his personal life to give you a general outline of his life and some of the real-life hobbies that led to some of his best games. Again, most of the details are left out, but there’s enough there to be inspiring. The thing I found the most surprising in the entire book, is that despite his high position, Meier continued to be an active participant in the programming of his games (or at least the prototypes) late into his career.

In short, Sid Meier’s Memoir! is limited in its scope. It’s mainly about game design and the creative process. But it does that well. You won’t quite feel like you’re in the trenches with the team making Civilization, but you will feel like you have a sense of where their head was at. The lessons about game design and the creative process that Meier provides are drawn from deep experience and most seem self-evidently true. The writing is clear and the insights are real. If you loved his games or you want to make games, you should read this book.