The Construction of Civilization

Résumé

The approach here is not a comprehensive history of Sid Meier’s Civilization series. I have little interest in reciting a general account of the series’ development or the early history of its developer Microprose, the company founded by Bill Steele and Sid Meier. My purpose is to provide a few methodological incursions into different, fragmentary pieces of the series history and engage with the games on technical, social and design-centric grounds not usually mentioned in general popular histories. I want to highlight the process of historical study and the many paths revealed in looking deeply into a computational object; seeing it situated in a design tradition and in the context its larger influence on a society of players.