If my gravestone says, “Sid Meier, developed Civilization,” I’m happy with that. It’s a game I’m happy to be known for.
» The Game of Everything, Part 2: Playing Civilization The Digital Antiquarian
As a game designer, you have ultimate power. And with this ultimate power comes very little responsibility.
» Starcraft (A History in Two Acts) The Digital Antiquarian
Great success brings with it great expectations. And sometimes it brings an identity crisis as well.
» Half-Life The Digital Antiquarian
Around twenty years ago, people would have laughed if you told them that videogames would end up at the Smithsonian, but the Half-Life team really did want to make games that were more than just throwaway toys. The rule against cinematics — which made our jobs much harder and also ended up leaving a lot of my favorite work out of the game — was a kind of ideological stake in the ground: we really did want the game and the story to be the same thing. It was far from flawless, but it was really trying to push the boundaries of a young medium.
» Choose Your Own Adventure The Digital Antiquarian
The first and most iconic of all the Choose Your Own Adventure books involved spelunking, just as did the first and most iconic of all computer-based adventure games.
» The Last Adventures of Legend The Digital Antiquarian
The early days were the best. We had successes, we had fun, and we had a good business model. As the industry changed, everything became more complicated and harder.
» The Life and Times of Maxis, Part 1: SimEverything The Digital Antiquarian
I’m still to this day just blown away by continental drift and things like that, stuff that most people think sounds pretty boring.
The Minecraft Generation (Published 2016)
How a clunky Swedish computer game is teaching millions of children to master the digital world.
Game
Come inhabit an exotic world and chisel through a layer cake of thousand-year-old civilizations.
The Legacy of No Man’s Sky in Game Design
Two years ago, No Man’s Sky, a sci-fi space exploration game boasting powerful procedural generation, released to a flurry of negative…
The Rise and Fall of the Lone Game Developer – Holy Ghost Stories
In the early 80s, all it took to make a game was a computer, some graph paper, and a lot of determination.
» Ultima, Part 1 The Digital Antiquarian
When we left Richard Garriott, California Pacific had just released his first game, Akalabeth, a substantial windfall for the 19-year-old university student. In between classes and SCA events, he spent his sophomore year at the University of Texas writing a new, much more ambitious game, which CP published just as the spring semester of 1981 was wrapping up. I think we can best proceed by just diving right into the game that retroactively came to be known as Ultima I.
The Same Old Fantasies Behind AI and New Technology
A review of Adam Becker, “More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity” (Basic Books, 2025).
» The CRPG Renaissance, Part 3: TSR is Dead… The Digital Antiquarian
“How do you make a small fortune in tabletop gaming?” runs an old joke.