![]() The most famous Facebook game, FarmVille, basically endowed each player with a digital farm and had him check in every few hours to see if everything was growing as planned. Videogame players had argued for years that games are an art form, and yet the most popular Facebook games threw narrative and visual sophistication out the window. I want to play a real Civ game, not some dumbed-down Facebook version," whined a typical commenter on CivFanatics, an online forum for Civilization players. The game's creator, Sid Meier, somehow packed a plausible simulator of human history into a three-megabyte file. The narratives that emerge bear little resemblance to actual events-Civilization can end in the year 2100 AD with a nuclear-armed Montezuma ruling the planet-but that's part of the fun. Players settle new cities, research technologies, meet other civilizations, build world wonders, and conquer the globe. From there, however, the decisions proliferate. Their first task is simple: Pick a location on the map to found the civilization's capital city. Players choose one of 14 civilizations, from the Americans to the Zulus. We have a computer game called Civilization to prove it.Ĭivilization came out in 1991, but it begins in 4000 BC. But if you flip Huizinga's idea on its head-play arising and unfolding in and as civilization-it turns out to be a blast. "For many years," he wrote, "the conviction has grown upon me that civilization arises and unfolds in and as play." The argument was not quite as fun as it sounds: It included long layovers in philosophy, linguistics, and law. In 1938, less than 20 years before the first videogames, the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga presented his theory of the world. But will fans play his new Civilization for Facebook? Sid Meier is one of the most beloved computer game designers of all time. ![]()
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