Sid Meier's Memoir!
by Sid Meier · first published 2020
71% recommend29% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Firsthand account of building classic strategy games, valued for its candid look at game design, the value of being a generalist across programming, audio and graphics, and the business side. Suits aspiring developers.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"The life and career of the legendary developer celebrated as the "godfather of computer gaming," and creator of Civilization. Over his four-decade career, Sid Meier has produced some of the world's most popular video games, including Sid Meier's Civilization, which has sold more than 51 million units worldwide and accumulated more than one billion hours of play. Sid Meier's Memoir! is the story of an obsessive young computer enthusiast who helped launch a multibillion-dollar industry. Writing with warmth and ironic humor, Meier describes the genesis of his influential studio, MicroProse, foun
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Sid Meier's Memoir! describes all of this and more, I can recommend it if you liked this article. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50489373-sid-meier-s-mem...
on “Sid Meier: More Than Just Civilization” ↗Sid Meier's Memoir! is a great read if you're a fan of those kinds of things. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50489373-sid-meier-s-mem...
on “DOS game “F-15 Strike Eagle II” reverse engineering/reconstruction war stories” ↗Wil Wheaton reads Masters of Doom, almost worth it for his impressions alone. “Sid Meier’s Memoir” is great along the same genre.
on “Ask HN: Programming Audio Book Recommendations” ↗Sid Meier's Memoir, too.
on “Great books on classic video games” ↗I recently finished Sid Meier's Memoir! I found it fascinating and highly readable. If you like games you will like this book. Meier's inspirations and insights into what makes a game fun make this memoir well worth it to anyone who is…
on “Sid Meier's Memoir” ↗…Bullshit Jobs - This is a controversial book (and paper) for obvious reasons. However, it really resonated with me at the time I read it. I think it was the thing that pushed me to find a different job. Sid Meier's Memoir! - I've had a passing interest in developing games for a long time and having the opportunity to peek into the life and mind of someone who created one of the most iconic games of all time was really…
on “Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2020?” ↗I really enjoyed "Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games". If you enjoyed Meier's games or even if you just like video games I think you will enjoy this book.
on “Ask HN: Best non-technical read of the year?” ↗I just got done reading Sid Meier's Memoir! He also touts the importance of being a generalist. You can have programming as your primary expertise, but you should have a bare minimal competence in both audio and graphics. On a number of occasions,…
on “Why decline in generalists leads to disjointed games and harms tool quality” ↗I’m only mentioning the ones I haven’t seen mentioned here so far The Ultimate History of Video Games - Steven L. Kent - loved this. Sid Meier’s Memoir was good. And not really a must read but I enjoyed David Kushner’s Jacked about the Grand Theft Auto guys.
on “Ask HN: What are some must-read books about video games and gaming history?” ↗This one and Sid Meier's "Memoir!" are two of my favourite software dev stories. Both are quick easy reads / and from the same era... code-nostalgia and hard- business mixed together.
on “Bruce Bastian, WordPerfect co-creator, has died” ↗Here’s a human recommendation if you like that you may like these that I’ve read: 1.Sid Meier’s Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games — Sid Meier 2.Source Code: My Beginnings — Bill Gates 3.Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making — Tony Fadell 4.Prince of Persia: The Journals — Jordan Mechner…
on “Show HN: I scraped 3B Goodreads reviews to train a better recommendation model” ↗I love that Meier's memoir is titled: "Sid Meier's Memoir!" (Although remapradio's login system isn't working for me - it uses magic links, which bring me to a logged-in https://remap.memberful.com/account page, but on remapradio.com I still show as logged…
on “The Lost Treasure of Sid Meier's Pirates” ↗…most competitive tech field. When you ask people why they learned to program the answer is frequently because they wanted to make a game. Also, based on reading "Blood, Sweat, and Pixels", along with "Sid Meier's Memoir!" the industry appears to be very tight knit so having connections in the industry seems to be very important.
on “Ask HN: Why are game dev positions hard to find?” ↗I have two computer game books on my to read list - Sid Meier's Memoir! and Ken Williams' Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings. In the 90s there was an accounting scandal that caused the downfall of Sierra, it's a pretty interesting read [0]. [0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3vem8/inside-story-sierra-o...
on “Roberta Williams, the Queen of Graphic Adventure Video Games” ↗I started reading Sid Meier’s Memoir not even two hours ago, so when I saw this submission’s title my immediate reaction was to joke “Civilization is a game by Sid Meier in which…”. I brushed it off and clicked the link only to read: >…
on “What Is Civilization?” ↗