Name: Sid Meier's Memoir!
ISBN: 9780393868296

Sid Meier's Memoir!

"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, founded in 1982 after a trip to a Las Vegas arcade, and recounts the development of landmark games, from vintage classics like Pirates! and Railroad Tycoon, to Civilization and beyond. Articulating his philosophy that a video game should be "a series of interesting decisions," Meier also shares his perspective on the history of the industry, the psychology of gamers, and fascinating insights into the creative process, including his rules of good game design"

What Hacker News says

no-name-hereAug 2026

I love that Meier's memoir is titled: "Sid Meier's Memoir!"

(Although remapradio's login system isn't working for me - it uses a magic link, which brings me to a logged-in https://remap.memberful.com/account page, but on remapradio.com I still show as logged out even on hard refresh - Chromium, no ad blocker.)

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mentosNov 2025

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 5.A Theory of Fun for Game Design — Raph Koster 6.Ask Iwata: Words of Wisdom from Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s Legendary CEO — Viz Media (Editor) 7.Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games — Cliff Bleszinski 8.Once Upon Atari: How I Made History by Killing an Industry — Howard Scott Warshaw 9.Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry — Jason Schreier 10.Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture — David Kushner

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songeaterJul 2024

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.

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colechristensenMay 2024

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...

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ElCapitanMarklaMay 2024

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.

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BeetleBOct 2023

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, he'd have a vision for one aspect of his game that the whole team was against, and the way he would convince them would be to make a working prototype of that feature. The audio/graphics would be poor, but they needed to be good enough to demonstrate it and have his team members play.

He could get underlings to execute on his vision, but he felt that if they didn't believe in it, they likely would put a lot less effort than he would.

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