Should the Civilization Video Games Be Fun—or Real?
It’s 1944. The world is plunged deep into war. American troops are on the verge of crossing into German territory. The war has dragged on for years. Heavy bombers and fighter planes have regularly made incursions on Berlin. Tanks, Marines, A.T. guns, and bunker-busting assault guns stand at the ready, waiting for direction from their commander.
But their commander in chief isn’t Franklin Delano Roosevelt; it’s Harriet Tubman. The Germans (technically the Prussians) are led not by Adolf Hitler but by Tecumseh. The war started way back in 1882. The Japanese, Soviets, and Brits are nowhere to be found, but the Americans have found a loyal democratic ally in Charlemagne, leader of the Qing civilization.
It’s just another day in Sid Meier’s Civilization VII.
Since 1991, players of the Civilization video game franchise have grown empires from scratch, turn by turn, from antiquity through the present (and sometimes beyond). They build and grow cities, manage international relations and trade, and direct technological development. Wonders of the world get erected, wars devastate empires, and random events cause chaos. Eventually, someone wins the game—usually through certain scientific milestones, cultural domination, or military conquest (at which point dedicated players either keep playing in that world anyway or fire up a new playthrough from scratch).
What started as a game played on large floppy disks for MS-DOS is now a 34-year-old franchise, with the latest iteration playable after a brief download to an ordinary laptop or gaming console. There have been sci-fi and colonization spinoff games and multiple attempts to adapt the concepts as a board game. The franchise sold 70 million copies by June 2024, and players have collectively spent over a billion hours in the game. Those numbers surely surged in February 2025, with the release of Civilization VII—the first main title in the franchise since Civilization VI‘s release in 2016.
The challenge for gamemakers in every iteration of the game is simple, yet ambitious: to simulate how civilizations grow, change, and react over nothing less than the entire course of recorded human history.
Some players like the game to mimic the real world, playing on a real-world map with all the civilizations starting in the right locations and all their rulers acting as they might have in reality. Others like to play as Gandhi but nuke their enemies into oblivion.
You can play however you want in Civilization. Players can play against other people or against leaders simulated by the game’s own artificial intelligence. The latest game allows for even more customization. Leaders are no longer tied to their real-world homelands. Players have three different civilizations over the course of a full playthrough, choosing their civilization’s identity as the game progresses from the Antiquity Age to the Exploration Age to the Modern Age. Benjamin Franklin might lead Rome before leading the Normans and finally leading the Americans to ultimate victory in the final age.
Throughout the course of the franchise, a tension has persisted: Is Civilization really a simulator of world history that captures how the world grows and changes, or is it just a fun way to move troops around on a map? People don’t expect the Red Dead Redemption franchise to be an accurate simulation of outlaw life, or for Grand Theft Auto to be an accurate simulation of whatever you do in Grand Theft Auto. But people do expect accuracy from sports and racing video games, and strategy games like Civilization fall closer to this end of the gaming spectrum. If players didn’t expect Civilization to react realistically to their choices, it would shatter the mirage the game offers of leading your own civilization.
So, should Civilization reflect how the world works, or should it just offer fun gameplay?
Every Government Is a Good Government?
Was Benjamin Franklin an authoritarian? No, but he could be in Civilization VII.
When the world transitions into the Modern Age, players must choose what form of government they want for the rest of the game. Faced with the choice, Franklin probably would have picked an elective r
Article from Reason.com
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