Legendary game designer Sid Meier gave a keynote talk Friday at the Game Developers Conference, explaining to his fellow game designers how to trick players into having a good time.
“If you play Civilization, you are an egomaniac,” Meier joked at the beginning of his talk. Through lots of playtesting, Meier has discovered that his players have come to expect to be rewarded constantly, and assume that when something bad happens in the game, it’s because the game’s A.I. “cheated.”