- A choir sang the Civilization 4 theme song on America's Got Talent - 27 July 2018
If you ever played Civilization 4 you'll know Baba Yetu, the theme song for the game. It's the work of composer Christopher Tin, who ended up winning a Grammy for the song and in the process, Civilization 4 became the first video game to win a Grammy . Now, it's another first for Baba Yetu, which has starred in America's Got Talent. Read more…
- The best covers of PC gaming music - 22 August 2015
Image by cuttingthebullet PC games have produced some beloved music, but there's a tiny irony in the fact that the technological advantages that the PC held over other platforms in the 1990s have actually hindered a music scene from forming around that original work. We had CD-ROM, hard drives, and discrete soundcards years before anyone else, and those advances pushed many studios toward not only full-motion video but elaborate, orchestral music rather than the chiptunes possible on the NES, SNES, and other sound palettes—a sound that has become a beloved aesthetic and genre in and of itself. Nintendo s (and even Sega s) platforms inspire a ton of affection, but there s still a lot of worthy professional and amateur PC gaming floating around the web. Mines, Spelunky Songe is an unbelievably talented multi-instrumentalist, mixing everything from flutes, drums, and ocarinas (when a…
- Ranking the best and worst of the Civilization series - 14 August 2015
survey fridays In this new column, we ask you to rank and reminisce about PC gaming's biggest series. Look for the survey link in our Twitter and Facebook feeds each week, and the results every Friday. Previously, we ranked the Mass Effect and Call of Duty series. I remember there being a lot of anger when Civilization V launched. It just wasn't Civ IV, the glorious, glorious Civ IV. But a few expansions (and a lot of mods) later, has public opinion changed? With the help of a thousand-plus survey respondents, I ventured to find out. First, some caveats. I left out Alpha Centauri, because A) it dropped the Civilization name and B) it isn't fair to put a horse in a toddler race. Though I would love to see a horse absolutely smoke a bunch of dumb toddlers, who can barely walk, never mind run. It's a funny picture. Anyway, I also left out any game not in the main Microprose and Firaxis ser…
- Sid Meier talks strategy, game design and Civ - 8 October 2014
Developers interviewing developers? This will not stand*! Actually this chat between Sid Meier and XCOM: Enemy Unknown designer Jake Solomon is funny and interesting, and a rare chance to see Sid Meier in the wild. Solomon initially tries to establish whether or not Meier is a Canadian spy, and moves on to quiz the Yoda of strategy design on his origins and inspirations. It's particularly charming to hear about the humble origins of Microprose. This anecdote reveals how much the games industry has exploded since the early days of the medium, though tools like Game Maker and Unity have kept this spirit alive. "When people ask me 'how do you become a game designer?' well you just sit down and type a game into your computer and you're a game designer. That's really the way it was back then. I did all the art, the sound, the programming, printed the manuals on my printer and put them in a b…
- Borderlands, Civilization 3 & 4 will survive GameSpy shutdown - 22 April 2014
With GameSpy's online services set to shut down on May 31, 2K Games has stepped forward and announced which of its online-enabled multiplayer games will survive the closure. Borderlands , Civilization III , and Civilization IV , and their respective expansions will all begin making the transition from GameSpy servers to Steamworks in the coming days, while several other games will see their multiplayer servers go down with the GameSpy ship.
- Why Sid Meier's name is on his games - 26 June 2013
Sid Meier's name is well known in gaming circles for the addicting "just one more turn" mentality associated with his strategy games. Of course, there is never any mistaking what his games are because his name is usually in the game's title. It can't be because of ego, as colleagues say Meier is a very soft-spoken, unassuming man. "In the years and all the people I've worked with at Firaxis," said designer Jake Solomon, "there has never been anyone who's had a personality issue with Sid, 'cause it's not possible. He's such a wonderful person." So just how did it happen that the brilliant strategy designer's games get that title treatment? It started in Meier's days at MicroProse with partner Bill Stealey, as Meier was pitching the idea for a pirate game. "Bill said, 'When's my next flight simulator coming out?' And I said, 'I'm not doing a flight simulator; I'm doing a pirates game,'" M…
- Community heroes: we talk to the man behind Civilization II’s Eternal War - 17 July 2012
James ‘Lycerius’ Moore played a single game of Civilization II off and on for ten years, extending far into a dystopian future that he described as “a hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation”. The story caught fire, spreading from reddit to the specialist games press and national media before returning to reddit as /r/theeternalwar, where fans trade fiction, music, and art. Last week, I spoke to James about his experience of the game, the rationale behind playing the same campaign for a decade, and what it’s like to have your cool gaming anecdote capture the imaginations of so many people. You can check out our previous coverage of The Eternal War here. You said in your initial reddit post that the campaign is about ten years old? Yeah. Do you know exactly...? It’s about nine and a half, something like that. Presumably there must have come a point when you decided that you were j…
- PC AI sucks at Civilization, reads manual, starts kicking ass - 13 July 2011
The Massachusetts institute of technology have been experimenting with their computers' AI. Specifically the way they deal with the meaning of words. You might think that the best way to analyse this kind of thing would be with a human to PC conversation, like in Short Circuit. That's not the case. Instead, the boffins handed over PC classic, Civilization, and let the AI get on with it. They sucked - winning a mere 46 per cent of the time. The difficulty setting the machines were playing on has not been specified. Then the researchers handed over the instructions and taught the PCs a "machine-learning system so it could use a player's manual to guide the development of a game-playing strategy." They didn't teach the PC how to play Civ, but they taught them how to read about it. The system had no pre-programmed notion of turn-based strategy or even what the objects in the world represent…
- Civilization on sale this weekend - 18 February 2011
Steam are throwing a Civilization sale this weekend. Civilization 5 is available for £17.99/$29.99 and the Civilization 4 complete pack is available for £3.75/$7.50. The Complete Pack comes with Civ 4's three expansions, including Beyond the Sword, Warlords, and Colinization, which is a massive slice of top strategy gaming at an excellent price. If you've always wanted give Civ a go, now's as good a time as any. The games are on sale on Steam now. Recently, Civilization 4 became the first game to win Grammy with an award for its theme music. For more on Civilization, have a look at our pick of the ten best Civ 5 mods, and our guide to making your own maps.
- Civilization IV wins Grammy - 14 February 2011
Civilisation IV has carved itself into the history books after becoming the first videogame to win a Grammy. Baba Yetu, a song written for the PC strategy game, won the Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s) category of the prestigious awards. The song won following its release on composer Christopher Tin's 2009 album Calling All Dawns, but it was originally created for the Firaxis-developed game. It plays during the game's opening theme. Kieron Gillen reviewed Civilization IV for Eurogamer back in October 2005, awarding it a stonking 9/10. Video:
