Sid Meier

My name is Sid Meier, I'm 66 years old, Baltimore, Maryland, headquarters of Firaxis Games. I am a game designer, have been for quite a few years, going back to some of the early days of computer game design. Most of the games that I've made have been in kind of the strategy genre. The best known one is called Civilization. It's about beating your civilization through 6,000 years of history. It involves exploration, technology, politics, military, armies, and teaches you a little bit about history but really lets you tell your own story. In addition, I've written games about pirates, and railroads, and airplanes, and submarines, and spaceships, and a number of other topics. I work at Firaxis Games, and we are best known for our Civilization and XCOM lines of games.

Great. Maybe it makes sense to start with the beginning. In the intro of your book, you say that your reputation is – this is a quote from you – a benevolent industry patriarch. How do you sort of think of yourself, and how did the experience of writing this book sort of change or maybe otherwise add new facets to how you relate to your work?

Well, I think I've always felt that part of my job and all of our jobs in the industry is to promote the entire industry, not just our particular game or our particular company. For a long time, it was not clear that video games would be around forever, would survive. It was considered, oh, you're wasting your time playing games. Don't do that. There's better things to be doing with your time.

So certainly in the earlier days of our industry, it was kind of building the industry as a whole was part of our goal. So for that reason, I was always happy to see another company come out with a great game, because I knew that would bring some more players in, and it would help us to establish ourselves as a viable entertainment industry. So I think that's kind of been one of the things that has motivated me as a benevolent patriarch is this idea that we're kind of working together to bring fun to people, to kind of show how varied, how interesting, how different computer games can be. And if you want to check it out, there's probably a game for you. It might be a game that we've written. It might be another game another designer or another company has written.

But we're kind of in this process of creating this new entertainment industry, art form, whatever you want to call it. And that's been – My role has been to try to be part of that, partly in the games that I've created, trying to bring new ideas, etc. to gaming, but also supporting our company and supporting the industry.

So yeah, these are all very big words. I think even when we say video game or industry, it's capital V video game, capital I industry. And so along those lines, with the recognition that yeah, this is all sort of a new space and a new field, although it's been around for a while now. Do you feel overall, when thinking about video games and sort of where they are now, are we living up to our potential? When you started, is this sort of where you saw us being now? Not that when you started you were thinking about 2020? [Laughs.]

Well, I think I always appreciated the potential of what we were doing. The fact that games were interactive, the fact that the games kind of drew you in in a way that some of the more passive forms of entertainment maybe didn't. I thought the potential was there even from the very earliest days. But for a long time, games didn't look as good as movies. They didn't sound as good as recorded music. We were trying to make up with our strengths for some of the weaknesses in our industry.

So it was not really a struggle, but it was a challenge. We were definitely working hard to be competitive and to say, yes, spend an hour playing video games. You'll find it rewarding. You'll find it fun. So I think that it's been this very interesting journey. Now I was not assured that we would get to 2020, but I felt that we deserved to and that we had something unique to say, to provide, to give people. I kind of expected if we did it right, we would grow, we would thrive, and people would find something that they would enjoy in video games. I think that has happened.

To think back from where we started, it's been quite a journey and quite a huge change where we now have a generation that's kind of grown up always having video games available and just something that you do. That was very much not the case when we started. You had to almost build your own computer to be able to play games. Imagine those 18 pixels were a space invader coming down to destroy the earth. So we've really come a long way, and that's really part of what's behind this book is to provide some of that context to from a little bit of our origin story, where things came from before the Internet, before CD-ROMs. It was a whole different world then, but it was kind of created the seed for the world that we live in today.

Well, I don't know if you think of it in these terms as far as other developers who were coming up when you were coming up, or other developers who in that period of time also made a pretty big name for themselves making video games.

Do you ever sort of look out – you mentioned it's been a long way here where we are now, but when it comes to the look ahead at things that are still a long way off, do you feel like others in your cohort, when they are assessing this, and their legacies are where they feel things might go next, do you have a feeling on where people like that, where they are overreaching, maybe where they are underreaching, as sort of trying to sum up where we've been and where we hope to go?

I think what's been fascinating about the industry is never really having a good sense of where we are going to go. I think it's often been a new technology, a new capability that's kind of pushed us in this direction or that direction. In my career I've seen the Internet appear, and that opened up this new set of possibilities. The CD-ROM all of a sudden we had more capacity than we could ever imagine. We can do movies now. VR, consoles that are super powerful.

In many ways it's been these kind of technology jumps that have pushed us in this direction or another. So I think that makes it hard to predict what's happening next because it is so much dependent on these various forces that just kind of appear. Something will appear this year that you couldn't even have imagined last year. So I certainly can look back on where we've come from and see how that path evolved, but it's very hard to predict where it's going to go because of the different – the interaction almost between hardware development, software ideas, gaming, and the world.

Is that a way that you've kind of always felt? Can you remember how you came to arrive at that conclusion that it's just unpredictable? We never really have a good sense of where it's going to go? Did you believe that pretty much from the beginning of your career?

I think so, and I saw it as a feature. I felt it was we were not limited. We were not constrained by being on a very specific path. It was like, oh, you want to do a game about pirates? Yeah, go ahead and do it. You want to do a game about history? Give it a try. I think the fact that there is no preordained path into the future for us is freeing and allowed us to try many different things. So I think it's been true for most of the time of our industry, and it's been a freeing concept as opposed to a limitation.

Yeah. Well, are there people you feel – because I wasn't necessarily assigning any judgment or value to it – are there many you feel who think it is a limitation or it is a bug?

That we don't know what the future holds?

Yeah, rather than it being a feature or a bug, yeah.

Right. Well, I think there's value in knowing what the future holds if it were possible. I'd like to know. The Kentucky Derby likes to hear. I don't believe that's possible, so I don't spend time pursuing that. I can see the appeal of it, but I guess I don't see the reality of it.

Yeah. No, I'm with you. Well, similarly, I guess along the lines of quasi-time travel stuff, I think it was in The Independent where I had seen you talk about how you don't think you could make Civilization today, and also we're not even sure if you would play it if you were sort of just starting out now. So assuming that that was quoted accurately, I would be curious to hear a bit more about why you feel that way.

Well, I think that that was kind of a reflection, I think, in my mind of what came together at that moment in 1990 and 1991 to create Civilization. I think there were a variety, a couple of things that kind of came together at that moment. Game design-wise, we had recently done Railroad Tycoon, and SimCity was out there. So there was some fertile ground for the sandbox games or these god games or games where you build something. The IBM PC was becoming kind of established as a gaming machine, and it had a little bit of a more serious dimension to it and had these capabilities memory-wise, etc., that kind of allowed us to be a little more ambitious with our game design.

And it was also a time when we didn't have quite these more rigid genre restrictions and the games kind of having to fit into this specific category to be understood. We were free to try something new. Of course, the irony now is that 4X is an established genre, but in those days we didn't have 4X games. It was just a game about history where you do a little bit of everything, and you just have to see what happens next.

So I think that it was a game we wrote in a year and had very limited graphics and didn't have cinematics, didn't have a lot of the things that are just required, expected in games today. So I think there were a lot of reasons why Civ kind of came together at the right time when there was this receptivity to something new and that genre. People were playing SimCity, and they're like, all right, what's next in this kind of game?

I think we could do Civilization today if we kind of acknowledge where the bar is today, what the expectations are. But doing it in the way we did it then today I think would be difficult because the expectations in terms of production values, etc. So much of the original Civ happened in your imagination. These 27 pixels were a bank. Trust me on that. It's just a different time and a different set of expectations, I think.

Well, I think the thing that really jumped out at me too is that you said you weren't even sure if you wanted to play it, which I realize is like this hypothetical timeline. But yeah, I guess I was just curious if you could elaborate on that as well.

Well, I think Civ is a game that kind of requires you to be prepared to spend some time for things to kind of come into focus. You spend time exploring and deciding, okay, which path is this going to be, an economic game or a military game, or what direction am I going to go? We might not have quite the attention span these days than we had in those days. I think knowing what the journey is going to be like, I think that motivates you to play. But if this were a game I'd never played before and it had this kind of prologue to it, I might get distracted by something else. I don't know.

Well, I told you a little bit about how I started doing these interviews. I feel like a question I've often had, even when I first started it, was along the lines of what you're saying, just a recognition of things that have changed in the industry.

I always had this question in my head of where is the next Sid Meier going to come from? Not to usurp your throne, but just sort of a recognition that it feels like certain career rises, career arcs, maybe aren't possible anymore. So I never imagined I would be asking you this question that I've been wondering, but I feel like if anyone has a good insight into that, it would be Sid Meier.

Part of my career is about the place and time in which it took place. I think that being there at some of the beginnings of the industry, being able to – I think the other dimension is being able to do this throughout my career. It's a volatile industry. Companies kind of come and go, and tastes change, and technology changes, and computers change. There's been a lot of change, and I've been able to ride out, keep doing what I enjoy doing in spite of the various changes and evolutions in the industry. So that probably is a difficult thing to duplicate.

I think that there are obviously lots of very talented designers working today, but the size and scope of projects have changed in a way that on the one hand, a designer today is probably not the only designer on a project, and is one of 50, 100, 200 people working on this project, and they're probably also doing this for a number of years. In the first 10 years of my career, I've probably brought out 10 or 15 games.

That's not going to happen today. Just the volume of games that I was able to do just because of the nature of the industry in those days is probably not something that can be duplicated today. Also, the fact that most of these games were done with a very small team, so my influence perhaps is a little more significant there. That's not to say that there aren't a lot of great design being done these days, but the industry has changed in a way that's irrevocable, and probably will never be able to do the volume of games released into not really a vacuum, but into a much less crowded marketplace than they get today.

Yeah. Well, I guess I wonder, ironically, I was curious if you could talk a little bit about – one of the interesting anecdotes in your book was, I guess in part, how the idea for your name being on the box, or for the title of games, I guess in some part, came from Robin Williams, which I didn't realize before reading this book. I guess I'm curious about the conversations that were had as a result of Robin Williams offering this advice, but I also was curious, because I think you mentioned it repeatedly, why you were reluctant – I think the phrasing you used was you would rather be invisible.

[Laughs.] Yes. So the Robin Williams incident was something that my partner Bill Staley talks about. I was not at that event or dinner or whatever it was, but he relates a conversation that he had with Robin Williams about – I think that just as he tells it, Robin said, well, in movies, you know who the director is, you know who the star is. They have names, and they're part of – the reason you go to see this movie is because of this person. Or comedians, you know their names. You go to see them because you like Robin Williams or whoever. But why isn't that the case with computer games?

At the same time, the story as I remember it was that I had done some military vehicle games, F-15, silent service, F-19, and I wanted to do pirates. I wanted to do this pirates game. I wanted to do an adventure game. I think it could be fun. And Bill was like, no, no, no. People want more military games. And I said, well, I really want to do this pirates game. And he said, well, okay. We'll put your name on the box, and hopefully the people that liked your other games will try this even though it's different. And then pirates did pretty well, so that became – we kept doing that.

So whether the Robin Williams incident kind of made him open to that idea, or exactly how those things work together, I'm no longer sure. But it was definitely a kind of very specific decision that we made for that game that my name would go on there. And I think it was because it was a departure from what we had done before, and was establishing a certain type of game, a certain approach to games that if you liked some of the previous ones, then you would like this one.

Well, why was your preference to be invisible?

Well, I think part of our design philosophy is what we call making the player the star. The player needs to be the star of the game. And one of our kind of design rules is asking ourselves, who is having fun here? Is the designer having the fun? Is the player having the fun? Is the computer having the fun? And the answer has to be the player is having the fun here.

So I think it's a significant part of the designer's role to step back and say, here are these toys to play with. Here are these tools. Here's this world to step into. But now you, the player, take over and write the rest of the story, tell the rest of the story. So it's really part of our job to be in the background and take a step back. So the irony is of course that my name went on the box. So there's a tension there, but that's where we are.

Yeah, but I mean I feel like having your name on the box must have enabled you to sort of bring other people with you in some fashions. Or like it helped open the door either for other people on projects you worked on, or in some ways maybe it set some sort of precedent at other companies, or the way people think about games or game companies.

I don't want to chart it as like was it right or was it wrong? I mean like in hindsight, how do you feel about the path that that opened up as a result, not just for you, but for other people coming up after you?

I think one, kind of as a way of branding, it worked. It kind of established, it allowed us to do Colonization and some other games and kind of tie them into this style of gaming. I think in that reason it worked, but it's not something that's really been done much in the industry. In that way, in that sense it's failed. It hasn't become the standard or it hasn't become the norm.

Perhaps because of this, what I was talking about is that it's really not about admiring a designer. It's about the player kind of showing what they can do and allowing them to be the star. So there have been a few isolated examples, but it has not become something common in the industry.

No, I think maybe the only – well, I don't know. I think maybe the only real reason, example I can think of is Hideo Kojima. I'm not sure – are those games, are those on your radar? Do you know what I'm talking about?

I kind of, but I couldn't guarantee you that I – a game name is percolating in my brain. But –

Metal Gear Solid would be the series.

Metal Gear Solid. Okay, thank you. I was thinking stealthy game of some sort.

You're in the neighborhood.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I was not aware that his – oh, he just did the – just recently came out with a game where you're traveling across lots of land and stuff.

You're making deliveries. That's sort of a distillation of what the game is. There's more that's going on there. But yeah, it's not a combat focused game at all. It really is sort of like a – in some ways like a meditative thing about navigating terrain, which you say it out loud, doesn't sound like it could possibly be interesting. But there was a continuation on that of his name very prominently being on the box, on the game, which is sort of a tradition that he had done since he was at Konami. Which I'm not saying you created the trend of that, but I think it is difficult to come up with examples of that.

Yeah, I think, I mean, like Zelda, the designer is very famous and well-known, but still, it's a Zelda game. I think that it's just – it's not super appropriate in some ways. I think it's more of a tradition at Firaxis than it is a kind of a different outlook on how games should be presented.

Yeah, I mean, something I've often wondered about is, and I'm sure you've run across it, and I think you even write about it in part of your book, that sort of the perception that portions of the video gaming audience can sometimes be entitled or pushy, or I don't know if I need to have a third adjective there, but I guess I've often wondered like – what did you say?

Invested, I'll say.

Invested, let's say. Passionate, let's say. I've often wondered, like is this sort of a seesaw thing along the same line, like if designers were on the whole less invisible, do you think it would have impacted either this perception or this type of behavior? Would we see – I don't want to say see people be less invested, but maybe not attach that investment to certain types of behaviors?

That's hard to project. I think most gamers see themselves also as, to some extent, designers. I think that's really the conversation between us and our community is one of almost equals, that we're both passionate about making this game better, and these are our ideas, and these are your ideas, and we'll try to pick the best from all of them. Now featuring the designer's name or featuring them more prominently, how that would change the conversation is hard to project.

I think that the anonymity of the Internet is probably the major reason why the tone isn't always the most positive. I don't think it's the invisibility or the visibility of the designer per se. I think it's the passion and the amount of time people invest. Certainly with a game like Civ, you're spending many hours, and you feel you deserve to be heard if you have something important to say.

I know it's speculative, and it's hard to imagine what an alternate reality might be, but I think I mentioned before that I interviewed Soren [Johnson] for my book. And we talked a little bit about some of these topics, because it's always interesting to me to hear it discussed from your side. And I checked back at the notes in preparation for this, and he told me that he feels players understand a game better than the designer does.

And I understand – I think the way you put it is really nice, that you think of them as equals. And I understand the impulse to not want to be siloed, but I guess I wonder when you are open to outside opinions, is there a context or a criteria? How do you assess whether this perspective has credence, or gee, maybe this isn't actionable or worth discussing further, or is it not a formal process like that?

I think one category is suggestions about the game. Like here's an idea of how this could work, or this could work differently or better. Those kind of things we consider. And it's kind of like typically half the ideas you hear are probably all fine ideas in one context or another, but in terms of the goals of this particular game, some of them may work and some of them may not. So I think we've been very open to discussions with the community.

If it's an opinion of whether it's good or bad, or fun or not, then I think you have to be in any field like this, you have to have a fairly thick skin I guess. People aren't always going to tell you they liked something quite as quickly as they tell you what they would like to see differently. But as I say that, I think it's almost not quite as true. Because I remember, maybe it's selective remembering, but I remember many kind of positive comments and discussions I've had with players about what they liked, and specific memories that they have, things that they enjoyed, or things that stuck with them that made them feel good about playing.

I mean do you think that sort of perception or reputation of negativity among invested portions of audiences, you say like is it an earned reputation? Is it overly fixated on? Is it not like when it's brought up, is it not zoomed out enough to be connected with just broader human behaviors, or just broader human behaviors on the Internet full stop?

You're getting into some psychology there. In a way the reason we write these games is because we want to play them. It's not really at the end of the day to please somebody else, or please everybody else. It's because we think these are games that we would like to play, and we presume that if we like to play them there's probably somebody else out there that might like to play them.

But we are not – it's not really a popularity contest, or a plea for approval. It's trying to make a game that we think is fun and can be proud of. And we hope others enjoy it and like it, but we are not at the end of the day – that's not the most important thing that we get a certain number of approval pats on the back for having done our job.

So you're saying that you feel like too much attention maybe is paid to that sort of reaction, the critical reactions?

Yeah, when I step back, the community as a whole is the reason we are here. I mean there might be one or two people that have a minor complaint about one thing or another, but the community of gamers is the only reason we can do what we do. So I'm not – I'm really not in a position to say something negative about that community because if you take it as a whole, it has kept us going, has supported Civ over 20, 30 years, has allowed us to do what we do, and has given us lots of positive feedback and good ideas. So if you ask me how do I feel about our gaming community, it's all positive.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think just like in the years since Gamergate for example, which I don't know if that was on your radar. It's just been an interesting thing to track because I feel like – I mean it's a super messy thing to even explain what it was, but I feel like for many people who don't really pay attention to video games, that is what the word video game in and of itself has come to mean, or that's sort of the only thing they know about video games. Yeah, I don't know. I mean speaking of like where things were when you started and the fact that you can't predict the future, I mean were you surprised by Gamergate and sort of the way it took out and was handled or maybe mishandled?

I was aware of it I guess, but I'm not really that up on the details. In my mind, we have evolved from a community of – the first game developer conference I went to there were about 30 of us, and today there are a lot more. I mean our community has expanded to such an extent I think that it now represents the world. If there's an issue in the world, you're probably going to find it somewhere in the gaming community. But I don't think it's unique.

For example, whatever the issues are, and there are issues in the world obviously, you'll find them represented in this huge community of gamers. But I think it's not necessarily the gaming aspect that is the connection, but it's not something that I feel really an expert on. So that would be my perspective though.

No worries. Well, I mean to shift gears a bit, sort of contrast to this stuff, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on niceness as it relates to creative leadership. I guess this fits into the reputation we discussed and you wrote about that you had earlier.

But I mean we haven't talked before. I feel like you're pretty well-known for being just like a really nice guy, and you're nice to the people you employ, which feels, at least as an outsider, someone who hasn't worked at a game company but has been covering them for a long time, it feels like, it feels rare for creative leaders like yourself. So I feel like the question shouldn't be, why are you so nice? But what are your thoughts on why it seems to be so rare? Or is that perception incorrect?

Well, I can only speak knowledgeably about our studio and my experiences. But I think given the choice of being nice or not nice, most people would choose to be nice. So I don't think it's a surprise that it's possible to be nice. There are pressures I would think. And I think in some ways we are a bit isolated from those pressures. And that is kind of in some ways giving us the luxury of being able to be nice. But with Civilization as a game that we make, and the community that surrounds it, we perhaps feel a greater stability, a lesser concern or fear or pressure about what the next year or two might bring.

So kind of in a way we have some of the pressures and worries that might get in the way of being nice or less at our studio. We also kind of know the kind of games we make, and the kind of people that like those games. So there's a little more of an assurance about the work that we're doing, and the value of it, and the future of it that kind of allows us to maybe not feel that we have to be as concerned or worried, and pass those concerns and pressure and worry along to other people. So again, I can't speak as why other companies aren't as pleasant. But it is definitely something we strive to do our best at. And part of that is because we don't have some of these other pressures, so we can focus on those things.

So more broadly, what does being a good creative leader mean to you?

Well, I think there's two aspects of it, and they tie together pretty closely. One of the things we say is we can't make fun without having fun. So we can't be creative – we can't produce something that is creative without taking advantage of all the creativity that we have at our disposal. So it's allowing people to be creative in an environment where the work is enjoyable, where it's appreciated. I think those things happening to the people who are making the games will result in games that reflect that fun, that creativity. I think that's the kind of environment and our philosophy of making games that has worked for us.

You mentioned it earlier. Earlier in your career, I feel like game development didn't have prescribed solutions. I think there was an attitude, this thing I want to play doesn't exist, so I'll have to create it. Do you feel like more broadly among game developers, is there a behavior like we know the solutions to too many things nowadays? Is there still that sense of looking to take on challenges or to solve problems that they haven't seen others do, or they haven't thought about taking on themselves otherwise?

Yeah, I think you see a lot of that, especially in the indie space. Yeah, there's all sorts of new creative ideas happening. I think just the pure number of games that are being made these days is mind-boggling, and many of them do explore new things. It's kind of hard to even keep track of all the things that are happening in gaming. Minecraft comes to mind among many, many other things. But where Firaxis is is a slightly different place because we have – you kind of made me think, if our very first game had been Civilization, would we have made many of these other games? I don't know. I'm not sure.

But the fact that we have a community around this game that has supported us and continues to support us, and we now see the kind of time investment in games growing, means it makes sense for us to make games that our community wants to play. And we find the creativity within that process, new systems, new ways of doing things within the umbrella of strategy. I think that's kind of where the creativity is these days in what we're doing. But we're not looking to start something very different because those kind of require a small team approach and things like that that are more difficult in a big studio.

After writing a memoir, I feel like it's reasonable to conclude that you've been maybe thinking about your sense of stewardship or ownership or legacy with your games. I don't know if you've thought about the extent to which you want to be involved after you decide you don't want to make games anymore, if you ever decide that. Have you thought about that? I don't know. I feel like there's a George Lucas model, not that I'm comparing you to George Lucas, but there's also a Tom Clancy model, not to compare you to Tom Clancy. But I also feel like it's a weird question to ask another person because it can be interpreted as kind of grim. But I am curious if it's been on your mind or if you've given it any thought. I'm not pushing you out the door. [Laughs.]

Right, thank you. I'm not ready to stop making games. It's kind of – it's not strenuous. I can't imagine the reason at this point that I would stop making games. Something probably will come along. I watch Tiger Woods and I say, okay, his body is going to give out. He's not going to want to stop playing golf, but it's inevitable that he's going to have to stop. Fortunately, game design doesn't have those inevitable reasons to perhaps stop. But I don't know. It's not something I really have thought much about.

I hope I haven't planted the seed here. I'm sorry.

It's really depressing. I think just the fact that I can kind of do it on my own. I think that if George Lucas wanted to make another movie, he'd have to get the team together and hundreds of people. I can do game prototyping in the comfort of my own home or in my office and every now and then show something to somebody. But the kernel, the core of game design is something I can do pretty much on my own. It's not something that I see needing to stop because of outside forces. You just reminded me. I remember I think in 1999 I got a lifetime achievement award. It was like: Now that you've gotten this lifetime achievement award, what are you going to do next? I was like, well, I'm going to keep working on games. I feel the same way about the memoir: Now that you've got your memoir, what are you going to do? Well, I'm going to just do the same thing. I don't know. Why not?

Yeah. No, absolutely. I think that makes sense given – I think it's clear you're a lifer. I don't know how well this necessarily connects with what we were just talking about. I know we've got to wrap up in a few minutes, but we've covered a lot of – we've jumped back and forth between the way things were at both ends of a timeline. I guess I would be curious to hear, because we have talked about perception of video games more broadly.

When it comes to things like – I guess what has really struck me is, for example, many more mainstream media publications, the response to Animal Crossing, for example, or I guess even recently there was a series of articles about the quote-unquote grandma who plays Skyrim. To me, I can feel at times that there's almost a surprise whenever video games seem to have some sort of cultural impact, i.e. you wouldn't necessarily see articles like that about movies or about TV shows, etc. Are there ways that you hope, or plausible ways that you think, like broader mainstream perceptions about video games, about what it means to have a life that intersects with video games in some way? You'd like to see it maybe be – sort of turn that corner a little bit, if you know what I mean?

I think so. I think it's a consequence of – it's almost a generational consequence that video games are in large part – present company excluded – part of the younger generation's life expectations of what – it's a recent enough phenomenon, I think, that there are many people who haven't experienced it or felt it's part of this whole new technology thing. There are people who – that technology is a new and mysterious thing that has arrived recently, and video games are part of that. Whenever they kind of intersect with our world, whether it's a grandmother or – then it is newsworthy because it's bringing tidings from this video game generation to the pre-video game generation, and now there's a crossover. So that's newsworthy in a way.

I was trying to think of a reverse direction analogy where, wow, kids are now crocheting or reading books. It's just that kind of idea that we have these generations, and every now and then there's kind of an unusual communication between them, and that's worthy of note because we're more alike than we thought.

I was just going to ask you one last question, which is not a small one, but I would just be curious to hear, what do you feel video games have accomplished?

Well, I think they have empowered a generation to kind of go beyond what used to be our limits as far as imagination or the fact that we play games that were made in Japan or made around the world. I think it's really been part of this whole becoming more familiar with the entire world, the entire civilization. This generation that understands this technology, and video gaming I think has been a part of making this technology appealing, that once we have our hands on this technology, whether it's the Internet or computing or programming or communicating around the world, it opens up whole new opportunities and removes lots of barriers. I think video games have had a significant role in making technology accessible, fun, and worth learning about. And once we have our hands on technology, lots of new things open up. So we've been part I think of making technology something that people feel it's worth becoming familiar with.