The philosopher René Descartes famously argued that our concept of imperfection, the knowledge that there are flaws in things, actually proves the notion of perfection exists in us by way of a divine form. And while Sid Meier’s Pirates! isn’t as impactful as Descartes “ Cogito Ergo Sum ” ( I think, therefore I am) I will argue it serves as one of gaming’s rare divine perfections. I compare nearly everything I play, in some way, to the purity of Sid Meier’s Pirates! And I said as much to Firaxis Lead Designer Jake Solomon, known mostly for his work on the XCOM franchise, during a chat at PAX East 2017. Unbeknownst to many, Jake has been with Firaxis a very long time and had worked on the game I unabashedly referred to as the best pirate video game ever.
“I love that game,” he told me, likely under duress after seeing the mania rising in my eyes as I talked about my all-time favorite game. “I was, like, the tech guy. I started in the graphics department. I did the initial water shader, things like that.”
A quick primer for those unfamiliar with this underappreciated beacon of gaming perfection: Sid Meier’s Pirates! is basically five games in one. It has an open world, open ocean exploration side with ship-to-ship combat. There’s a completely separate battle mechanic for land raids on ports and cities, including terrain bonuses and flanking strategies. A real economy that has fluctuating prices between towns means it's possible to make a profit trading goods. There’s swordfighting against rival captains and corrupt guards. You also get a surprisingly challenging ballroom dance QTE game for romancing influential governor’s daughters. Oh, and buried treasure maps pieces to collect, too. It’s an astoundingly deep and replayable game full of actual history.
Talking to Jake about the dev experience was fascinating for me. Rarely do you get to poke the brain of someone directly linked to the most influential game of your childhood. He said that the team was very small and lots of people did multiple jobs. In addition to graphics, he worked a bit on the land battles. He explained that the legendary work ethic of Sid Meier was a big part of the reason the game works so well despite having so many disparate parts.
“When you work for Sid and even to this day, he does the lion's share of gameplay programming. He just does it himself. He works all the time, but he wants to have that control so he can just change things really quickly. He did a lot of the gameplay programming,” he said.
It didn’t start out as a hands-on Sid Meier joint, though. Sid Meier’s Pirates! was initially being developed without much input from him, but the team hit a snag designing the ship to ship battles. And, if you’ve never played Pirates! , let me say those battles are super important and one of the most enjoyable things in the game. Very fluid and intuitive, their influence can be seen in modern takes on pirating like Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag . But during development, Jake explained the battles just felt off.
“We worked on that game for a long time, and Sid wasn't in charge of the game when it started. Sid came in one weekend and he saw it and he just saw his legacy and said ‘mmm we're not gonna do that,’ ” Jake said. “So he came in and he made the ship battles basically in one weekend. We had ship battles before that weren't good and he came in and made a prototype using our art and sounds and everything. And he did it in a weekend. And on Monday he had everyone in the company play it and we were like ‘that's what we're doing.’ And then he said ‘Ok I'm going to take over the project.’ And then we made Pirates! in less than a year because Sid was in charge. It was awesome.”
During his PAX East keynote, Jake spoke often and fondly of his relationship with Sid Meier and what a profound influence the man has had over Jake’s career as a game developer. And although he’s immensely proud of the work he’s done with XCOM he can’t exactly share that work with his three young girls. This gives him reason to fire up the more kid-friendly Sid Meier games he has been a part of, which serve as reminders that Sid Meier is one hell of a game designer on a level all his own.
“I have three little girls and I'm not comfortable with them playing XCOM obviously, so I can go back to all the old games I made with Sid,” he said “I'll play Pirates! and my kid's love it. And I'm like ‘Ahh I wish I could make games like this!’ ”
