A new Civilisation and the Chief Game Wizard: highlights from Games for Change Festival

What do games designers do while they are not thinking of new ways to blow things up on screen? They work on how to make the world a better place, if the Games for Change Festival is anything to go by.

The festival, organised by New York-based Games for Change and co-sponsored by the powerful Entertainment Software Association, brought together more than 100 game designers and executives from around the US to discuss how gaming technology and gameplay could be put to use in diverse fields like education, health and science.

“We believe in the positive power that games can have beyond entertainment,” says Susanna Pollack, the president of Games for Change. “How far beyond is something that we hope to find out at the festival.” The festival took place June 23 and 24 at The New School campus in New York.

The star speaker at the event was Sid Meier, creator of the legendary Civilization strategy game. Civilization allows players to build empires by making military, political, and social decisions. One of the most influential games ever made, it has sold over 33 million copies worldwide since its debut in 1991. Meier, who was interviewed onstage by Pollack, gave some details of the forthcoming Civilization VI at the festival, and also announced that a version of the game was being developed to teach history in classrooms.

All ears were on Meier’s description of Civilization VI, the long-awaited update of the game which is finally due to be shipped on October 16. It was a challenge to come up with the sixth edition, Meier explains: “The problem we had was how do you come up with a game with the number ‘VI’ on it – a game that has already been understood and analysed to death by the community.

“We have a rule which we call the one-third/one-third/one-third rule. One third of Civ VI features the classic format that we know and love. One third features ideas that we tried in previous versions that we feel we can do better – we’re going to improve on some of the aspects of it,” says Meier.