Sid Meier’s Civilization has had a very strong 25 years since the first game launched in 1991, selling 33 million units across the entire series. This was revealed by Meier at the DICE Summit 2016 during a panel focused on the 25th anniversary of the franchise.

As per VentureBeat, Meier said that with regards to the first Civilization, “There was a hint that strategy might be something cool. We wanted to end up with something big. What about the history of Civilization? We were inspired by SimCity with god games. The core was a number of simple systems: economic, combat, growth. Everything was understandable on its own. Once it all interacted, the decisions for the player became very interesting.”

When Civilization 2 released, the developer projected 38,000 copies to be sold. However, it did much better, a fact which Meier credits mod support for. “So many [of the player’s] ideas and energy has gone into the game. Brian [Reynolds] introduced the idea of modding into Civ II, and the game took off. “Something about Civ seems to bring out the game designer in people.”

Thus far there have been 66 different versions of Civilization released across all platforms and of the 33 million copies sold in the series’ history, Civilization 5 and its expansions contributed to 8 million. It also seems that players have spent more than 1 billion hours playing the game as per Steam stats and sales.

Bethesda Softworks’ Fallout 4 won the Game of the Year at the DICE Awards 2016, a surprising development considering the number of awards claimed by The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt from other publications and outlets. Fallout 4 also won the awards for Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction and RPG and MMO Game of the Year.

Regardless, The Witcher 3 won three awards for Outstanding Achievements in Technical Design, Story and Game Design. Ori and The Blind Forest and Rocket League achieved the same feat while Star Wars: Battlefront and Rise of the Tomb Raider claimed two awards each.

Late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata was also honoured with a Lifetime Achievement award. Elsewhere, Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain director Hideo Kojima was inducted into the Hall of Fame by Guillermo del Toro, whom he formerly collaborated with for Silent Hills before the project’s cancellation.

What are your thoughts on the results for the DICE Awards 2016? Let us know in the comments below and stay tuned for more information.

Hideo Kojima’s games take a very long time to come- and they are commonly attributed as being rather expensive to make, too (as a matter of fact, the costs necessary in developing Metal Gear Solid V are commonly held to be a contributing factor for the Kojima-Konami split). But Kojima thinks a lot of this is just misconception. Speaking at DICE, he tried to clear the air about his development process.

“A lot of people say that I spent too much money or take too much time, but that’s a misconception,” he said. “My last project was late about five or six months, but I’ve always kept my word on timelines and budget. For example, I do take three to four years to make games, but that’s the plan from the start.”

He discussed why his games have development cycles that are this long to begin with, then- something that he attributes to his personal involvement with every step of the development and marketing cycle.

“I take a lot of time because I create my own teasers, posters, and I work on how to create the box for sales,” he said. “Japanese creators are famous for being loose with schedules, and I think people put me in that category, but it’s not reality. In my case, I’m a director and a producer, so I have to stay aware of production and the budget.”

Kojima also discussed his upcoming game, which will be the debut game for his new Kojima Productions, and which is being made in collaboration with Sony, for PS4 and PC.

“They [Sony] are not controlling what I’m doing at all; that was part of the conditions, and Sony was very respectful towards me and what I do. In that regard, it’s been very nice, and very pleasant.”

All in all, it sounds like he finally has the kind of creative freedom he has wanted for so long- after all, it is a running joke at this point that Kojima did not want to work on Metal Gear. Let’s see what he can do freed from the shackles of that franchise.

(Source: Gamespot)