I think I can say with absolutely no hesitation that the Civilization series has occupied more of my gaming time than anything else through my life thus far. Stretching all the way back to Civilization I, we are probably easily talking in the over-a-thousand-hours range. From the moment a friend handed me that original 5.25” floppy and said to give it a try and I saw that first Roman settler sitting in an empty world, I was hooked.

Civilization games combine three of my favorite things: exploration, strategy, and building. Civilization was my first entry into the 4X world, and it still remains my top series in the genre, even after all these years.

Of course, as the years have gone by and each new edition of Civ has come out, the question always lingered as to what they could do next. Each new iteration of the series introduced something new, usually with interesting new strategies right along with it. Civ II added pretty much more of everything, Civ III added culture and borders, and Civ IV added religion and corporations. Each new addition gave the player more options for deeper strategy, but the simple act of continual increases in complexity couldn’t go on forever, could it? At that rate, would Civ VII or VIII be more than a single player could possibly handle?

With the release of Civilization V, Firaxis has decided that the cycle of addition couldn’t go on forever, and has gone back to the drawing board in many ways to recreate a new Civilization experience. In some ways this succeeds wonderfully, and in other ways it falls very flat.

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Manuals, as I’ve mentioned before, have been in steep decline for many years.  Now, as manuals generally serve the purpose to telling the player how to play the game, it’s pretty clear that something needed to take their place.  By and large, the in-game tutorial has stepped up to the plate to fill this void.

In-game tutorials have taken many forms in my experience – some are as plain as a big ol’ “Tutorial” button ala Civilization IV, where a guide takes you step by step through the various concepts you need to understand to play the game.  Some take the form of introductory levels that aren’t called tutorials per se, but introduce game concepts one step at a time, such as in the Advance Wars series.  Sometimes the tutorials are even more ingrained in the game, popping up only when needed to introduce a new mechanic to the player (Shadow Complex takes this approach).

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I have a feeling I’m not alone in saying this, but as a gamer, I often like to have a “standby” game despite however many other games I’m playing.  I might be twenty hours into the latest Persona, and at the same time slogging through mission six in whatever new military FPS is out, but I still like to have a game I can sit down and play for five, ten, fifteen or however many minutes I have available and not feel like I’m obliged to play for the long haul.

Sitting down to play an RPG these days is usually an investment of hours or play per session, and often times interrupting an FPS mid-level feels disruptive and breaks the action (if you are lucky enough to be able to save mid-mission at all).  So, in those times when you’ve got the gaming itch, but not a lot of free time, you need something to fill the gap. 

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If someday I am standing at the Pearly Gates and St. Peter looks down at the sum total of my life and asks, “You played Civilization 2 once for an entire weekend? Like, 32 out of 48 hours? Seriously?” I will answer him, head held high, “Yes, yes I did.  And it was totally awesome.”

It is true that in my younger days, I put in many a marathon session of gaming.  Entire nights or weekends could blow by as I sat immersed in whatever game was occupying my attention at the time.  An entire Christmas vacation could be lost to Final Fantasy VI, or nights that should have been spent writing history papers were spent tracking down Sectoids in X-Com. Even up to my years in college, I still might put off more pressing concerns to stay up until the wee hours of the morning waiting to see what was coming next in Silent Hill or the like.

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I’m sure you’ve all been there before at some point in your life:  playing a friendly game of Monopoly, enjoying the zesty give-and-take of shifting the same pile of money back and forth between players, when suddenly you notice that the banker took $300 when he paid himself for passing Go instead of the mandated $200.  Perhaps it was an accident, you think to yourself – it would be easy to be distracted by the pure fun of Monopoly and make such a mistake.  And yet, on the next go-round the board, you see him do it again.  That’s when you realize: you’re dealing with a cheater.  You respond the only way you know how; driving the Thimble playing piece into his eyeball while screaming about the “integrity of the game.”

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I remember the day Master of Orion III came out. After heading off to the mall during lunch, I returned to work, bag in hand, and ripped open the package in the car. Tucking the game itself safely under the seat, I stealthily smuggled the manual into my office where I proceeded to read it, a few pages at a time, as soon as the opportunity arose.

While I would eventually learn that the game itself left a lot to be desired, the manual was, on its own, a delight:  Long passages about the history of the Master of Orion universe, plenty of shots of all of the game’s interfaces, and discussions of strategy as you made your way through the game. I read the manual twice that afternoon, and as soon as I got home, it found a place on my bookshelf, among a collection of others.

For a lot of people, the moment they get a new game in their possession, they race home, tear off the shrink wrap, and pop it into their systems to get playing.  For me, however, there is always that one critical step in between: reading the manual.

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