Justice & Law Quote by Sid Meier

Sid Meier is selling restraint as a creative virtue, and it lands because it rewrites the usual tech-booster narrative. Instead of treating 3D as an inevitable upgrade, he frames it as a tool that only becomes legitimate when it can serve the genre rather than bully it. The line quietly calls out an era when developers chased polygon counts like prestige, even when the result actively harmed play: strategy games need clarity, legibility, and a godlike overview. Early 3D often delivered the opposite - cluttered camera controls, hidden information, and visual noise that made decision-making feel like navigation.

The intent is pragmatic, almost moral: wait until computing power can make 3D functional, not just flashy. Meier’s “ready to do 3D justice” is a sly inversion. It’s not that games weren’t ready for 3D; 3D wasn’t ready for games, at least not for strategy. Shooters and racers thrive on perspective and speed, where 3D’s embodied viewpoint is a feature. Strategy is about systems, not sensation, and Meier is defending the idea that the player’s mind is the main stage.

Context matters: coming out of the late-1990s and early-2000s hardware arms race, this is a designer staking authority against marketing. The subtext is a reminder that progress in games isn’t linear; it’s negotiated. New tech earns its place when it amplifies the verbs of a genre, not when it merely modernizes the screenshot.