"We'd love to do Pirates for the 21st century. People have also asked about Colonization, and a few others"
About this Quote
Sid Meier’s throwaway-sounding “We’d love to do Pirates for the 21st century” is less nostalgia than a mission statement for an entire strain of game design: take a beloved sandbox, modernize the systems, and let players author their own legends again. Pirates!, in its original form, was a pre-open-world open world - a mash-up of sailing, dueling, trading, courting, and opportunistic betrayal. Saying “for the 21st century” signals that the fantasy still sells, but the friction points have changed. Today’s players expect deeper simulation, richer reactivity, and fewer opaque rules; they also bring sharper politics to anything touching empire, slavery, and extraction.
That’s where the second sentence does quiet work. “People have also asked about Colonization” isn’t just a fan-service checklist. It’s an acknowledgment of demand colliding with a cultural headwind. Colonization, once framed as a tidy strategy problem, now reads as a loaded narrative about conquest and dispossession. Meier’s phrasing is careful: it places the desire on “people,” not the studio, and lumps it into “a few others,” diluting the controversy while keeping the door open.
The context is a veteran designer speaking in the language of iteration and prototypes, but the subtext is reputational risk management. Updating Pirates is a technical challenge. Updating Colonization is a moral one. The quote captures the modern remaster dilemma: you can’t simply upscale graphics; you have to renegotiate what the game is asking the player to celebrate.
That’s where the second sentence does quiet work. “People have also asked about Colonization” isn’t just a fan-service checklist. It’s an acknowledgment of demand colliding with a cultural headwind. Colonization, once framed as a tidy strategy problem, now reads as a loaded narrative about conquest and dispossession. Meier’s phrasing is careful: it places the desire on “people,” not the studio, and lumps it into “a few others,” diluting the controversy while keeping the door open.
The context is a veteran designer speaking in the language of iteration and prototypes, but the subtext is reputational risk management. Updating Pirates is a technical challenge. Updating Colonization is a moral one. The quote captures the modern remaster dilemma: you can’t simply upscale graphics; you have to renegotiate what the game is asking the player to celebrate.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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