Friday, October 15, 2010

What Counts as a Civilization?

I've been waiting for Sid Meier's Civilization V to come out for a long time. When I finally received the game, I was dismayed to discover that the list of civilizations one can play for in this version of the game runs as follows:

America, Arabia, Aztec, China, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Greece, India, Iroquois, Japan, Ottoman, Persia, Rome, Russia, Siam, Songhai

Do you see what I mean? There is no Spain!! Even though Spanish is the third most spoken language in the world, even though Hispanic civilization gave the world Cervantes, Picasso, Garcia Lorca, Goya, Calderon, Goytisolo, as well as 11 Nobel Prize winners in literature, there is no place for Spain in this version of the game. On what planet is Spain less deserving of being named a civilization than France, Germany, and Siam is beyond my comprehension. Spain was one of the civilizations in the previous versions of the game. I wonder what the motivation was behind removing it from the list.

It is equally annoying that the word "America" here refers to the United States. Canada and the countries of Central and South America are completely excluded.

5 comments:

BenYitzhak said...

I'm given to understand that there's official mods to add more civilizations.

Clarissa said...

Glad to see a fellow gamer here. :-) I'm still struggling with Steam, which is the most annoying system ever, so it will take me a while to figure out how the mods are downloaded.

Still, Hispanic civilization should not be "optional."

Anonymous said...

I was never that interested in gaming, but I stopped gaming completely after games became laden with DRM.

Civ does sound like a game I would've been interested in, in the old days.

-Mike

Pagan Topologist said...

I give up. What is DRM?

I myself have become less interested in games as they have ecome more "realistic". I loved Q-bert and Pak-Man because of their abstract nature. When I was younger, I loved chess for much the same reason.

BenYitzhak said...

Pagan Topologist:

DRM is Digital Rights Management. In early games, like one where you played an abdominal surgeon, they would give you messages from other doctors and if you didn't call them back, the game ended, and you could only call them back if you had the wheel that came with the game that deciphered the number you needed to call.

These days, the anti-piracy measures have changed a lot. I know people who buy the game and then pirate it because it's easier than dealing with all the DRM. EA has a reputation for nearly killing games with DRM.