Sid Meier's Memoir!

 

How did you convince Sid to write a book with you?

I wrote him a letter and asked. Never underestimate the power of well-written, honest, personal communication.

 

What’s your connection to the videogame industry?

I worked as a Sound Designer from 2001 through 2006, primarily for Acclaim Studios Austin and Midway Entertainment. You can find a partial list of my game credits here on Moby Games.

 

Are you a (“real”) gamer?

I don’t find it useful to define anyone by a single interest. Back in the day I played a ton of Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, and Doom, as well as old-school adventure games like Space Quest, Zork, 7th Guest/11th Hour, and of course, Monkey Island. I paid a friend in college to mod-chip my PlayStation so I could play imported versions of Vib-Ribbon and No One Can Stop Mr. Domino. I did a brief stint in recovery for a moderate Sims addiction. Then… I had children, and all my leisure activities, gaming included, had to take a back seat—or more accurately, the last seat in the last car of a several-mile-long train, hermetically sealed and guarded by alligators—for the better part of a decade. Now that the kids are older, we do enough board gaming as a family to justify a gaming table (with MVP awards going to King of Tokyo, Forbidden Island, Ticket to Ride, and Tokaido,) plus I occasionally let them destroy me in a head-to-head bout of Katamari Damacy or Smash Bros. Ultimate. Since 2021, I have been the co-owner of a summer camp that teaches videogame development (including code, art, audio, design, and indie business skills) to kids ages 8-18. Whether these creds are sufficiently street is entirely up to you.

 

Don’t you want to go back to making videogames? That’s such a cool job!

As you may notice from my early work history, I get bored very easily. I love to learn, and writing lets me hop between wildly different topics and live vicariously through all of them. Like Sid says in the book, “Something new is always more interesting than something I’ve already done.”

 

 

No Map to This Country

 

I heard you fumble over your kids' names in an interview, and even say the wrong name once. What gives?

The publisher suggested that I change their names for the book, which was great advice—most importantly because all new releases these days are fully indexed by Google Books. This means that actual passages from the text would have been the first search result on their names for the rest of their lives. Neither kid has any sense of discretion (proof of their maternal lineage, if ever it was in doubt,) and they in fact were angry when I told them about the impending name change, because they were proud of the challenges they'd overcome and didn’t want anyone else getting the credit. So we compromised, and used their middle names.

 

I tried to look up some of the doctors and therapists you talked about in the book, and half of them don't exist.

If I had to change the names of people I like, you better believe I had to change the names of people I was less than charitable toward. We also flipped a few genders and other identifying traits on anyone who hadn’t given me specific permission to talk about them.

 

The idea of “treating” autism is offensive to me. Neurodivergence is something to be celebrated, not something to be cured!

Here’s the thing. Any time you hear someone talking about neurodivergence, it’s always someone at the extremely high-functioning end of the spectrum (the first bit of evidence being that they’re talking at all.) I would never suggest that, say, an analytical worldview, or a preferred style of communication, or even a tendency toward hyperfixation should be corrected. But I absolutely maintain that a nonverbal, self-harming child suffering from constant digestive pain and a dozen panic attacks a day has a right to seek relief. If that’s not what autism looks like for you, then that’s great! But it very much is what autism looks like for a lot of people, and it does not help them one bit when the neurodivergence movement tries to pretend that they don’t exist, or that their symptoms aren’t that bad.

 

I have a friend/relative with an autistic child, how can I help them?

As I'm sure you've discovered, nagging folks about how to raise their kids is a losing proposition. If I knew how to convince people in a single conversation, I wouldn't have had to write a whole book about it. The best I can say is be there for them, offer to take on as much of the work as you can, and forgive their imperfections. It's harder than it looks.

 

I have an autistic child, and I feel overwhelmed. Where do I start?

If you only do one thing, make it the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.

 

Where do I find a doctor who will be supportive of medical treatment? Where do I find studies to convince my current doctor, who is open-minded but unfamiliar with autism?

The Autism Research Institute (www.autism.org) is the best place to go for peer-reviewed information from reliable practitioners.

 

 

General

 

How do you get a book published?

First you have to write it. Every time I've been asked this question, it’s from someone who hasn't actually written their book yet.  Wistfulness will get you nowhere—if you're serious about writing, then you have to be your own cheerleader. Write every single day, and finish the dang book.

 

But writing a book is really hard!

I guess so. I mean it's not easy, but it should be enjoyable. If it isn't that way for you, maybe reevaluate whether you dream of writing, or being a writer. The latter has a miasma of romantic notions floating around it, most of which are false. The former is a non-negotiable prerequisite. Write every single day, and finish the dang book.

 

Okay, I wrote a book. Now, how do I get published?

Google "query letter," and toss in a search for "proper manuscript format" while you’re at it. This information is widely available on the internet, and if you don't have the motivation to hunt it down, you won't have the motivation to slog through dozens of boiler-plate rejections, either. Understand that even the most brilliant authors spend months or years trying to wedge their toe in the door, so while you're still out there rapping your knuckles bloody… keep writing every single day, and finish your second dang book.