How Bruce Shelley brought a board gamer’s view into designing Civilization

Before he worked on Civilization with legendary game designer Sid Meier, Bruce Shelley was a board game designer at companies such as Avalon Hill. He designed games on paper back in the 1980s and 1990s, and it was easier to keep revising until the game was right. That’s a lot like how Meier made one prototype after another on computers.

Together, they worked on Railroad Tycoon. And then they doubled up on the first Civilization empire-building game, which debuted in 1991 to great acclaim. Evidently, they did something right. Civilization has 33 million copies in sales to date, including 8 million for its latest, 2010’s Civilization V and its expansions. Meier’s teams at MicroProse and Firaxis created 66 versions of the game across all platforms throughout the history of the franchise. Based on extrapolations from sales on the Steam digital distribution and community platform, the Civ series has been played for more than a billion hours.