130
Popular Culture Review
This is by no means a unique situation in the area of computer games, and
even less so in those of Civilization's creator (see Appendix). A large number of
games developed by Civilization creator Sid Meier have as their central focus some
aspect of the American myth of progress. As often as not, such progress follows a
very specific script drawn directly from historical events that were later
mythologized and incorporated into the American monomythic structure that
includes these mythopoetic ideals. An examination of this monomyth, how it is
employed by Sid Meier in the Civilization series and other of his games helps both
to explain the popularity of these games and to illustrate the continued importance
of this singularly American mythological structure. Each of these important concepts
can best be understood with an analysis of Civilization itself, which is virtually
unequalled in both popularity and its presentation of this American monomythic
structures^
Civilization first appeared in 1991, and it’s sequel. Civilization //, in 1996.
Now, with the pubUcation of Civilization III in 2001, this series of games has
become among the most popular strategy simulations for personal computer gaming
in history (cf. PC Gamer, Computer Gaming World). This popularity can be seen
in the number of “clones” of the game, created to approximate the gaming challenge
found in the original concept^. Certainly a causal factor in each game’s popularity
is the striking exactitude with which they manage to follow the American popular
historical ideas of progress. Civilization presents its players with a simulation of a
“New World” (which can be geographically very much like Earth, or a quite different
simulation), and then allows them, through the course of thousands of years of
game time, to develop that world. In short, the game allows players to become
masters of a simulacrum of the great American myth: The Frontier. And it is through
an understanding of this American mythological structure, and its employment in
the Civilization series (hereafter called, simply. Civilization), that an understanding
of both this particular game’s success and the continued importance of this American
mythopoetic structure can be understood.
The most famous advocate of the notion of a frontier as a defining concept in
American history is, of course, Frederick Jackson Turner. And, likely, if transported
forward in time, that American historian would have enjoyed playing the game of
Civilization. In 1893 Turner, only thirty-two at the time, ventured from Wisconsin
to Chicago and presented his “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”
at the annual American Historical Association. As Charles Beard would note in
1938, that paper was “to have a more profound influence on thought about American
history than any other essay of volume ever written on the subject” (61). Indeed,
the significance of “Significance” is such that, by 1993, David Wrobel would agree
with Beard’s earlier as 6W76