Sid Meier not keen on inflexibility of Kickstarter

Legendary Civilization designer Sid Meier has said he personally would not enjoy the way Kickstarter projects often mean designers must commit early concepts.

"I think you kind of lock yourself into a lot of ideas early," Meier said of crowdfunded development, speaking to GamesIndustry.

"I really enjoy the luxury of changing my design and evolving over time. I'd be a little concerned with Kickstarter if I committed to X, Y and Z and I found out down the road that Z didn't work very well, I kind of promised to do this."

Meier continued to say that there are advantages and disadvantages to the indie scene and to traditional publishing, but he himself seems pretty happy with Firaxis Games' arrangement with 2K Games.

"They do all the stuff I don't want to do; they allow me to make games and really focus on that part of what it takes to get a game out there," he said.

"I get to design games, I get to program games, I get to work with the artists and the sound guys and do the fun stuff. They worry about testing it and publishing it and promoting it and selling it - whatever it takes to do that I would be really bad at, they do.

"So more power to Chris Roberts and the Kickstarter, but having a great publisher is a real asset and allows me to focus on the things that I can do and not worry about all the other stuff that needs to be worried about."

Sid Meier's latest release is an iOS strategy game called Ace Patrol.