just read a good piece on Sid Meier recently:
kotaku.com/the-father-of-civilization-584568276

a couple of interesting things: “feedback is fact”, and do what you are interested in yourself.

here’s a few quotes:

A great video game, Sid Meier likes to say, is a series of interesting decisions: a set of situations in which the player is constantly confronted with meaningful choices.

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[early on, they released] mostly flight sims, because that’s what the two were interested in making.

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If you play more than one of Meier’s games, you will notice certain common characteristics: there is never any blood, for one. Although Meier likes to cover violent historical periods, he does not like to show violence
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Meier’s games are also known for giving their players all sorts of options: instead of telling a focused, linear story, Meier prefers to create situations in which the player can create his or her own narrative.
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It’s totally up to the player. “I prefer games where the player can lead the game in the direction that they want,” Meier said. “And then they kind of end up with that unique story that only they can know.”

…. [on turn-based instead of real-time]
you’d kind of say, I wanna have a village over here and a farm over here and maybe I want to have some things happening over here, and then you could kind of stand back and watch your people gradually do things,” Meier said. “But it was a much more passive kind of process. There was more watching than doing. It was just not happening.”

So they switched gears. They gave more control to the player and changed up the pacing: now, instead of waiting for the world to change, players could change the world. Time wouldn’t progress until players made their decisions.

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When Meier finished the game that would make his career, he was eager to make something bigger. Better. More ambitious. But he also knew that would be ridiculously difficult—“I said if I continually get in this mode of trying to top the last game or do something bigger or more epic, I’m gonna drive myself crazy”

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And they were all kind of fun but just not funfun.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.
“I play the game,” he said

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“Sid’s famous for saying a game is a series of interesting decisions,” Solomon told me. “On Civ Rev one time he cracked and said, ‘Playing games is a series of interesting decisions, but making games is a series of heartbreaking disappointments.’“

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That prototype-centric mentality is how Meier has always made games, and it may be one of the explanations for his success: he doesn’t believe in design documents, or long, written descriptions of how a video game will work. While many game makers put ideas and concepts on paper before taking them to a machine, Meier’s approach is all hands-on.

“Sid’s never had to write a design document, because instead of debating with you about some new feature he wants to implement, he’ll just go home and at night he’ll implement it,” Solomon said. “And then tomorrow when he comes in he’ll say, ‘Okay, now play this new feature.’

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Meier is known for these types of rules and mantras, which he likes to share with other game designers as often as possible.

“‘Find the fun’—that’s Sid’s phrase,” said Reynolds. “Essentially, you have to make something in order to have any chance of finding the fun. Fun wasn’t going to be found on a piece of paper, at least fun in terms of a video game.”

To hear Reynolds describe Meier’s process calls to mind the old joke: “How do you carve a statue of an elephant? Get a block of marble and remove anything that doesn’t look like an elephant.” How do you make a good game? Get a game and remove all the parts that aren’t fun.

“He told me a phrase I use all the time,” said Solomon. “Feedback is fact. That’s the way you have to look at feedback, as if it’s a fact. You’ve worked on this massive system or this game, and they come in your office and they go, ‘I played it, and I was bored.’ The worst thing you could do as a designer is start to defend your design or argue with that person. What you do is accept what that person told you as a fact. They said they were bored, so guess what? Your game bored that person. And you need to figure out why that is.”

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if you are making a video game, and you’re having trouble with a number—say, the number of damage points a unit can do—either double it or cut it in half.
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the typical thing is to be really careful and try to inch up a little bit, and then you have to change it seven times to get it right. If you double it, you’ll immediately feel whether making it stronger was even a good idea.”

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’this choice would be the right thing to do, but this choice is gonna help me win the game’—put the players in those kind of moral dilemmas. That’s not what our games are about. We want you to feel good about yourself when you finish the game.”

A feel-good, addictive experience with tons of interesting choices: that has become the definition of a “Sid Meier” game.

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[Sid] wants to make the type of games that he wants to play.

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“When we made Civilization, it was not with the idea that this was gonna be the greatest game that we’re gonna be remembered by,” Meier said. “It was the best game to make at the time and we thought it was a lot of fun. Each game we make, we kinda go into it with that idea: this is gonna be the best game we can make on that topic.