Apolyton: There is a perception that games such as SimCity or The Sims are relatively 'free' in that you can experiment with different approaches to your city or house or sim design. Is this achievable in SimGolf?
Sid Meier: Yes. There are a lot of different ways to play SimGolf. Your goal might be to make as much money as possible, or to make your golfers as happy as possible, or to create the world’s most beautiful golf course, or to create the most outrageous golf course, or to win the famed SGA (Sim Golf Association) Open tournament. In SimGolf all the game elements relate to each other in some fashion. A fun, well-designed hole will make your players happy, happy players will pay more money to play, more money allows you to expand your course, a larger course generates challenges from other professional golfers, playing against other pros increases the skills of your pro golfer, your pro can win big cash prizes in tournaments held at your course, more money allows you to add a variety of buildings to your course, buildings add to the skill and happiness of your players, etc., etc., etc.

Apolyton: Many sim games have been accused of only becoming fun after many hours of gameplay. How will you make sure that you engage the player right from the start?
Sid Meier: I think one of the strengths of SimGolf is that it is easy to get into and you don’t need a deep knowledge of golf to begin playing and having fun. All you need to do is lay down a tee and green to open up your first hole. Immediately your little golfers come out of the clubhouse and start playing and reacting to your course design telling you what they like and don’t like. You can pamper your golfers with luxury accommodations and beautiful scenery or you can torment them and watch them storm off the course - the choice is yours.

Apolyton: Civ3 and Dinosaurs were announced very early in their development, while SimGolf only a few months before the release. What was the reasoning behind this?
Sid Meier: The golf announcement was delayed a bit while we transitioned from Dinos. I had been working on the game for quite a while before we made the official public announcement.

Apolyton: Both SimGolf and Civ3 will have been released by the end of the year. With a now large development team(enough to work on two games at the same time), what's the next step? SMAC2? ;)
Sid Meier: SimGolf will now be released early next year. We’ve got some really exciting ideas in the pipeline but we’re not ready to talk about them yet. As always we’ll let you know as soon as we can.

Apolyton: We saw "you" in the Sims, we will be seeing "you"(as on of the advisors) in Civ3, and with an import tool we will be able to get "you" in a golf course. Is all that a form of immortality or something? :)
Sid Meier: In Civ3 we thought it would be fun to make some of the Firaxians advisors. It felt right since one of our goals was to create a game that captured some of the light-heartedness of the original Civilization. I’m not sure how I ended up in the Sims, you’ll have to ask our marketing people :)

Many thanks to Sid for answering our questions!

Also thanks to Ming and Snapcase for their help on the questions and to Kelley Gilmore of Firaxis for arranging the interview

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