Play Time: 3:30pm – 4:30pm

I don’t know what happened. But this was like playing a completely different game. For this play session, I chose to use the same keyboard and graphics settings but without sound. I continued to play at the Chieftain level as a Babylonian civilization. I am beginning to wonder if there are different to begin each civilization. I did not get frustrated play this time. Maybe some of the stress came from the horrible bleeping of the music, but somehow I was able to play for a complete hour without yelling or swearing at my computer.

I am looking at the educational elements of the game and am seriously questioning what the designers were thinking. I understand that working with advisors to create and protect your city as well as making technological advances could really help in teaching children how civilizations were created. But… I am lost on how, when a city is founded, the image of covered wagons on a grassy plain is used. Even for the civilizations that were well before the Common Era. And while I see the intention behind using real historical figures in the game, I am fairly certain that Ghandi and Stalin were not alive at the same time as Hammurabi. Having paid attention in my history classes, I find this “edutainment” factor ridiculous because there is no educational basis for using these figures as characters. I am just glad that the historical figures are paired with the correct civilizations!

Aside from the edutainment of the game, I was able to see new features fo the design that I was unable to see before. While I still have no idea what they mean, I am interested to see how things could change in my future play sessions. My goal for the next two sessions are to understand the game a little more. I would like to play as the Babylonian civilization again to make sure this calm play session was not a fluke. But I would also like to play as yet another civilization to see if this affects play, design, movement, and any other features of the game that I have seen thus far.