Session 5: Civilizations

Location: Bedroom

Device: Laptop

Time: 1 hour

I started another new game. This time it was Civilization 4; difficulty level: Prince, tribe: French. The leader’s picture was different than it was during my first hour playing this game. However, the figure in the picture had masculine facial features and a grey helmet. This feature in the game seemed to reaffirm the game’s appeal for the male gender.

After I positioned another new city and started exploring the area, my screen presented a quiz over a symbol that represented a particular advancement in the game. My kingly reputation was at stake. I got the question wrong, but I wasn’t really affected by that. I was only irritated. The answers were probably in the manual, which I didn’t know where to find. I assumed that I could access the manual in the game by pressing a certain key, but that never happened. At the beginning of this game, my civilization was titled “Mediocre” which didn’t change.

I noticed for the first time that there were different physical land features: grasslands, forests, mountains, a swamp, jungles, and the artic. They were all part of the island. On the left sidebar, the names for the different locations changed when I moved my units around. I never really bothered to pay attention to it. My soldiers traveled around over rivers and streams with ease but for some reason, they were blocked by pixelated fish. I could move the soldiers around the fish but not over them. I couldn’t take them and feed / improve my civilization, which I found rather odd. They were pretty big.

During the game, I received reports about other civilizations building monuments. I couldn’t help but wonder why I couldn’t build anything. With the right set of advancements, I would probably gain enough knowledge to build something impressive. However, I didn’t know which combinations would yield a world-renown feature like fancy gardens or a Colosseum.

I became uninterested in moving my soldier units around a cut-off island, once again, and decided not to save my progress in this particular version of the game.