A few days before his birthday, it is difficult to tell whether Sid Meier is about to turn 68 or 16. The Canadian-American video game programmer and designer, best known for his Civilization turn-based strategy series, speaks about his work with such enthusiasm, you would suspect that he barely considers it work at all. “After college, I just wanted to do cool things with computers,” he says, smiling over Zoom, from his home in Baltimore, Maryland.

Meier has developed, co-developed and/or produced a total of 56 games since 1975 across a range of consoles and operating systems, but those in the Civilization franchise, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in September, are his most celebrated. “Civ” games are considered formative examples of the 4X sub-genre of strategy gaming – the abbreviation referring to exploration, expansion, exploitation, and extermination – and all share a similar gameplay style.

Civ games allow a player in a god-like or overseer role to upscale a civilisation from pre-history to the near future. Each Civ campaign involves aspects of science, politics, economics, architecture, culture, and religion. There are six main titles in the series, various expansion packs and several spin-offs or mods.

The original elevator pitch for Civ, Meier explains, was about “the joy of building something”. He was “really inspired” by Sim City and the work of Will Wright, but had already enjoyed some of his own success with the business simulation Railroad Tycoon – a game which he co-developed with Bruce Shelley, and published through Micropose, the company he co-founded with Bill Stealey in 1982.

Released in 1990, Railroad Tycoon tasked players with building and managing a train company by laying tracks, constructing stations and scheduling services. The game was a commercial and critical success, with Brian Walker at Games International giving it a perfect score of 10 out of 10 and hailing it as “one of the most captivating games I’ve ever played”.