Video: Sid Meier encourages developers to be ready for failure

Firaxis held its first Firaxicon fan event this year, and one of the recorded talks may be of particular interest to game developers: XCOM: Enemy Unknown designer Jake Solomon speaking with Firaxis cofounder Sid Meier about the veteran game developer's career and his philosophy of game design. "As a designer you can't really have a lot of ego," said Meier, referencing his thoughts on good game design. "If the idea you thought was great, you put it in and it's no fun, you have to be willing to take it out." Meier speaks to a variety of challenges facing contemporary game makers in the course of discussing his own career and his approach to developing titles like Civilization and Covert Action. "Make a couple of failures; I think that's the key," said Meier. "You're going to learn more from your failures than your successes. Be ready to fail. Be ready to try something new." It's worth watching, so we've taken the liberty of embedding the hour-long talk above. You can also find it on Firaxis' YouTube channel.