We Could All Use a New Civilization Right Now

By Garrett Martin | January 23, 2025 | 12:17pm

Video Games Features civilization vii

We Could All Use a New Civilization Right Now

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Sid Meier’s Civilization VII starts how these things always do: a lone settler on an unknown map stumbling through the darkness. Their surroundings are as shrouded as their future, but at least those surroundings are knowable; as they explore the new ground they find themselves on, they start to get the lay of the land, its hills and valleys opening up around them. The future—the civilization they’re creating, and the culture that defines it—can be planned for, can be strategized, but there’s no guarantee anything will turn out how they hope it will. And when things go wrong, as they will, all the settler and their ancestors can do is react and try to make the best of it, even when the whole damn thing seems on the verge of collapse.

Seven times now I’ve played a Civilization for the first time, and never has it felt better timed or more necessary than with the new one. Like all the Civs before it, Civilization VII is a way to escape the real world that has a patina of accomplishment about it. I feel like I’m working on something worthwhile when I play Civ, even though I’m not, and although this medium and artform have matured somewhat since I first played Civilization on Christmas Day 1991 (not nearly as much as it should have over 33 years, but what can you do), shepherding my civilization from huts to the stars still somehow feels more meaningful than even the best game narratives or most ingenious design. I’m a sucker for history and archeology and the symbolic power of any man-made construct, be it tangible or merely an idea, that has lasted for generations, and since it’s currently impossible to feel even slightly upbeat about where humanity has taken itself, there’s a good chance I would’ve turned to Civilization even if there wasn’t a brand new one to play.

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It’s not just that Civ gives me control, or an escape, or options, or any semblance of the agency that our real civilization is built to deprive most of us of. Part of the power of Civilization VII is that it lets us trash the whole goddamned thing the instant we want to. There’s a point that comes frequently when playing these games, where I’m tired or bummed out by how my civilization is going, and I just check out completely. I ball it up, clang it off the rim of the trash bin, and head back to the main menu to begin again. Normally just a mundane, unremarkable part of playing these games, right now feels pretty good to get to do that. Aspirational, even.

Obviously we just can’t chuck the real world into the garbage, however desperately we want to. Outside the computer we’re stuck with what we’ve got, and reader, what we’ve got sucks. We can try to ignore whatever problems might exist, disappearing into our work, looking to religion (or other substances), or escaping through entertainment, but none of that is a solution. Solutions are beyond any of us individually, and trying to get enough people to work together to fix anything is exhausting and disheartening. None of that in Civilization VII: we are, each of us, the sole maker of all decisions in our part of this world, and the decision to nope out and try again is always there for us. If our civilization spoils, we can just exit out and create a whole new one from the start.

I’ve already done that during my preview time with Civilization VII. When that rat Augustus sneak attacked my society’s key harbor town, while our once-mutual enemy Tecumseh continued to pick at my Southern border, fighting on two fronts made me have to stop work on the Great Wall—the kind of inspirational great work that would inspire not just the citizens of my civilization but, uh, me, too. (Again: old stuff has power, especially really big, really old stuff.) I would’ve maybe played this fraying string out a bit longer in a normal setting, but why? Writing a “preview” encouraged me to scrap it all so I could see more of the game before writing about it, but I won’t lie: there’s enough actual misery in this world, and getting stressed out by a game, of all things, isn’t something I need to put myself through right now.

I’m not letting Civilization VII stress me out. Again, this game is all about aspiration for me right now. And maybe a little bit of inspiration, too. It won’t be healthy or responsible to stay distracted for too long, to try to ignore everything that’s happening, the current escalation of the degradation the world’s been struggling through for years, but it’s also not healthy to not take a break from all that when we need to. At this moment, during this particular week, with the daily onslaught of simple cruelty against America’s most vulnerable, and the intentional dismantling of civilization by the wealthiest and cruelest sons of bitches this world has ever seen, Civilization VII presents an easy, if fleeting, out: an opportunity to build a world we’d maybe want to live in, a world we actually have the ability to impact through our actions and choices. It couldn’t have come at a better time.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.