Civilization IV and its various expansions have, since their release, captured my time like an Aztec Jaguar with +10% City Attack invading a town guarded only by a wounded Spearman. The game has vaulted into that relatively rare class of game to which I return again and again, never growing tired of its refined gameplay or its epic scope. It is a grand accomplishment of recreation, a game of extraordinary noteworthiness among a landscape of more-of-the-same and overblown pyrotechnics.

That's not to say there's anything particularly wrong with ordinary, pedestrian or action overloaded games. They probably define the concept of game far better in most instances. It would hardly be fair to compare games like Gears of War, Mario or Madden to something like Civilization IV, not because Civ is inherently superior but simply because the mandate of the games are so ridiculously different that they are comparable only in that they require an electronic medium to play. (Civ boardgame notwithstanding) But, what strikes me as really quite remarkable about Civilization IV is that it is an even rarer class of games which has given me so degree of insight into the world in which I live.

Playing yet another round of Beyond the Sword, I was lusting after my own brand of manifest destiny as Peter the Great kept uncomfortable pace with my own advanced technology putting great air-fleets of fighters and bombers along our shared border and making me think twice about making a push for his eastern shores. Earlier in the game I had walled in the hapless Zulus between a cadre of Knights and the deep blue sea, and through equal parts attrition and aggression pushed his increasingly antiquated forces into the water until, grudgingly, he ceded his remaining island based lands into a vassal state. Fighting wars, it occurred to me, was significantly more straightforward in the sixteenth century than the late-twentieth.

This isn't precisely news to me, but there's a difference between knowing a thing and understanding it. In a fictional way Civ IV had tapped my brain into a semi-accurate simulation of the geo-political complications of waging war in the modern era. Even with only seven partners sharing a fictional, if densely packed, globe, the instabilities of the alliances I'd cobbled together posed no less problem than the sheer uncertainty of mounting a conflict with an equally matched enemy. Even against a comparable competitor in the sixteenth century, they could not bomb my cities from a distance, could not paradrop units behind my main assault force and could not cause nearly the same level of havoc on my infrastructure in nearly so many ways.

Following a discussion on last week's GWJ Conference Call, I sat down and tried to think of games that gave me a deeper understanding of the world around me. I could come up with a few that gave me some sort of insight into myself, most commonly games that posed a moral choice, proving once and for all that I'm a goody-goody even in virtual spaces and incapable of more than mischievous harm. There were even games like Defcon which evoked unexpected emotions, but the number of games that have given me insight into the mechanics of our society and civilization is reduced to one aptly named title.

I'm not sure it's the job of games as a form of entertainment to instill some global or even local revelation, and I don't someday hope that a new version of Lumines will give me insight into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but I do know that Civilization has become an even richer experience to me because of what I learn from it. Painted in broad strokes, it succeeds where even other strategy games fail because it is a game fundamentally based around concepts instead of events. It is, in that novelty of describing broad concepts, a remarkable game both in its design and its execution.

Civilization IV, and to some extent its earlier predecessors, are the proof in the pudding that gaming can describe the world around us while providing a fun environment. Considering how rare such a thing comes around, more notice should be taken of Firaxis' accomplishment, and I look forward – as I have for at least a decade now – to other developers taking up the challenge of creating a fun game that provides this kind of sophistication. Though, I'm really not holding my breath.