Famed designer Sid Meier seems intent on revisiting his gloried past, starting with Sid Meier's Pirates!, the remake of his classic strategy/adventure hybrid of the same name. In the original Pirates!, which came out in 1987, you played as a pirate who was seeking fame and fortune along the Spanish Main. You could sink or capture enemy ships, plunder coastal towns, perform missions for various colonial governors, romance the governors' daughters, and engage in stylized swordfights. In essence, Pirates! captured all the swagger and adventure of the buccaneering life without any of the downsides. The remake will attempt to recapture the essence of the original game while updating it for modern gamers. In the latest chapter of our Designer Diaries series, Firaxis Games' Jeff Briggs explains why Meier and the design team have once again chosen to eschew realism and aim for a more romanticized game about piracy.

When in doubt, stick them with the pointy end.

Reality: Threat or Menace?

When Sid Meier and I decided that Firaxis would rerelease Sid Meier's Pirates!, the Firaxis design team began doing intensive research on the subject. This included playing the original Pirates! game a lot, watching pirate movies, and a trip to the Caribbean (we love our jobs). We also reread a bunch of the historical documents on pirates and piracy, which reminded us of a number of things:

1. A pirate's life was usually wretched, brutal, and horribly short.
2. Many pirates were little more than common murderers, and some were obviously insane.
3. Sea voyages were tedious, boring, uncomfortable, and dangerous, and you often lived for months on rancid meat and rotten biscuits.
4. In the 17th century almost nobody had a full set of teeth.

Much of this stuff is quite fascinating in its own way, but it reminded us once again of why our Pirates! game should take a less realistic and more fun approach to the life of a pirate. There are a number of gritty and realistic games out there, but Sid Meier's Pirates! has and always will take a more cinematic, lighthearted view of the world. In this game, pirates never brutally murder their victims, they always get the girl, and they never die of the pox. Can you see Errol Flynn cutting off a prisoner's ears and nose to get him to reveal where the rest of his family is hidden? We can't, either. Our pirate is a hero, not a villain! So we had to leave a lot of cool, historically accurate stuff right out of the game.

It turns out that governors' daughters have a thing for scoundrels.

Here are a few examples of the kinds of details we felt we had to discard: First, nobody likes a fair fight. Most pirates were little more than highway robbers at sea. They were not in it for the glory; they wanted to make as much money as possible with as little risk as possible. Most survived by preying on weaker ships; when confronted by a stronger opponent they turned tail and ran as fast as they could. That is not to say that pirates were cowards--they were tremendously brave and they'd fight like cornered rats when they had to or when the prize made it worthwhile. But a fat, slow merchant ship was always far more enticing than a frigate, and any pirate captain who thought otherwise would quickly find himself voted (that's how they did it) out of a job.

In our game, caution doesn't pay; the big rewards fall to the pirate with the most guts. The player's pirate is a noble fellow with the heart of a lion. He's never happier than when he is taking on an enemy twice his size.