A game I have loved and what it taught me: SMAC

In Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (1999), we are put in charge of ensuring the survival of the last remnants of humanity, a few thousand people sent urgently in a starship to colonize the star system Alpha Centauri in the final days of Earth. Through the game, we not only get to decide how humanity may (or may not) survive, but also decide how humanity evolves into different future societies, and find its place among the stars. This unique science fiction setting drew me to Alpha Centauri as a teenager. At first, I expected to be simply entertained by the game. Yet years later as an adult, I still remember Alpha Centauri as a wellspring of ideas from which I drank and became transformed. 

Through Alpha Centauri, I discovered ideas about how future societies may organize themselves to ensure human survival and progress. I discovered ideas about what future speculative technologies might be and how they will affect future societies. I remember that playing the game made me felt less lonely in the world, because I discovered that loneliness is a universal human condition and that it is timeless. I discovered hope and optimism in an uplifting possible future in which humanity finds its place among the stars. I found and grappled with ideas that are bigger than me. I made decisions that made me reflect on my capacity for empathy. I discovered that history is not a guiding moral force. I found these ideas so unexpected and erudite in a computer game that playing the game became a way for me to meditate about my place in the world...