Product Road Maps for 6 Year Olds
Civ 1 and 4X/turn-based games made me the PM I am today
Like many before me, I spent my early 20s as a dutiful sled dog at digital marketing agencies, before moving to the product side. You apply your quantitative skills, your judgment, and lots of hours and hard work, and you pull your clients forward as a team. Hopefully.
One day our agency strategists were all asked “what’s your favorite part of digital?” as an icebreaker in a dept meeting. Some said “copy,” some said “subject lines,” other people geeked about creative. The roundtable came to me, and I said “Uh, A/B testing and learning. You’re figuring out what makes sense to test, when — what to learn in order to get the highest score.”
And yes, I just compared a test and learn roadmap to videogames. Clearly great at icebreakers and parties. Well, what can I say, the gamer mindset started early, and it helped make me the product manager I am today.
Because I’ve been telling technologists what to prioritize since I was 6 years old. Not for money of course — but as the “leader” of a country in Sid Meier’s Civilization series. The first game (Sid Meier’s Civilization aka “Civ 1”) came out in the early 90s. In this turn-based strategy you found the first city of a country (e.g Rome by the Tiber river) and you put your farmers and builders to work making more cities.
And you decide if your wise men should focus on “The Wheel,” “Bronze Working” or “The Alphabet” first. Eventually the wise men become scientists and you discover the printing press, democracy, rockets, fusion, etc. This map of possible future discoveries is called a “Tech Tree.”
In these games, tech trees have huge implications. If you spend your time researching weapons and not writing or paper money, you can’t raise funds to pay for your fancy armies. Or you might focus on farming and irrigation, but if you don’t develop a courthouse and legal systems, corruption will spring up and slow your growth to a crawl.
The user manual for the game had a list of technology, and which unlocked the next advancement. After a week of playing Civ 1 on our first Windows PC, I grabbed it to map out which 6–8 technologies led to Democracy (more trade, society prefers peace) or Industrialization (can build factories and get Women’s Suffrage). It also made sense to research Pottery along the way so I could store more food for my civ, and grow faster. I remember scribbling down this rough plan on a piece of junk mail.
I usually spend TOO much time focused on technology — I build these advanced giant cities with bustling markets and culture, and then get walloped by a horde of barbarians with handaxes. You can’t ignore military and defense either, in this game.
You have to be smart, you have to balance a bunch of competing needs as you scale from one small village to multiple cities, and from hunting/gathering to building roads and then trains. What’s needed at every stage of the lifecycle changes, and your choices of technology dictate what you can build.
With each new game I played as a kid, I would always zoom in on the tech tree and research order. And as a boring adult, every time I’ve sat down to build a roadmap, for new features on a tech team, or for AB testing priorities in a marketing org — I fall back to the mindset I’ve been using for 28 years now: What needs to happen to unlock the next good thing, and what should we do first?
If you understand dependencies, the impact of your roadmap items, and the need to vet against the current reality of the business/market — these games can be great training! In addition to a lot of fun.
For the nerdy among you, here’s some info on the best of the games below:
Best Tech Trees in Videogames: Honorable mentions
Civ 4 — The legendary Leonard Nimoy reads a little quote to you for every technology you unlock.
Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri — This game, often called “Civ in space” mixes space-age technology with wisdom from Sun Tzu and Plato as you settle humanity’s first colony outside the solar system.
Master of Orion 2 — Known as “MOO-2” you choose an alien species and settle the galaxy. You’re slowly expanding and trying to figure out if new ships, new lasers, or new economic systems hold the key to advancement.
Ascendancy — They had a 3D tech tree, which blew my mind in the 90s. I think they made an iPad version of this game more recently. More alien expansion throughout the galaxy. And each race has a special ability. I always chose the species that could solve a free technology every X turns.
Warzone 2100- Most of these games have been turn-based, but this was a “real-time strategy” game (or RTS). You had to juggle building patrol units and exploring, with figuring out if you should focus on oil refineries, hovercraft, or death rays with your research. The graphics were a little clugey but you had to make quick decisions without a lot of time, and it was a fun challenge.
