Strategy game designer Soren Johnson is a real jerk. Doesn't he know that it's October and lots of great games are coming out? He had his moment in the sun when Civilization IV came out three years ago and again when Spore game out last month. So why did he do the terrible thing he just did?

Here's what happened. Firstly, he posted a thoughtful article he'd written for Game Developer magazine detailing the seven deadly sins of strategy games. Then, while discussing a point he'd made, he casually mentioned something called Realms Beyond. He cited it as a good example of how to do scenarios for strategy games:

My favorite example would actually be the meta-gaming site Realms Beyond which creates alternate Civ3/4 scenarios by imposing extra limitations on the base game (such as "You must declare war on everyone you meet" or "You cannot build defensive units"). Here's a link to their scenarios. I wish we had had the resources to do this type of stuff in the shipped game.

That link is where he really showed his true blue colors as a big fat thoughtless jerk. He knew that guys like me would be curious what he was talking about. So I clicked on the link and found myself in a treasure trove of different ways to play Civilization IV.

The idea of Realms Beyond is that veteran players have come up with challenges. They create scenarios with different kinds of objectives and limitations, and then they invite each other to play them and post their scores. For instance, the currently active game is called Ditchdigger. You start out in the ancient era playing against six opponents who've already advanced to the classical era. It's a losing proposition. How well will you do?

Then there are more accessible scenarios like the Dan Quayle challenge, Tomorrow's Future. This one changes some basic rules with a mod. You're an incompetent leader who incurs a penalty to every city's health, happiness, and Great Person birth rate. Your banks are less effective. Your workers are lazy. How well can you do?

Thanks, Soren Johnson. Thanks a lot. The last thing I need is an incentive to sink more time into Civilization IV.