It is exactly that. I never truly did that for Civ, but had fun with hotseat sessions of Heroes of Might and Magic 3. IIRC the game literally calls it that, must have been the first I encountered the term.
I think it‘s just an old PC term for turn-based games where you play multiplayer on the same machine with the same peripherals. Basically, you play your turn, get up, let the next player take the seat in front of the monitor, they do their turn, etc… Since not everyone is playing at the same time, you can play together by playing in succession. „Hotseat“ as in passing the seat in front of the PC around like in hot potato, I guess lol
brsrklf@jlai.lu 3 days ago
gustofwind@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I miss when games were truly social like this ):
smeg@feddit.uk 4 days ago
Some of them still are! I played some Golf With Your Friends recently, that has the classic hot seat experience. The Jackbox games are different but also good for a party.