Civilization 5 Announced

[luddite]

I thought this poll from the Off Topic forum on CFC was pretty funny.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=411222

It asked people which version of civ they still play. Civ 4 was in the lead by far with 61 votes. Civ 3 was in second place with 28 votes. Civ 5 was stuck in third with 21 votes, just barely ahead of "none" which had 18 votes. Civ 2 was doing respectably with 10 votes, while poor Civ Rev was just barely ahead of Civ 1 at the bottom.

[darrelljs]

They really needed Alpha Centauri in that poll.

Darrell

[Brian Shanahan]

Looking at their wikipedia page now, it looks like Take-Two games bought Firaxis just two weeks after the release of Civ 4. That was really the last great game that Firaxis has made, because I don't consider the Civ 4 expansions nearly as good as the base game. And since Take-Two bought the company, they don't have a choice- they HAVE to continue with Take-Two, even if Sid and the other founders hate it.

They could always resign, reform and make a new game. It has happened before, the example I'm thinking of is the Champ Man/Football Manager split. At the time there was major friction between the developer (SI games) and the publisher (Eidos). SI wanted to leave and the situation was finally resolved that Eidos got the look and the name and SI got the base code (they also got all the researchers too, but for personal reasons on the researcher). FM is going strong as the biggest sport management sim, while CM is dead as of the 2010 edition.

If Sid and Firaxis were that displeased about the franchise direction they could do something similar. Nothing to stop them from resigning and developing a new game (especially with a name like Sid's behind it I imagine).

[TheArchduke]

If Sid and Firaxis were that displeased about the franchise direction they could do something similar. Nothing to stop them from resigning and developing a new game (especially with a name like Sid's behind it I imagine).

That I doubt. I am not sure why they still think the name is a good idea. But then again, no other CPU game has had its developer put his name before the game. In retrospect, what a curious thing to do.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Its not common but it has been done one example is John Romero's Daikatana.

Edit: And the Madden Series.

[Brian Shanahan]

That I doubt. I am not sure why they still think the name is a good idea. But then again, no other CPU game has had its developer put his name before the game. In retrospect, what a curious thing to do.

Sid is still a seller, even now. And having his name on it would probably drag in some people, especially if he span the "We weren't satisfied with 2K's direction, and they had big input in Civ V. Here's what we actually wanted" line.

[Tyrmith]

I doubt it's something that they would do though, the loss of intellectual property would be a very large deterrent I think.

[v8mark]

But then again, no other CPU game has had its developer put his name before the game. In retrospect, what a curious thing to do.

Edit: And the Madden Series.

Madden was already a celebrity for something other than playing games though. Don't know about Daikatana. The only other example I can think of is Geoff Crammond's Formula 1 GP (and GP2, GP3, and GP4 subsquently).

[Sciz]

Chris Sawyer of Rollercoaster Tycoon fame has also had his name in front of games a la Sid Meier.

But I agree with Brian Shanahan, that it should be possible for the Civ dev team to resign and make a new similar series with a different name if they really wanted to, just like Football Manager. This is just speculation of course, but it worked very well for Sports Interactive, their new (well since 2005) FM series is much, much more popular than the original CM series that they created at first.

[Gaspar]

Madden isn't really relevant, that's just a celebrity endorsement. He doesn't have anything to do with the game itself, other than for years he provided color commentary. No different than Tiger Woods or what have you. That sort of endorsement was very popular in the days before pro league licensing became so commonplace(i.e. Ken Griffey Baseball, Joe Montana Football, etc.)

I also don't think the CM/FM situation is a great comparison. SI were a very small company, and their entire franchise was heavily based on fan interaction. They're probably a more direct comparison to Stardock than Firaxis. While yes, they split away and maintained and expanded their audience, there was never any doubt of that, the community is very-clued in to what's going on. FWIW, CM/FM might be the only game series over the years where I've logged more hours playing than Civ. Firaxis has the chops of a larger company, but not the budget. And they are not at all known for being in tune with their playerbase. And Sid is not absolved of this nonsense, its said he had heavy involvement with CivRev, which was an absolute piece of trash. I'd be far more likely to buy Soren Johnson's History of the World or something than Sid Meier's Empire Building or whatever. And that's with Soren being attached to that abortion that was Spore.

Bottom line, we're just going to have to hope that Firaxis lucks into a good designer for Civ6 and that somehow Take Two doesn't ruin everything. Doubtful, I suspect more likely we'll be playing Civ4 MP with an RB mod and FFH2 until someone else comes out with something that takes the board by storm for a long time. I wish FFH2 made any sense to me. :P