Civilization 5 Announced

[antisocialmunky]

Did anyone read the Game Dev Magazine's post mortem of Civ5? Even the team admitted that they dropped the ball on a ton of stuff due to rewriting everything to support 1upt. Though they played it down of course.

[Lord Parkin]

FWIW, that's considerably more historically accurate than the typical behavior in Civ games. Population exploded with the industrial revolution; to take a random Western city as an example, London never exceeded a million population until about 1800, compared to 7 million now. Pretty much entirely the opposite of Civ games, when cities grow fastest in ancient times then don't even double in size between 1 AD and 2000 AD.

Right, but Civ games aren't really known for their complete realism. For gameplay purposes it seems more fun to not have cities limited to only a fraction of their potential until well into the game. And for the record, if it matters, the actual "population number" in the demographics screen does scale exponentially, so you get very roughly the right level of growth over the course of a game. Just saying.

[Lord Parkin]

Did anyone read the Game Dev Magazine's post mortem of Civ5? Even the team admitted that they dropped the ball on a ton of stuff due to rewriting everything to support 1upt. Though they played it down of course.

Got some quotes there?

[fire&ice]

Did anyone read the Game Dev Magazine's post mortem of Civ5? Even the team admitted that they dropped the ball on a ton of stuff due to rewriting everything to support 1upt. Though they played it down of course.

or a link

[antisocialmunky]

By Dennis Shirk
What Went Right

[Seperation of Gameplay and Engine]
[Tech partnerships with Intel, Nvidia, AMD]
[Keeping all the subteams in one office]
[Art Team was good]
[We has modding support]

...

What Went Wrong
1 /// CLASH BETWEEN DESIGN CHANGES AND COMPETING EXPECTED FEATURE SET. CIVILIZATION IV: BTS was as fleshed out a CIVILIZATION title as one could hope for. Expectations for a new version of the game would be extremely high, especially among our hardcore fanbase. Since this was the 5th iteration of CIVILIZATION, our team came to the drawing board looking to do something profoundly new with the series. Our vision for CIV5 included many risky changes that would require a significant amount of new tech, and an even larger role for design and gameplay than in past versions. The design radically changed three of the four types of victory from previous versions, and while this was exciting to us on paper, the challenges of designing and balancing it were numerous considering the schedule we had to keep. 1upt was perhaps the biggest most noticeable change. Whereas a player in previous versions would work with large stacks of units, 1upt was more about expanding the tactical game to make it more interesting and engaging. While I think we succeeded in this concept, the time commitment to this system needed by our design team was fairly costly, and it had a very real impact on the other core components of the game. An entirely new AI system had to be created, and while great strides were made, we underestimated the time needed to make such a large system work in a consistent, competitive manner.

The reality is that the more we focused on brand-new systems to create a brand-new experience, the more we had to trim systems that players had come to expect form previous versions. We ultimately had to focus on making sure our core systems and new concepts were working well, sacrificing some of the less critical features. Some of our hardcore fans have been disappointed by the lack of certain features, but the prioritization has given us a solid foundation to build on[LOLOLOLOLOL], and we're restoring or improving most of that functionality and more, as we continue to support the game moving forward.[DLC]

2 /// OUR EXTERNAL DESIGN TEAM WAS NOT BROUGHT ONLINE UNTIL VERY LATE IN THE PROCESS
During CIV4's development ...we utilized an external design group called "Frankenstein," which was primarily made up of some of the most hardcore fans of the series who know the game inside and out... we passed them regular builds, and they provided extensive gameplay testing and feedback to the design team.

[For CIV5]... we set up a new team with community veterans from the previous team. Jon started working with them early ... in the prototyping process. At this point we were still delivering builds that used the CIV4 engine... there were no issues pushing out regular builds to our external testers. The issues cropped up when the new engine was finally ready... Because this was brand new technology, there was significant work needed to get it to a place where we felt comfortable [giving it to] our testers.... 2 months with no new builds going out... 2 months with zero feedback. [We are going to make lots of patches and DLC to get the game where we want it to]

3 /// CRITICAL POSITIONS WERE STILL MISSING ENTERING PRODUCTION. ... we did not have a staffed-up multiplayer team well into production [Because WOW and Facebook bought all of them up apparently].... gameplay changes coupled with a completely new engine meant that much of [the multiplayer code] had to be coded from the ground up.

[We tested it extensively, and we did lots of testing.]

While this successfully go us to a point where we were able to ship the game, the multiplayer experience was lacking many features [like being playable] that were present in previous versions of CIV. [Our engineering team owns the 2K games QA department except for the last game where I got pwned by a "horseman zerg"]

4 /// INDUSTRIAL AND MODERN ERAS WERE NOT AS POLISHED AS THE FIRST HALF OF THE GAME

[Does anyone want to hear this?]

5 /// LAYOFFS AND THE OBVIOUS EFFECT ON MORALE.

[The recession caused many lay offs during production]

On a humorous note, the conclusion of the article was titled "MORE SETTLERS!"

Added For Emphasis

[Brian Shanahan]

While I think we succeeded in this concept[1UPT]

What really hit my eyes was this point. I know they have to talk up the game. But talking like 1UPT is actually a working part of the game (leaving aside the changes needed to implement it which destroyed the game), shows how far wrong they went even before starting on the game.

[antisocialmunky]

Well, technically that part does work because you can only have 1 unit per tile.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for that info, ASM.

From the emphasized sections, it seems the Civ V design team did not fully realize what they were getting themselves into, and just how far the ripple effects of the 1UPT changes were going to spread. So they ended up with a game where a lot of things had to be cut out (list of features and subsystems too long and too familiar to mention) and other things were not properly integrated and balanced.

Worse, they seem to think they largely succeeded with the initial version of the game, and that a series of patches and DLC could fix the remaining issues and maybe even reintroduce cut functionality. Have they realized by now that the initial version of the game was bad enough (at least in many eyes) that people are not going to care if patches and DLC (especially DLC!) arrive in some indeterminate future? Disappointed fans are not going to suddenly burn with fresh enthusiasm if Firaxis oh-so-generously offers tham a chance to pay more money for DLC to get the game they thought they had bought in the first place?

I made a mistake when I pre-ordered the game and got a lot of hype and hot air rather than a Civ game. I am not about to pay more money to maybe get some DLC that will make MP playable, sort of, or to add espionage back into the game. The basic product was a huge disappointment, and multiple patches show every sign of going further in the wrong directions.

My gaming dollars will go to other games which have at least a chance of being decent, rather than proven failures which might reach the level of "kind of OK" with another year of patching.

[Tyrmith]

I just don't get how DLC helps improve the game- all they do is add more civs and random scenarios people will play once and then ignore. At most I could see it if they claimed they allowed funding for development of the game further after going gold.

[Sullla]

Thanks for posting that information, antisocialmurky. I don't suppose there's a direct link anywhere to the article (?)

I mean, it's not really a surprise or anything, but it certainly does confirm the troubled design process for Civ5. You know it was a stormy development period when "What went Right" consists of things like tech partnership with Nvidia and "we had a good art team", counterbalanced against What went Wrong that has things like "critical layoffs", "we didn't start adding MP until the game was mostly finished", and "drastically underestimated the time/difficulty of implementing our initial design ideas." Whoops.

I thought the statement about not competing with Civ4 was particularly insightful. Back in June 2010, I wrote this reaction based on nothing more than watching the E3 game coverage:

However, I do feel that the design team has decided to take Civ5 off in a separate direction; rather than competing with Civ4, and trying to surpass it, they zagged off on a different path entirely. While that's not the worst thing in the world, and probably even a smart move given how difficult topping Civ4 would be, it will be a bit of a personal disappointment for me if that turns out to be true.

So it was very interesting to read Dennis Shirk state:

CIVILIZATION IV: BTS was as fleshed out a CIVILIZATION title as one could hope for. Expectations for a new version of the game would be extremely high, especially among our hardcore fanbase. Since this was the 5th iteration of CIVILIZATION, our team came to the drawing board looking to do something profoundly new with the series. Our vision for CIV5 included many risky changes that would require a significant amount of new tech, and an even larger role for design and gameplay than in past versions. The design radically changed three of the four types of victory from previous versions[...]

Pretty much exactly what I thought. They went with "change for the sake of change", rather than because it was actually needed or wanted. They didn't even attempt to improve upon Civ4. They went in a different direction entirely. I guess you could call it bold, but I'm so very, very disappointed. I fell like they just gave up on making a better game without even trying.

Other than that, it's really what you'd expect to read. They messed up very, very badly in the design stages. Obviously they did not take the time to think through all the implications of radically redesigning the Civ series. People like to point to combat since it's the best example, but here's another point: Civ5 lets cities grow to work 37 tiles instead of 21. But did the designers ever really understand what this meant? Did they adjust growth or tile yields to accomodate vastly larger cities? Obviously not, which is why the release version had mass ICS empires of size 4 cities dominating the gameplay. I said this innumerable times already, and I'll say it again: the designers did not understand the consequences of their own design. They massively underestimated the time and resources they would need to pull this off, and then they started getting closer and closer to the deadline, realized "Oh sh*t, we have to ship this game in 3 months!" and then started frantically cutting features to make it happen. Obviously that's why we have the pathetic endgame screens, the unfinished Demographics system, the lack of wonder/endgame cinematics, the laughable Civiliopedia, and so on. A lot of people have claimed that was all due to 2K Games rushing the game's release, and while I'm sure 2K shares some of the blame, most of it falls on the dev team. I know from private sources that they started development in early 2008 for Civ5. That's well over two years, almost 30 months of development before release. The game came out in terrible shape not because of 2K, but because the dev team didn't manage their project timeline correctly. Almost as if a young and inexperienced developer were in charge, huh, imagine that...

The other points would be comical if they weren't so tragic. They picked the wrong community testing team to begin with, and then didn't even get them the right builds. I don't know the whole story there, it sure looked like Civ5 hadn't been properly tested though when it came out. They didn't even start work on MP until the game was halfway done, and then tried to graft in the MP code halfway. Ye gods, no wonder MP is such a disaster in Civ5... Go watch the Soren's prototyping videos for Civ4, and compare how differently the development process worked. My second-ever game of Civ4 was online, actually; MP was fully integrated from the start. "Lacking many features" indeed. Then Firaxis/2K were laying off important people during production, yeesh. Talk about a star-crossed game. And their poster child lead developer leaves shortly after development finishes.

What a disaster. If it sounds that bad when Dennis is putting a good face on things, I can only imagine how turbulent things were in reality. Maybe the moral of the story isn't to do a "radical new design" with "risky changes" when you have an untested design team and are facing severe budget cuts and layoffs?