Civilization 5 Announced

[Brian Shanahan]

Nice post Tatan, I've a pretty similar story except replace Reach with FM11, and the fact I am pretty tolerant of a buggy game under 2 conditions:
1) The game itself is strong, ie the underlying gameplay and concepts work, challenge me and are interesting, and
2) The company works dilligently to fix the bugs if possible.

1) definitely is a fail on the part of Firaxis, while IMO 2) is somewhat debatable as most of the energy with the patches seems to be with nerfing ICS strategies and not fixing problems.

And on the time thing I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion that it was the team's own fault. They had 2 years definitely and quite probably 3 from the very first stages. They should have had enough time to try the new concepts, see what was working, what wasn't and what needed improvement/changes, but it seems that a) they (especially Shafer) were too focused on one style of play and one type of game system to change when it was found to be lacking (and I can't see how they coulnd't have found out both ICS and 1UPT to be seriously wrong), b) they were not willing to accept criticism (we can see that from reports of former testers who weren't asked back) and c) they were too inexperienced to handle the deadline when it became an issue (all the features being dropped, "to be included later").

[regoarrarr]

So while RB isn't generating more forum traffic than Apolyton, it is indeed producing very nearly as much in terms of posting content. RB has significantly fewer people, who are posting more on an individual level.

We do what we can....

[Lord Parkin]

So while RB isn't generating more forum traffic than Apolyton, it is indeed producing very nearly as much in terms of posting content. RB has significantly fewer people, who are posting more on an individual level.

I believe there's another word for that. It surely doesn't rhyme with "ham"...

But seriously, it's quite impressive that RB is doing so well for itself, considering the smaller member base.

[scooter]

Now, this may seem like comparing apples and trash cans, but the fact remains: Bungie has treated the blockbuster Halo series and its fans with the time and energy it deserves, while Firaxis has trashed the acclaimed Civilization series by treating it like just another Strategy Game 5: The Cash-Milking. I never thought a single game could turn me into a jaded cynicist about new games, but Firaxis did it; and it will take a HIGHLY recommended game for me to ever touch them or 2k again.

Thank goodness I only had the money at the time to buy Reach.

Tatan - one nitpick I'll make... Is that I can practically guarantee you that Bungie has a much, much bigger budget with their games than Firaxis will ever have. Don't get me wrong, the Civilization series is a very successful franchise and Firaxis games is still a big deal, but Bungie is most definitely bigger. Sure Firaxis really screwed up a lot of things about Civ5 (I think the biggest one was putting Schafer in charge, to be frank). But things like this:

Firaxis rushed to get the game out

Are completely 2k's fault honestly. Things like the slowness of patching are also 2K's fault, and it's just the nature of dealing with a generally crappy game label. Whenever Firaxis completes a patch, they have to submit it to 2K for approval, which is a process that can often stretch into weeks and weeks. Several of Civ4's patches got delayed for way too long - and I remember developers for Civ4 posting on CFC that the patch was complete and submitted to 2K, and 5 weeks later, no patch.


I guess my point is that comparing Firaxis and Bungie isn't totally fair. Firaxis shipped a horrible product in Civ5 and they deserve most of the blame for it, but a lot of the semantics you talk about is largely beyond their control, as I'm pretty sure that the budget and resources Firaxis is working with is dwarfed by what Bungie has. Be mad at Firaxis for designing a horrible game, and be mad at 2K for making the post-development process be very unpleasant (as it was with Civ4 at times).

[Caustic Soda]

While it is very possible that 2K Games have screwed out Firaxis, that does not mean that all the blame for the deadline + patching issues fall on 2K. Firaxis has worked with them before, they should know their modus operandi. Firaxis in general and the Civ series in particular has had a very good brand name. It should not have been difficult for them to switch publishers before they started production of Civ 5, had they so desired. The decision to keep working with 2K wasn't Shafers to make, but Firaxis as an organization had the ability to go looking for another publisher, and they chose not to.

I am generally skeptical of the claim that stupid practices from publishers absolve game developers of blame for buggy, unfinished games. If you cooperate with someone who is an idiot and/or have radically different goals, then you take that into consideration and try to work around it, if you can't find someone better to work with.

[Zed-F]

Doesn't sound like what scooter was saying to me. Sounded like he was saying both Firaxis and 2K deserve a share of the blame. Also, regardless of how successful Firaxis was, one doesn't switch publishers just like that; business in general doesn't encourage switching partnerships easily once they are established. Usually one tries to first work with one's partners to get issues resolved. For the smaller member of a partnership like 2K/Firaxis, where 2K has more money by far in comparison, Firaxis switching publishers would be a desperation move -- 2K can afford a lot more lawyers to punish Firaxis for trying to leave a contractual arrangement even in a legitimate fashion.

[Caustic Soda]

Doesn't sound like what scooter was saying to me. Sounded like he was saying both Firaxis and 2K deserve a share of the blame. Also, regardless of how successful Firaxis was, one doesn't switch publishers just like that; business in general doesn't encourage switching partnerships easily once they are established. Usually one tries to first work with one's partners to get issues resolved. For the smaller member of a partnership like 2K/Firaxis, where 2K has more money by far in comparison, Firaxis switching publishers would be a desperation move -- 2K can afford a lot more lawyers to punish Firaxis for trying to leave a contractual arrangement even in a legitimate fashion.

Well yes, but my point was that Firaxis also shared blame wrt. patching, in addition to the design issues. Your point about the contractual obligations Firaxis may have with 2K games is well made, though. To be honest, I have no real idea of how such contracts look, so I may well have overestimated the feasibility of changing publishers.

[Krill]

2K own the IP to civ, IIRC, well, 2K or their parent, right?

[Brian Shanahan]

Caustic Soda & Zed-F: 2K own Firaxis, so there is no question of a switch of publishers, unless 2K sell.

However I still believe that Firaxis were the authors of their own downfall here. 2 years is a significant amount of time, long enough definitely to find out which concepts work and which don't and get a good, working (if not perfect and definitely buggy) game out to the public instead of the broken mess which thought is was a tactical battle simulator.

And the patching strategy is 100% Firaxis. If it were at the behest of 2K all they'd be interested in is fixing bugs and intergrating the DLC properly, not rescuing the dream of Shafer by doing their best to nerf the ICS strategy in favour of the 3CC strategy.

[scooter]

And the patching strategy is 100% Firaxis.

If Firaxis had it their way, they'd fix a bug and push out the patch an hour later. Unfortunately, it doesn't generally work that way for them - 2K has an approval process because they think if it's their label, they want to control everything that goes in/out of the game. It's just the way 2K manages things..

My point was not at all to absolve Firaxis of blame for creating a bad product, my point was that there are two things that are not Firaxis' fault, but rather 2K's:

1. The game being rushed out the door. It's VERY common for game publishers (2K) to come up on a quarterly deadline and realize they are short on their quarterly projections, so they advance a release date for a game so that it can come out on time to boost their sales numbers. It happened to Civ4 and it happened to Civ5 as well if I'm not mistaken. Firaxis can't control it if 2K tells them "release it on this date, and if it's not done then you can fix it later."

2. Patch cycles - All patches for Civ get submitted to 2K for approval - a process which is somewhat notorious for taking a bit too long sometimes. I don't totally understand the inner workings of the process or how it works exactly, but it's the reason why Firaxis can't make a fix and push it out an hour later... Rather they make a bunch of them, roll it into one patch, submit it to 2K, and a month later it gets pushed out.