Civilization 5 Announced

[Amelia]

So if Firaxis always look 2 generations behind, will it be realistic to think of Civ VI as the successor to the greatest Civ they've created?

[Tyrmith]

It wasn't that people like Sirian didn't know the problems it was that Shafer wouldn't listen to them. Sullla said it when he described how there was so much less communication between players and game designers unlike civ4. Shafer knew exactly the game he had in mind, and I guess dissenting voices weren't terribly welcome.

[Krill]

It certainly seems like something happened to the process at Firaxis, something that contributed significantly to the outcome of Civ V being what it is (and isn't). I understand that due to non-disclosure agreements and the like, we are highly unlikely to ever know what really happened. But can anyone speak in general terms about Firaxis' process? Was the Civ V team mostly the same people who worked on Civ IV? (With different leadership, of course, and that can change things a lot.) Or would the Civ V team have mostly been people new to working on the Civ franchise?

I am curious because development processes are a professional concern of mine. When a company has well established process, people and projects may come and go but the process endures -- it is a form of institutional memory and a stabilizing force.

If the Civ V team was mostly different from the team which developed Civ IV, it would explain a lot. Probably this is too simple an explanation, and we will just never know. But I am curious.

Different players. At least, the useful ones weren't there anymore.

[Sullla]

There was a lot of continuity on the part of the Firaxis staff between Civ4 and Civ5. I recognized tons of names in the credits from people I met back in 2005. The problem is that there was turnover in key positions (no Soren as lead designer, no Jesse Smith as producer, etc.) and that definitely makes a difference. If you look at individual areas in isolation, then most of Civ5 comes off nicely: the sound/music is great, the graphics look nice on high-end computers, the animations for the leaderheads and their native language stuff is impressive, etc. etc. (Leaving aside the theft of art assets from Google image search! Heh.) The problem is combining all the little pieces together: they mostly don't fit, or work at cross purposes, and the whole is much less than the sum of the parts. It's almost as if a very young individual with virtually no experience in game design was put in charge of the overall project...

I wasn't part of Civ5's development and can only speculate on what happened. So here's my best guess on the major problems in development, emphasizing that it is a mere guess:

1) Inexperienced lead designers and faulty overall design

2) Insufficient or substandard testers/testing process

3) Tight deadlines and limited development resources

I don't need to say much about the first point; in the interview with Game Developer magazine, one of the Firaxians even admitted that their design had been far too ambitious, and took much longer to implement than they expected. I've written way too much already on how and why the design for Civ5 is wrong, so enough on that.

I put a large share of the blame on the testing process. This might be a bit offensive, but in my opinion, Firaxis shoved out the community members who were giving them real feedback and replaced them with people who were just happy to be part of a beta test. Or perhaps Firaxis simply ignored the feedback their were given; I think it's the former, but I've heard some claim the latter. In any case, that's why we had so many extremely obvious bugs in the release version of the game. Like, "stuff that I would notice in 5 minutes of playing the game" obvious. There's no excuse for that, and it's taken the better part of 9 months for the game to get this stuff patched out of it.

On the last point, it's pretty clear that the publisher forced Firaxis to release Civ5 before it was fully ready. At the same time, they had at least two years (possibly three) to work on this thing. The management of the project was simply awful, as evidenced by the fact that they were still trying to hire MP programmers six months before release. If you can't meet a timetable for release, maybe it's the big bad publisher's fault... or maybe it's the fault of the developer, who couldn't manage the project competently.

Anyway, in the end it does come back to the lead designer, the guy in charge of the project. Yes, there are a ton of moving parts in designing a game. But the person in charge deserves much of the credit for success, or blame in the case of failure. Soren did a masterful job with Civ4, and Jon did a poor job with Civ5. Analyze all you like, that's basically what it comes down to.

[MJW (ya that one)]

People are not talking about if there will be an expasion pack because it is very likely there will not be one. 12 months is too long and an expasion pack coming in 3 months is unlikely due to the hoildays.

People have forgotten the whole "Dale" thing. I think testing was ignored or they ran out of time because ICS was big. The testers were not given the right builds to so that is why they came under time pressure. I think that certain testing was igonored due to Siran's posts earlier in this thread. I think certain people have an Apolyton fetish... I think certain testing was ignored because the ratio of talented players vs. bad players ratio was messed up. And the talented players like Dale were easy to ignore for obivous reasons in a groupthink stituation like Civ5 was.

Jon's task was harder than Soren's but that does not take away that he did a poor job.

The biggest problems in the game is bad AI and no MP. It is not things not fitting together well. The things that make Civ5 a bad game are just not even there.

2k moving up the deadline hurt the game but 3 extra months would have not fixed the issues. And Firaxis did not get the rug sweeped from under them suddenly. They knew what they had to work with.

[Krill]

I think certain people have an Apolyton fetish...

What do you mean?

[MJW (ya that one)]

What do you mean?

(USA) An irrational, or abnormal fixation or preoccupation.

wikitionary...

[NobleHelium]

I think Krill knows what a fetish is. He's wondering what you mean by an Apolyton fetish (and so am I).

[MJW (ya that one)]

I think Krill knows what a fetish is. He's wondering what you mean by an Apolyton fetish (and so am I).

Sulla likes to attack apolyton irrationally because of his irrational fixation on it*. You asked for it. This was not might to be serious at all.

"I think Krill knows what a fetish is." might be our QotM.

*Caused by Dale attacking him on CFC, the whole Templar thing, being shut out of the Civ5 beta test because of Apolyton members taking up slots and the game Civ5. I don't blame him.

[Krill]

Sulla likes to attack apolyton irrationally because of his irrational fixation on it*. You asked for it. This was not might to be serious at all.

"I think Krill knows what a fetish is." might be our QotM.

*Caused by Dale attacking him on CFC, the whole Templar thing, being shut out of the Civ5 beta test because of Apolyton members taking up slots and the game Civ5. I don't blame him.

First of it wouldn't be irrational, secondly that would be a good reason to hate Panda****ers, not Poly.