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Are you, in fact, a pregnant lady who lives in the apartment next door to Superdeath's parents? - Commodore |
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Civilization 5 Announced
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Anyone know if this is typical?
If you're a small studio, and development on your next product is NOT in full swing when your previous project finished, to me it would seem to make sense to cut staff during that time. sunrise089 Wrote:Anyone know if this is typical?The folks over at CivFanatics seem to believe so.
Actually, it's a really bizarre period to be cutting staff, sunrise. With Civ5's release date arriving in late September, that means that the game will "go gold" (essentially be finished so it can be sent off for distribution) around September 1st. Firaxis is wrapping up the final stages of development right now, which is always a frantic crunch time. During this same period for Civ4, I know personally that the guys on staff were working 16 hour days and sleeping in the office half the time. Normally a company will pull in extra staff at crunch time, not lay people off. Everyone usually gets released after the project finishes. Very strange...
I don't like the vibe I'm getting from Firaxis these days. They haven't made anything of consequence since Civ4, and that was a full five years ago now. (Expansions don't count, since they piggyback off an already-existing product.) The games that came out since - Railroads!, CivCity Rome, Civ Revolutions, Civ4 Colonization - were all mediocre to poor products. The Civilization Facebook game appears to be in limbo, with no release date and unclear design goals. (We still have no idea how it's going to work, or how exactly Firaxis plans to monetize the thing.) Jon Shaefer is a nice guy, but he's very young to be heading Civ5's development, and has only marginally more experience in game design than I do. Firaxis' publisher is Take-Two, one of the most corrupt and poorly-run groups in all of gaming. I hope this all ends well, but I'm not optimistic for the future longterm. Sullla Wrote:Normally a company will pull in extra staff at crunch time, not lay people off. Everyone usually gets released after the project finishes. Very strange... This makes sense, and you've sold me on it being troubling. I was thinking development was further along than it was.
All of these things combined, and I have zero excitement for Civ5 right now... I don't know, maybe it will pleasantly surprise me, but I know when Civ4 was wrapping up, I was practically counting down the days and couldn't stop reading previews. I think I've read about two previews tops for Civ5, and before reading Sullla's post I couldn't even tell you what month it was coming out in. Granted - part of it is that I'm still having fun with Civ4, but I haven't seen a single great reason to buy it, and I'm seeing several reasons NOT to buy it (cough Steam cough)... Probably all that will get me to buy it is if several people here at RB buy it and love it. That might be the only way to get my interest at this point.
Civ5 Special Edition announced. Seems to be worth the money, glad to see that! Unless the artbook only has in-game graphics in it lol. Probably won't buy it though since it's priced 80 euros for european countries, that's 100 euros in Finland then.
Jowy Wrote:Civ5 Special Edition announced. Seems to be worth the money, glad to see that! Unless the artbook only has in-game graphics in it lol. Probably won't buy it though since it's priced 80 euros for european countries, that's 100 euros in Finland then. huh? thought you guys were in Europe too 
zakalwe Wrote:huh? thought you guys were in Europe tooYeah but everything costs more here. For example Red Dead Redemption (new console game) costs 62 euros in a local game store here, but you could buy it online from a foreign game store and ship it from UK to here for just 48 euros total. Most European countries have it as easy as UK as far as I know. |
