Civilization 5 Announced

[regoarrarr]

Hmmm. Digital TV is now the only way to recieve TV signals, right? So aren't most people replacing old none HD TVs with new HD, digital TVs anyway?

Listen, if *I* have an HDTV, I'm pretty sure it's getting pretty prevalent.

[Sullla]

Casual players seldom visit fori and seldom join SG's so a part of the lack of SG's is for that.

Alright, I'm not trying to pick on you specifically Rowain, but I keep hearing something along these lines, and I'm getting tired of it. I have heard some variation of this innumerable times: "Sure, the people who post online are complaining about Civ5, but most of the purchasers are casuals who don't go to forums, and they are loving the game." In other words, the detractors are a vocal minority, while there's a huge silent majority out there who thing Civ5 is great.

That's always a neat trick, using the absence of evidence as proof for an argument. (Not stating again that this is your point of view Rowain, but I have seen others assert this.) I think the whole opinion is bunk! Who are these mythical "casuals" anyway? Aren't they gamers too? The whole "casual" thing has become such an industry buzzword in the past five years, it creates an imaginary category to describe a phenomenon that has existed all along. (Who do you think was buying all those Buzz and Singstar games eight years ago? Why did Tetris sell 30 million copies on Gameboy in the early 1990s? The so-called "casuals" have always been there - the gaming market hasn't magically changed recently.)

Furthermore, this is 2010, not 1996. Internet access isn't exactly limited these days. This is a world where my dad uploads his weekly golfing scores to an online spreadsheet with the rest of his golfing club, and my mother does a weekly NFL pick'em group with her friends. Everyone knows how to use the Internet, and it's incredibly easy to make your opinions known there. So which of these two scenarios is more likely:

1) There is a gigantic majority of Civilization 5 fans who are so "casual" that they are unable to make their opinions known anywhere on the Internet.

2) Most of the people who enjoyed Civilization 5 initially have since become tired/bored of the game, and have moved on to other pursuits.

The first option stretches belief beyond credibility, since every observable metric indicates serious discontent with the game: user ratings compared to official review scores (significantly lower), Amazon product reviews, unhappy forum discussions, deserted SG forum, crippled MP ladder, and so on. (By the way, has anyone checked out that Apolyton Civ5 forum lately? Less activity than Realms Beyond, and I'm not exaggerating.) Internet cesspools like Gamefaqs and Gamespot manage to draw tens of thousands of people to their forums when new games come out, because not surprisingly people who purchased Call of Duty or whatever want to share their opinions and read up on strategies. There's nothing different about the Civ series. If we're seeing a negative reaction from the online community, and we're not seeing new blood getting pumped into the online fanbase, it's pretty safe to conclude that this game isn't proving to be terribly popular. Believe me, I was there when Civ4 launched, and there was instant overwhelming enthusiasm, new people appearing out of the woodwork everywhere you went. I've been watching a whole bunch of Civ5 websites (even a few non-English ones!) and they are all suffering heavily from lack of interest.

At some point, you have to apply Occam's Razor and realize that there is no giant fanbase of happy supporters who never make their opinions or presence felt.

As for sales numbers, they've gone exactly as expected, with high initial numbers very rapidly falling off thereafter. (This is the normal sales pattern for all games.) Comparing the Civ5 peak to the peak for Black Ops sounds really great... until you remember that over 90% of the sales for Black Ops comes through the two console versions. Civ5 doing 1/30 of the sales for Black Ops sounds a lot less impressive, and is probably pretty close to the mark. Anyway, there was never any doubt that Civ5's initial sales would be great, because most people bought it based on the quality of Civ4. The real question will be how many people purchase Civ5 expansions (and eventually Civ6) if the quality of Civ5 doesn't improve.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Furthermore, this is 2010, not 1996. Internet access isn't exactly limited these days. This is a world where my dad uploads his weekly golfing scores to an online spreadsheet with the rest of his golfing club, and my mother does a weekly NFL pick'em group with her friends. Everyone knows how to use the Internet, and it's incredibly easy to make your opinions known there. So which of these two scenarios is more likely:

1) There is a gigantic majority of Civilization 5 fans who are so "casual" that they are unable to make their opinions known anywhere on the Internet.

2) Most of the people who enjoyed Civilization 5 initially have since become tired/bored of the game, and have moved on to other pursuits.

The obvious additional point to make about this: Civ V requires Steam. You simply cannot play the game without an internet connection. How many people are savvy enough to have the internet, deal with Steam, and still not be savvy enough to make their voices heard on the internet?

And if you don't think casual players talk about the games they play, you should see how many damn notices, invites, and comments I get from Facebook friends about Farmville and Mafia Wars, even though I have never, and will never, play those games.

[Rowain]

Alright, I'm not trying to pick on you specifically Rowain, but I keep hearing something along these lines, and I'm getting tired of it.

As I already mentioned I would really prefer it if you stop ignoring parts of my post to just pick on one little item.
If you reread my post you see that I list 3 more reasons one of them even the game itself.


Second you may like to discount it but internet access is one thing logging into a forum and writing a completly different one. I know from my MMO's that those that post on a forum (even of the companies own game-related forum) are a vast minority of those that play. If this is true for a game that is already Online (IE need Internet) how much more true should it be for a game which you can play offline?
Furthermore those casuals that will go to a forum are most likly at the game-companies forum and not on an fanboard.

Simple proof: according to steam-statistic at the current moment 14.500 people are playing Civ5. Have you seen so many different people post about it??

[Sullla]

Look, I really don't want to get into this, and I'm *NOT* attacking you personally (as I said twice in the last post), but I would really suggest you try searching around the Internet a bit more. If you go to the Official Civilization 5 Forums run by Take-Two, they are also full of complaints and disaffected posts, although the 2k mods keep locking and shutting down those threads. In fact, there's a topic on the front page today addressing this very topic, the whole belief in a silent majority of people who love Civ5 (which has been a very commonly bandied subject on the official forums defending the game). This guy typed "Civilization 5 is..." into Google and check to see what the most common search results were:



Seems pretty suggestive to me. Those are the things that people are most often typing into Google. And again, I don't want to beat this to death, but I'm really struggling to see where this vast resevoir of popular support for Civ5 is supposed to be located, when every measurable indicator of opinion trends the opposite direction.

[Selrahc]

Look, I really don't want to get into this, and I'm *NOT* attacking you personally (as I said twice in the last post), but I would really suggest you try searching around the Internet a bit more. If you go to the Official Civilization 5 Forums run by Take-Two, they are also full of complaints and disaffected posts, although the 2k mods keep locking and shutting down those threads. In fact, there's a topic on the front page today addressing this very topic, the whole belief in a silent majority of people who love Civ5 (which has been a very commonly bandied subject on the official forums defending the game). This guy typed "Civilization 5 is..." into Google and check to see what the most common search results were:

Go type "Civilization IV is" into google Sullla. The three things it gave me were "Hard, Boring, Not Installed Properly"

Generally, when people do a google search for a game it's for some sort of technical issue that they're trying to sort out, or to learn what they're doing wrong. That means its heavily biased towards negative words and this google search based analysis is nearly valueless in trying to determine people's actual opinions.

[scooter]

Go type "Civilization IV is" into google Sullla. The three things it gave me were "Hard, Boring, Not Installed Properly"

Generally, when people do a google search for a game it's for some sort of technical issue that they're trying to sort out, or to learn what they're doing wrong. That means its heavily biased towards negative words and this google search based analysis is nearly valueless in trying to determine people's actual opinions.

Though I agree with Sullla's belief that Civ5 has bombed out with players, using the "______ is" deal for Google search isn't the most reliable method. I just did a quick informal test for "Apple is " and I got:

-a cult
-overrated
-gay
-the devil

Ladies and gentlemen, the internet!

[Rowain]

Look, I really don't want to get into this, and I'm *NOT* attacking you personally (as I said twice in the last post), but I would really suggest you try searching around the Internet a bit more. If you go to the Official Civilization 5 Forums run by Take-Two, they are also full of complaints and disaffected posts, although the 2k mods keep locking and shutting down those threads.

And your point is?? Why do you think that I try to sell you Civ5 as the best thing? Still todays peak at steam say 27.000 players and currently 18.000 . Apperently there are still alot more people playing that game then posting about it. (Doesn't make it a good game just shows how many play compared to posting .

For clarification I can understand your anger/frustration with Civ5 I felt the same with WoW.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Is 27,000 supposed to be a lot? If they sold roughly 500k copies, that is only 5% of the people who own the game actually playing it two months after it released.

[Gaspar]

And your point is?? Why do you think that I try to sell you Civ5 as the best thing? Still todays peak at steam say 27.000 players and currently 18.000 . Apperently there are still alot more people playing that game then posting about it. (Doesn't make it a good game just shows how many play compared to posting .

The point that there are a lot more people playing the game than posting about it is about as illustrating as saying there are a lot more people awake than sleeping at any given moment. Playing video games is a more popular pastime than writing on internet forums about video games. Every single game in existence has more people playing than posting about it. We also can't draw anything from the number of players at any given time, based solely on the fact that there's no good apple to compare it to.

I agree wholeheartly with Sullla's frustration at the "vocal minority" strawman. I was one of the primary testers for a WWE online TCG many moons ago, and the designers would forever ignore us based on the fact that there were "countless people" out there playing the game who didn't have time for the strategies we employed, etc. Low and behold, the game died around the 3rd expansion when the parent company pulled support for a game with few players. I understand there is little to no correlation in the two types of games, but there is heavy correlation in the idea that the supporters of games that get underwhelming reviews from the "hardcore" fanbase constantly find ways to call the hardcore fanbase names and diminish their opinions.

The funny thing is the folks who are really insulting the Civ fanbase are the supporters. The argument I constantly see is the game is simpler and easier to play and therefore everyone loves it, except for the hardcore elitist meanies. I don't actually believe the average Civ player is stupid, I think the game has natural barriers to entry for that. (I'd wager more than half of folks pick up a Civ for the first time because of at least a passing interest in world history.)

The difference between Casual Joe and say, T-hawk isn't that T-hawk is really super smart and gets into the game in a way that Casual Joe doesn't understand. The difference is that T-hawk derives his entertainment from the game from playing as optimally as possible, finding which levers to pull for maximum effect and which ones he can pull a little different than everyone else to do just a little bit better. Casual Joe still wants interesting decisions, he's just less invested in figuring out which is best. In fact, I'd venture that the number one difference between Chieftain/Warlord level players and Emperor/Immortal level players is that the first group wants to pull *every* lever in every game, which the higher level players understand that won't/can't work at the level they want to play at.

What isn't different between the two groups is they can both sniff out a boring game. T-hawk moves on because he can beat Deity in 190 turns two weeks after the game comes out and realizes there are no interesting decisions to make. Casual Joe moves on because he's getting bored with the game, since they all play out the same way. Its the same process, just executed on different levels.

TL;DR: The "silent majority" of players who enjoy a game that the "vocal minority" are nearly unanimous in complaining about doesn't exist. I guarantee the expansions won't sell as well as Civ4's did, and I guarantee Shafer won't be in charge of Civ6 if there is one.