Water Finds a Crack

[Sareln]

For those of you who don't read Soren's blog regularly, (esp. since he hasn't been particularly focused on CIV stuff for a while) his latest article is quite interesting.

link

[T-hawk]

Neat article, thanks for the pointer. It's stuff that most of us already know but (as always from Soren) explained very neatly and elegantly.

[scooter]

Very nice article.

Again, designers often don’t understand their own games as well as the players do.

Probably the best line in the article, and the one that most pertains to Civ5.

[Sciz]

Yeah the fact that players almost always know much more about the game than the designers is interesting. Not all players of course, most players don't, but for almost every game there's a group of gamers who know every little thing about the game, finding things that the devs would never imagine possible.

Of course, knowing about a game doesn't translate to being able to make a good one. Even if you gathered all the most knowledgeable players in a game to develop a new game in that series, it wouldn't turn out better than if only devs made a new installment without input from players. The key is to have both experienced devs making the game with a lot of input from experienced players. Kind of like the Civ 4 development seemed to have been (I don't know myself as I didn't pay attention much to Civ at the time, this is just stuff i've heard afterwards)

[Sullla]

The thing that impresses me most about Soren is how much knowledge he has about the games he discusses. Honestly, how many of the Civ designers do you think actually knew about cheesy Civ3 exploits like lumberjacking? That's a fairly obscure issue, especially to recall 8 or 9 years after the fact. While Soren is completely right that a lot of designers don't understand their games as well as the fan community, he made it a goal to really know as much as possible about Civ, best symbolized by the extensive time Soren spent on the forums talking with fans to figure out where problems existed.

I'll leave the comparisons with a certain other Civilization game up to the reader.

[Krill]

The thing that impresses me most about Soren is how much knowledge he has about the games he discusses. Honestly, how many of the Civ designers do you think actually knew about cheesy Civ3 exploits like lumberjacking? That's a fairly obscure issue, especially to recall 8 or 9 years after the fact. While Soren is completely right that a lot of designers don't understand their games as well as the fan community, he made it a goal to really know as much as possible about Civ, best symbolized by the extensive time Soren spent on the forums talking with fans to figure out where problems existed.

I'll leave the comparisons with a certain other Civilization game up to the reader.

You that's not the best comparison to have. Soren read the forums, and Trip contributed to them, especially the PTWDG which gave a good chunk of of the CIV testers. The level of overlap is extensive.

[Maksim]

You that's not the best comparison to have. Soren read the forums, and Trip contributed to them, especially the PTWDG which gave a good chunk of of the CIV testers. The level of overlap is extensive.

What was PTWDG? Has it been written up anywhere, or preserved for posterity in some fashion?

Thanks!

[Tyrmith]

Play the world demogame- Basically a multiplayer game with a team of players controlling each civ, play the world was the expansion.

I think this is the link to the correct forum: http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=149

[Krill]

Wrong forum. CFC sucks, it was on Poly. That game that you linked too was quite frankly one of the more boring games to get played.

[Krill]

http://apolyton.net/forumdisplay.php/164...cracy-Game