Comments/questions weclomed here.

How many games does the average gamer buy? How close-knit is the gaming community? Anyone in the know also realizes that this kind of malfeasance by a game publisher does not go unpunished. Just months ago I owned shares of ATVI and sold them for a profit bc I figured the xmas season was going to be a downer for games and all tech stuff and I'm glad I did. And I'm very pleased I have no interest now in ATVI whatsoever. I think ATVI is going to have hell to pay among the "adult" gamers. A few years from now they will be relegated to making Pokemon and other chirlish games for NES and gameboy because it's "just too hard to please that literate gaming community at Apolyton."

Frankly, they should have just said that and owed up that they were overawed by the challenge of producing a quality product for intelligent consumers. I think you were balanced in your comments and from your perspective, knowing what you do about the industry, I'm sure your statements are still a scathing rebuke of the stunt they pulled. I just wished to be a bit more blunt.

Thanks to all your effort to make this a great site for gamers.

That said, Civ 3 is something I continued to hope for...I trust Sid, and Firaxis will, at the very least, see that the game is not defective as CtP was.

Activision tried to compete with Sid Meier and failed horribly!!! Their response to our inquiries? Basically "screw you all, we're moveing on to other projects."

I really wonder what kind of a response they will recieve from these "new projects" of theirs?????

Too bad all you programing whiz types can't stop modifying CTP and start a game of your own...

quote: Originally posted by Lancer on 01-21-2001 10:14 AM Too bad all you programing whiz types can't stop modifying CTP and start a game of your own...

I recently checked out the alternative Civ games on this site. Some of them look pretty impressive...

(I am not affiliated with any of them, just bored of CTP1/2 and the fabled CIV III).

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Author of Diplomod. The mod to fix diplomacy.

quote: Originally posted by phoenixcager on 01-22-2001 12:33 AM MarkG, I think what you wrote took a lot of courage. Thanks for writing it.

seriously, can you be more specific?

Apolyton and the folks that do the programming could even reap some profit instead of working for free.

I think I could personally swing $100 in March or so.

This would be a kick in the pants.

quote: Originally posted by Lancer on 01-22-2001 09:20 AM Here's an absurd idea. We each kick in a few bucks, send them to Mark and Dan, they buy the rights to put out Apolytons' CTP 3, and pay ppl back w/ a good game in the mail. If Activision is seriously not interested, should be cheap enough...free money from an abandoned product line... Apolyton and the folks that do the programming could even reap some profit instead of working for free. I think I could personally swing $100 in March or so.

While this is an amusing idea, you are severely underestimating how much money it costs even to do just a patch to a game like this. You're talking about hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. I assure you, if it was something inexpensive enough to be funded like this, Activision would have done it. But it's not that small of a project.

quote: Mark, I thought your story was very well written too, all of it. Print it and hang it on a wall somewhere, don't lose it.

He did hang it on a wall, an electronic wall, here.

There are some very good things about the game, it's pretty, I love the combat model, the interface is nice, some nice adaptions from SMAC.

But the downside is substantial, the AI is timid at best, stability is obviously an issue based on the system requirements stated and for crying out loud how hard would it be to fix the scoring?

Great work by the dedicated and talented fixing what shouldn't need fixing. How much are you guys going to bill Activision for your time?