NOTE: This is The Column, a regular feature on Apolyton where anyone can write about anything to do with Civilization or the gaming industry as a whole. If you feel like writing, please visit the article submission page.

PREVIOUS ARTICLES

#214 THE COURTS OF CANDLE'BRE: AN INTRODUCTION Vel opens the door of the Candle'Brewing laboratory just for glimpse of what's happening in there... #213 A FREECIV FAN RESPONDS CapTVK responds to the "accusations" against Freeciv #212 FOUR YEARS AND SIXTY EIGHT MILLION HITS PASSED DanQ reviews the 4th year of Apolyton #211 CIV3: THE LAST GLASS OF WINE The eternal issue: exactly how much does civ3... ;) #210 EDITING RULES FOR EXPERIENCED PLAYERS Peter shares his suggestions for more interesting games #209 THE CURSE OF CIVILIZATION The full feature of Jonathan Speelman on his experience with Civ and his meeting with Sid Meier and Soren Johnson COLUMN ARCHIVE

Rasbelin launches Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 and heads for Apolyton. He has been registered there for 8 years now, so he knows the community quite well. As he gets to the main page, a small window informs him that he has a new voice message waiting in the inbox of the personal messaging centre. The message is from Ming that warns in a booming voice that he will be sent to Mingapulco, unless he stops spamming in the thread for speculating the new leadership in Iraq. Rasbelin trashes the message and heads for the Stella Polaris forum in order to check if there's any threads/posts regarding the development of the second version of Stella Polaris. As there's nothing new, he decides to have a look at the Civ IV strategy discussions, but as he starts to load the Civ IV strategy forum, he notices that Settler seems to be so busy that he decides to switch to the European mirror server Worker in order to have a more speedy access. A large annoying pop-up loads a video clip that advertises an offshore online casino on St. Lucia, but Rasbelin couldn't care less about it. After a few replies about the new Civ IV democracy game, he decides to take a quick look for any new Dinosaurs screenshots as the Apolyton Dinosaurs preview should now have some new images about the hive system. Unfortunately Markos has been too lazy to upload the new screenshots or most likely he's too addicted to the game by the classic “one more turn” syndrome. As there's nothing to see in the on-topic forums, our brave explorer heads for the off-topic forum as he hopes that the new Suomithreadi has been posted. While looking for it, he discovers a few other eye catching threads, so the new Suomithreadi will have to wait for a few moments. As he's done with the visit to Apolyton, Rasbelin closes the browser window.

What was this? A travel into the future? My intention was to create a vision of how ACS could look like in 2007. Maybe it won't look like that, but predicting the future isn't exactly easy and as the past has shown us, predicting the future development is more difficult than many more predictable sciences. As I'm not Nicholas Negroponte or neither am I an educated futurologist, I'm only trying to create a rational vision how good old Apolyton could look like after 5 years in December 2007. My vision is based on realistic estimates and tendencies since 5 years back.

More specifically my estimate is that the number of registered Apolytoners will grow steadily during the next 5 years, unless no new titles are released. That would in my opinion mean a slow down in the growth, but no matter how many new titles will be covered by this site, the community will grow larger. This will also get faster as new potential members can be reached as the Internet becomes more frequently used and easily accessible in many parts of the world. One good example is India with a population of about 1 billion and a very low Internet connectivity. This means that the Internet can only become more popular there. When it comes to the features of ACS, I'm more rational as it depends on what new titles are released in the next 5 years or what could be expected. I now mentioned Civ IV and Dinosaurs as I already mentioned them in my The Column writing about the future game development (I can't promise that the writing has been published at the time you're reading this), because of the various reasons. Of course the future outlook of Apolyton depends much on how much time our gracious friends Dan and Markos have for working on the site, but as the site grows, the number of staff will most likely grow. Also one important thing to notice is that as the server load continues to grow, the number potential victims for advertising grows, it's expectable that Apolyton will and in my opinion should divert the load two servers like Civilization Fanatics' Center and setup a mirror in Europe as that would mean that the European Apolytoners wouldn't have to cross the pond for accessing the site. I myself don't expect the forums to change that much. The bulletin board software will most likely be a newer version of vBulletin and the discussions will be like before; new persons participate and others leave, the topics discussed maybe change, but the community spirit will remain. The bravest vision by me is the voice messaging, but that's just a result of the evolution of technology, so it's maybe not that absurd.

If we want to see Apolyton as something described here or maybe even more developed, we can all do something for it in order to achieve that. One thing anyone can do is to keep the community alive and encourage new members to participate in the bulletin board discussions. Also one important thing is to click on banners and ads in the pop-up windows every now and then as it will provide Dan and Markos with the funds needed for any future expansion. Also ordering goods from online stores like Amazon.com. Amazon.co.uk and Chips & Bytes, using the referral codes of ACS, will help the cause. I once did that, but because of Infogrames' greediness, I never received my biscuit tin and neither did Dan and Markos get the bonus for my order. However I still haven't given up the hope that I'll one day order something using the referral code. So small deeds will help to achieve continuity for Apolyton.

If nothing seems to be predictable, what could be predicted? I only dare to predict one thing for sure. Apolyton will still be alive in 2007, unless anything worse happens; the unknown X factor.

In the mean time I want to wish you all a joyful and merry Christmas and a happy new year that will be one step forward in the history of good ol' Poly.

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About the author: Stella Polaris Development Team Manager -- website

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The opinions expressed on this page do not necessarily reflect those of Apolyton CS. They are just the personal opinions of the writer.