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Take a look around for a second and you'll notice something. There are a good number of SMAC scenarios. There are over a thousand Civ II scenarios out there in one form or another. And there are really no C:CTP scenarios. Why? What lesson can game developers take away from this?

Let me put it to you straight: There's an inherent conflict between good graphics and good scenario design by "the people." When a game has awesome 3D-rendered graphics with multiple posing, fully-rendered backgrounds, and so on, then the graphics are going to by necessity constrain the modifiability of the game. Even if coded so that all the relevant information can be modified by the user, the chance that Joe Public has the artistic skills to create new 3D units or terrains that won't immediately provoke hysterical laughter from players becomes miniscule. Joe also can't simply pluck 3D models from other games (or at least, we can expect it to be a bit more challenging than simply calling up DXGrab and pressing Ctrl-Alt-X). And let's face it, the people who can create such models are going to be hired and paid to do it, not working for free in their den for "the people".

Even with Test of Time, we've begun to see proposals from very good designers to work as a team on scenarios because the sheer amount of artwork required and its quality is daunting. Professional-looking scenarios require several artists and a lead designer - you simply can't do it alone. And with 3D models, we ought to just admit that after people have written and rewritten the default scenario with slightly different maps a few dozen times, there's not much left you can do. Even Heroes of Might and Magic, a truly great and quite customizable game, ran afoul of the "all scenarios look alike" syndrome after a while.

Allow me to quote from a user on one of the mailing lists I'm on, one devoted to customizable CRPG games. He says, "To be even remotely successful, a [modifiable game] must be democratic and customizable, graphically first and foremost." Civilization II succeeds because the art, though good, can be modified by the user with relatively minimal investment of time. When I say minimal, I mean for some users "hours and hours of modification" (as with Alex Mor), but still compared to fully-rendered 3D units, the time involved is quite reasonable and the technology is within reach of the common man.

Allow me to conclude with three good rules for making a "classic" customizable game:

1) Make all of the rules and statistics customizable in external text files (a technique pioneered by Civ2)

2) Make all of the art modifiable. That means if you have 3D units and terrains, you need a way to turn that feature off to allow people to modify it with flat images. New art attracts players more than any other feature in scenarios, I find.

3) If you have art for everything, make some of it possible to "turn off". For example, ToT has three sizes of images for all city improvements. Being able to toggle off this feature and use just the smallest size would make it much more simple to modify and create a fully thematically-consistent scenario.

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Webmaster of Platehead's Civilization Site.

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