If you have to cut game features, at least do this:

[yin26]

ANNOUNCE IT PROMPTLY AND PUBLICALLY!: Take a look at the MOO3 thread if you haven't already.

Am I disappointed? Sure. But am I well-informed and can I understand the decision? Absolutely.

Same developer but even later release date. If anybody could afford to keep back the info, it would be Quicksilver. So...

Firaxis?

[Zanzin]

Agreed, Yin.

This is an important lesson on how to achieve developer <---> consumer communication.

Firaxis, take note!!

[tniem]

yin,

Couldn't agree more. The scary thing is it sounds like Firaxis themselves don't know whether they are going to include it or not. I take this from the newest interview that they are still working on something. It sounds like they hope to include something they just started working on. Hoping that there are not that many bugs in the code. I wish they would just come straight with us.

[Leonidas]

I agree.

The most important thing is communication, not hiding things from the fans.

If things won't be included - say so - it'll hurt. . . but the fans will understand. . .

But honesty and being frank about the game's capabilities is the best route to go. . .

[Leonidas]

Hmmm. . .

What a coincidence. . .

Infogrames is rushing MoO3, just like it's rushing Civ3. . .

Pity that Infogrames is the publisher of these two superior strategy games. . .

[Alex]

Yea. Absolutely. I do agree that the developer should take the time to explain to the fans why those features are not being included in the game. So the people at the MOO3 development team seem to be on the right way... So I wonder: why Firaxis doesn't talk about the MP thing? Why do we have to frantically speculate about it? Wouldn't it be more simple to release a statement to the fans, admitting that MP won't be in the game out of the box, OR denying that rumor and confirming that some or all of the MP features will be in?

Sure, I can understand how delicate this situation is to Firaxis: if they say that the game won't have MP features out of the box, they will probably lose some potential buyers... on the other hand, if they remain silent about that subject, they are also probably going to lose some potential buyers. The point here is: I think that they would lose less consumers IF they decided to keep us informed about the development. Sincerity almost always pays off.

[tniem]

Originally posted by Alexnm
Sure, I can understand how delicate this situation is to Firaxis: if they say that the game won't have MP features out of the box, they will probably lose some potential buyers... on the other hand, if they remain silent about that subject, they are also probably going to lose some potential buyers. The point here is: I think that they would lose less consumers IF they decided to keep us informed about the development. Sincerity almost always pays off.

You are totally right.

That is why I am beginning to believe that Firaxis actually has no idea what they are going to do with MP. They want to include it but they just getting started on it. They are trying to figure it out so they are ignoring the issue. They want to satisfy us but they know it won't be ready.

So that means the Infogrames deadline on top of them not planning well, has lead to a non finished game that might be released anyways.

[raingoon]

Yeah, but you know what? I don't want to know too much. Would you also demand to know if George Lucas had taken Darth Vader out of the next installment of Star Wars? Consumers of such immersive entertainment products don't necessarily benefit from having certainty over their final release condition. The main benefit I see would be providing certainty about what is coming, where uncertainty makes the consumer uncomfortable. But if I'm a producer of product, I don't see where that is a positive. I want you to have some uncertainty and, like it or not, the anticipation that uncertainty builds.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by yin26
If you have to cut game features, at least do this

first they have to decide to cut something, right?

[Inverse Icarus]

i concur.

having the whole multiplayer thing up in the air is horrible.

whats the best source of this anyway? someone with an email of questionable nature.

hell, i can send you an email from thecivteam@firaxis.com saying i am a magical goat. give me your email if you wanna see me do it

[Master Marcus]

The cuts are unavoidable for such ambitious TBS & RTS games in development: think about the initial plans for MoO3, Civ3. It would have taken at least 5 years of full programming to implement everything in harmony. No company can afford that; they want to make some money after all, and they want also to ...just do another project as soon as possible. That's why the numerous patches released after, and so on. We all want to be informed promptly of course, but they don't want to lose upcoming customers for such unpleasant but efficient$$$$ "readjustements".

[CapTVK]

Originally posted by MarkG
first they have to decide to cut something, right?

How can you cut something when it wasn't even there to begin with?

[MarkG]

Originally posted by CapTVK
How can you cut something when it wasn't even there to begin with?

then why you would you continuasly say that you are working on something really cool in that area?

[Inverse Icarus]

to amass pre-orders with false-hopes.

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by MarkG
then why you would you continuasly say that you are working on something really cool in that area?

to amass pre-orders with false-hopes.

Exactly. Thats what all you who are critical of all us MPers who are upset over this miss. They are delibritly trying to scam us, keep us in the dark, and hurt the quality of this game to make a buck.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by UberKruX
to amass pre-orders with false-hopes.

and i suppose that this is the kind of treatment you have been used at by firaxis....

[TCO]

Originally posted by yin26
ANNOUNCE IT PROMPTLY AND PUBLICALLY!: Take a look at the MOO3 thread if you haven't already.

Am I disappointed? Sure. But am I well-informed and can I understand the decision? Absolutely.

Same developer but even later release date. If anybody could afford to keep back the info, it would be Quicksilver. So...

Firaxis?

Sometimes I think you are more interested in Firaxis communication with the fans (and with you) than with the game itself.*

What if one company sits in isolation and makes a good game and another one communicates frequently, but makes a lousy game?

WRT CTP, you had huge amounts of time and thought directed towards the game prior to release...but then couldn't reveiw it after it came out. (I'm not beating you with this anymore...you made a very gracious post about it. But I see a trend.)

WRT Civ3, you were intially leading the kvetchers, worriers...than you put together the list. BTW that was an incredible list. Truly...the organization into Word, the links, the table of contents, STUNNING!

I wonder if you are a little like a diesel engine. Need to be kept under "load". Or a weapon "capable of being used for good or harm". Either way it seems like you are really energized by being some kind of fan leader.

* this is OK. And like I said can be a source of good...at times. But it makes me take some statements with a grain of salt....

[TCO]

Originally posted by Leonidas
Hmmm. . .

What a coincidence. . .

Infogrames is rushing MoO3, just like it's rushing Civ3. . .

Pity that Infogrames is the publisher of these two superior strategy games. . .

Pity that the designers can't keep a schedule. Has Infogrames acclerated the schedule? NO! Sid and Alan need to work more efficiently. They had a negotiation for who would be the publisher. They took the best deal offered. The publisher has kept his end of the bargain. Now they need to produce.

[Rasputin]

Firaixs may or may not be shipping MP with civ3 , we dont know because they wont telll. one simple post here or at civ3.com will suffice.... but no , no repsonse anywhere not evben a reply to emails...

[Inverse Icarus]

EDIT: right click and hit show picture if you cant see it.

[yin26]

Either way it seems like you are really energized by being some kind of fan leader.

GP:

What I enjoy most about games is the sense of community. This starts, of course, with the fans. I also do find it fascninating how we can, if we are focussed, produce some great things...like bug lists, wish lists, strategy guides, mods, etc. That's pretty cool considering most of us never will meet each other.

But I also look for a company to at least meet the fans half way when it comes to keeping us informed about what's going on. I don't think I am exaggerating in the least to say that all the fan time dedicated to supporting and spreading the word about the Civ series has far outpaced that of any other game in history. From the rabid modder to the guy posting an idea for the next patch, Civ has had an untold number of hours devoted to it by the fans.

And what does Firaxis do in regards to publically recognizing this effort and at least being wise enough to capitalize on this flood of enthusiasm by at least keeping us up-to-date on important issues? What it always has...next to nothing. And what did Activision do when it was clear the game would need MAJOR patches to bring it up to spec? They pulled the plug.

It's at that point that I lose a lot of interest for two reasons:

1) Certainly the fans deserve better, and I feel that when I keep up my enthusiasm, I'm betraying my own principles.

2) The idea that the problems in the game WON'T get fixed takes a lot of wind out of my sails.

This is why I decided to re-install Europa Universalis. While I still stand by my review of the game as horribly muddled the first several hours of play, I know that its community is a strong one and that the guys at Paradox truly do it as a labor of love. Heck, they are still patching the darn thing! It's up to version 1.10!

Now, I understand they are much smaller and need this game to succeed to save their own futures, etc., but absolutely NOTHING but horrid business sense and a fundamental lack of respect for the gamer is keeping Firaxis from doing the same thing.

I had hoped that a massive outpouring of support from us for Civ3 would wake Firaxis up as they programmed their flagship title. In the end, I see from them very little appreciation for us and very little passion for the game. Instead, I see a 'maximize gains and cut losses' mindset borrow/imposed from their corporate masters.

Fine, I say. If I ever buy Civ3, it will be much, much later on my own terms...if and when I decide it is worth any more of my time.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by yin26
This is why I decided to re-install Europa Universalis. While I still stand by my review of the game as horribly muddled the first several hours of play, I know that its community is a strong one and that the guys at Paradox truly do it as a labor of love. Heck, they are still patching the darn thing! It's up to version 1.10!

See, this is an indication of how your reaction towards the same event is deeply affected by some deep predisposition.

Paradox still patching EU: a good thing.

MicroProse patching some game: stupid arse why couldn't they get the program right before selling it to the public?

[Leonidas]

Quote by GP:

Pity that the designers can't keep a schedule. Has Infogrames acclerated the schedule? NO! Sid and Alan need to work more efficiently. They had a negotiation for who would be the publisher. They took the best deal offered. The publisher has kept his end of the bargain. Now they need to produce.

As I understand it quite a while ago Firaxis waxed poetic about not releasing Civ3 before they felt it was ready. This was, after all, their flagship game. There were several date changes with the last one aiming for a Spring 2002 release date.

Then, within the past few months we were informed that Civ3 is going to be released on Oct 16th (now Oct 30th).

Infogrames has set this date, not Firaxis.

[yin26]

MicroProse patching some game: stupid arse why couldn't they get the program right before selling it to the public?

Totally untrue. My biggest gripe has been about 1) NOT patching and 2) NOT letting the fans be involved in the process. Also, since EU was released in Europe first, I have no idea how buggy it was upon release. In the NA market, we saw the game after it had already had more than a few major patches.

I think you missed something somewhere.

Let's recap:

1) If Firaxis releases Civ 3 WITHOUT features they promised or hinted at WITHOUT explaining/clarifying that as of yesterday, I will wait to buy the game...if ever.

2) If Firaxis releases Civ3 WITH major bugs and doesn't make a public effort to work with fans to fix them, I will NEVER buy Civ3. The converse could also be true, but that means I will still be waiting a good long while before buying the game.

And the thing that impresses me about Paradox is they really didn't need to do these last few rounds of patches. But they did because they want to sell the NEXT game. Not only that, but they worked closely with the public to craft the patches.

[Urban Ranger]

Hey Yin,

Read what I wrote not what you think I wrote

[yin26]

Hmmm. "This is an indication of how your reaction towards the same event is deeply affected by some deep predisposition."

I assume the 'your reaction' means 'Yin's reaction.' Not true?

"Same event." Actually, I think the events are quite different. Not true?

...confused...

[Buck Birdseed]

*shrug*

Basically, there are two approaches to fan interaction in the game industry. The "quiet" approach adopted by practically everyone, including Firaxis, and the "proactive" approach currently adopted by a small handful of game developers spearheaded by Sony On-Line Entertainment (formerly Verant) and to a lesser extend Quicksilver. I know I, as a fan, appreciate the latter. However, seeing it from the perspective of the game developer, I think both approaches make sense, depending a little on the type of game involved. A mass market product like Civ3 probably benefits from the controlled approach, while a more "Hard Core" game like Star Wars Galaxies which depends almost in its entirity upon previous MMORPG players and Star Wars fanatics, and needs to be completely fine-tuned to the needs of the hardcore gamer. The areas where fan input would be useful in that game are not really present in Civ3 anyway (Interface/Basic rules settled), so the only benefit gained by a developer in this case would be better interaction with, what, 2-3000 players who no doubt will buy the game anyway. At the cost of hiring a "Communications Manager" full-time, it's not really worth it.

[Blacksurf]

Of course, being optimisitic, maybe Firaxis MP is sooo ground breaking/revolutionary/fantastic that they a) want it to be a HUGE suprise, and b) don't want some stealing their ideas before they patent it....

possibly anyway

[Bleyn]

Originally posted by GP

Pity that the designers can't keep a schedule. Has Infogrames acclerated the schedule? NO! Sid and Alan need to work more efficiently. They had a negotiation for who would be the publisher. They took the best deal offered. The publisher has kept his end of the bargain. Now they need to produce.

I thought it was clear from Stormhound's posts in the MOO3 forum thread on the cuts, at least on the matter of MOO3, the cuts were being done by the choice of the Quicksilver team, in order to meet the schedule that they have in place. Yes, there probably some prodding on the side of Infogrames that went along with this. But that is supposed to be part of a publishers job. At least, in this case, it was the choice of the designers to make some cuts, and early enough to potentially make a real impact on the rest of the project schedule.

Looking over the thread on the MOO3 annoucement, it appears to me that you have either little appreciation for the job of project manager, or just have something against Alan and Sid. I will admit that I have never worked on any sort of computer software project, but I can at least appreciate that their job is not an easy one.

It is, to my understanding, very normal for a lot of game projects to start out with a grand list of "We'ld like it to do this" ideas. At various times during the project, these ideas are evaluated for how well they are developing. Some remain the same, some get reworked, some get canned, some get postponed to an expansion or sequal. Some times, these changes happen late in the development cycle.

And while yes, I am willing to concede that some of the time when the developers have to can something late in the project, they might have been deluding themselves on the feasability or required timeline for an idea. There are also plenty of times where something is removed or reworked because they find that while it may be on schedule and working exactly the way it was planned, but they find that it just isn't fitting in with other parts of the game, or just plain isn't as fun or nice as they thought it would be. And unfortuantly, there are going to be times when an idea has to be worked on for a long time before they can really see these things.

Given how much things can potentially change in the development of a game, I am honsetly surprised that some developers give us as much info as they do. If it were entirely up to them, I suspect a few would rather not even announce a game is in the works until its ready to ship. However, that would be unrealistic market-wise, and at the very least the publisher is going to try to hype a game at least a little bit before it ships.


On another point, I think you are also somewhat mistaken. IIRC, Firaxis did Not choose to work with Infogrames on Civ3. I believe that they were originally contracted to work with Microprose. It was not Firaxis's choice for Microprose to be bought by Hasbro, or for Hasbro to then sell Hasbro Interactive to Infogrames. And given the amount of time that MOO3 may have been in the works, Quicksilver is probably in a similar situation. And there is no telling what sort of changes in relationship may have occured between the developers and publishers in the buy-outs.

Among other things, a number of people around here seem to want to blame the developers for absolutely every little thing, and few seem to consider that maybe some of the choices they don't like are either being made for them by the publisher without or because the publisher gave them no better option. Personally, I think it says something about both Firaxis and Quicksilver that they are willing to remove or delay certain components of the game to ensure that the product that is released is the best they can make it, rather than release it with multiple sections that need more work that may never happen.

Finally, I would like to remind people of an old axiom of computer hardware and software development that applies as well to games as :

In any project there are three options, but you can only have two. It can:
1. Work well (ie. few if any bugs/lots of features)
2. Run fast (ie be optimized)
3. Be cheap (ie. come in on time/under budget)

And thats just the way that things are.

[TCO]

Originally posted by yin26

I had hoped that a massive outpouring of support from us for Civ3 would wake Firaxis up as they programmed their flagship title. In the end, I see from them very little appreciation for us and very little passion for the game. Instead, I see a 'maximize gains and cut losses' mindset borrow/imposed from their corporate masters.

Fine, I say. If I ever buy Civ3, it will be much, much later on my own terms...if and when I decide it is worth any more of my time.

Don't get so down, Yin. "It's gonna be all right..."


1. Sid has been doing games for a long time. He probably has a decent handle on how to maximize profits from a Civ game. If he thinks its important to get a game out before Xmas or if he thinks its possible to break the game into 2 components and sell it as such, than he's probably right. At least I trust him, more than I trust you. If there were truly bad financial decisions being made, Sid would got to bat on them. I personally think that if the game is well-done who cares if it costs $70 and releases in 2 components?

2. Sid probably knows a little but more about PR than you. Repsonding to Yin and the Poly crowd is down pretty far on the priorities. They will make sure to take care of the magazines. Don't worry ...Sid understands PR!

3. Wrt to the duty of Firaxis to communicate with us, come on! I'm sure they appreciate the list. And I'm sure it was useful to fix some bugs and to have as a reference. But the sheer bulk of the work they've done would have gotten done without a List. They've been playing and coding civ games for a long time. They could make a great new game even if there were no internet community.