By Markos Giannopoulos
November 21th, 1998

note: This is The Column, a part of Apolyton where mainly Markos and Dan write whatever we want . Well, not just the two of us. The Column is open to everyone. If you feel like writing submit your article to us.

INTRO

Waiting for a flight that I never took due to it's excessive delay, I was thinking about the delays of the three games that we're waiting(civ2:mge, smac and ctp) and how we were informed of them. At the end, I found logical reasons for all of the delays, except of my flight's

CIV2:MGE

The multiplayer version of Civ2 was the hardest one. And that was because we didn't have almost none information from Microprose on the reasons of the delay. MGE was at first announced for the spring of this year. My guess is that the economic problems of the company led to a small developing team, which meant the progress was slower. The next schedule was for summer, and early July Microprose started pre-selling the game from their site. But then came the purchase from Hasbro, and everything was frozen. Until the new management reorganized everything and made the new plans for Microprose's titles, it was fall...

That's of course my guess, because Microprose didn't bother to inform the fans about it. I don't think that any of the above reasons, where something that we couldn't understand and accept.

SMAC

SMAC is a completely another story. It was first announced for fall(the counter on the first page of the official site was pointing to October 15th). October came it was officially announced(first from EA and then from Firaxis if I remeber correct) that it was delayed for Christmas or January, which a bit later became January. The problem seemed to be the graphics, and to tell you the truth, the old screenshots didn't look as good the most recent ones. The highly anticipated demo was initially expected for September, but then was delayed along with the game. It is now scheduled for December 20.

What is important is that in most times the fans where informed through the (hosted on the official site) forums. Firaxis spoke out, explained the reasons of the delay, and the fans accepted it...

CIV:CTP

Sadly, the third game we are waiting, was also delayed. CTP was initially scheduled for Christmas, but this week was officially announced that it wont come out until early spring of '99. The problem this time was play balancing the new untis and features. Perhaps some of the new unconventional strategies proved too powerfull. Prior to the announcement it was mentioned that the game would come in spring in various previews or release dates pages, but when it became official, it was also announced on the most popular fan forums for ctp(ours ) There were some "arghh!" responses, some "oh well" and even a couple "I told you so" ones

A CONCLUSION

Generally, the people of the civ community have shown to accept the delays as way to get a better product. And that all they ask is that they are informed about it. At the very end, we're people who are playing the same game for 2.5 years(and we still love it!), we can wait the next generation for 2-3 months more...

The opinions expressed on this page doesnt necessarily express Apolyton CS or GameStats.
It is just the personal opinions of the writer.