Do you agree with Will Wright? Is Civ 4 too daunting?

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Strategist83
Please post a link to this Will Wright's article.

It's from a commercial magazine, you'll have to buy it. I posted links to it in the news item (http://civilization4.net)

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by conmcb25
Daunting?, Please! My 13 year old and 15 year old picked this up no problem. The 11 year old still has problems with some of the concepts but with a little help from dad he does just fine.

That's nothing...my 4 year old can play it. She can't read yet, but after sitting on my lap and watching me play a while she wanted to try it, and she can move units and decide what her cities are going to build next without any guidance, and only needs a little help with things like diplomacy. She's not able to effectively build good improvements, or manipulate where here population works, build specialists, and barely keeps up with the AI on Settler, but on that difficulty all you really need to know how to do is move your units and pick what the city builds next.

[Bkeela]

Tetris is a game that appeals to a mass audience. Tetris is fun, but doesn't offer the kind of experience that a niche game can. A greek philosopher once said that most people are bad - I think that a bit harsh, but I will agree that most people are dumb. Therefore mass audience games will be dumbed down dramatically and be less engrossing.

[OssomTossom]

I remember when a friend of my dad's brought the first Civilization. I was 13 years old then. He had just gotten it himself, had no idea how to play it. He arrived around 7 pm - at around 3 am I went to be. Whe had spent about 8 or 9 hours trying to figure it out, and still hadn't really made it: We would mine gold that wasn't within any city's radius, all kinds of mistakes like that. I woke up at around 8 or 9 the next morning and went straight to playing, and my dad had to send me to the store at around 3 in the afternoon so he could have a go at it as well. Great times ...

Anyway; Civ I was fairly daunting at first. I had no idea what I was doing and would routinely get kicked all around the map. Since then, of course, all the Civ games have been fairly straightforward for me, but I can see how any of them can be scary and daunting if you're trying a Civ game for the first time ever.

Still - I don't know anyone who's tried it and didn't get hopelessly addicted once they got the hang of it (except a girl I was dating once, but that's actually more because I didn't do a good job at all trying to teach her how to play - really turned her off the whole thing, I'm afraid).

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Locutus
That may not be the point to you, but a lot of developers and publishers feel very differently about that. In the end, the game industry is about making money, and making money means selling to the masses (no book publisher can survive on niche literature either, they all need their Harry Potters, their Dan Browns and their Nicky Frenches to stay in business). Finding new audiences is currently a major theme of discussion among game developers, just check out the GDC keynotes, Gamasutra news and features, GD magazine, etc...

Like Solver said, most developers do NOT water down their ideas to market to the masses. The game industry is not only about making the most money, but doing something you love, something special. That is why you have people making GalCiv II, Fallout, Civ. If Wright wants to make dull games with no complexity so any idiot can pick it up and play it, just for the goal of making more and more money, he can go ahead. However, other developers would rather make a special game and make a little less money.

[OssomTossom]

Come to think of it, isn't this just the same as with music? Some artists try to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, while others only want to appeal to a certain group?

[Imran Siddiqui]

And the ones that appeal to the wide audience get derided as dull and lacking talent (Britney Spears and her ilk) .

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Locutus
I never said Civ is supposed to be about appealing to the masses, and never did Will Wright. In fact, that's his whole point: the games of today don't appeal to the masses, none of them.

I don't think games have ever catered towards the masses, with a few exceptions. This is particularly true wrt computer games.

So, if Will Wright made a point that most of us knew already, more or less, I am not sure what that "daunting" comment is about.

Originally posted by Locutus
Except Sims, that's the only full-fledged video game that seems to attract a mass audience.

Another one is Tetris. However both of these are accidents. Will Wright's earlier efforts (the whole sim series) never had the same appeal, and the author of Tetris could not repeat the same feat.

Originally posted by Locutus
It might not appeal to us, but we are a niche, not the mass market.

There is no mass market, at least wrt games. There are a whole bunch of niches with overlaps here and there.

Originally posted by Locutus
That's what Will is talking about: he sold 58 million copies by appealing to a different audience, to a very large group of people that the gaming industry is completely ignoring but that still has a lot of money to spend.

I am not sure I understand. Most of the 58 million copies were really sold to non-gamers. How do you make a game for non-gamers?

Originally posted by Locutus
He's not saying Civ must start appealing to that audience as well if Firaxis knows what's good for it, but Civ is an example of something that just doesn't appeal to that audience.

FWIW, I would like to point out that the Civ frenchaise has been more successful than the sim series. Civ games (including Alpha Centauri) have been consistent sellers, while most of Will Wright's efforts had been mediocre in terms of sales.

I would say he would be on better ground if he had been more consistent. I hate to say it, but he seems to be gloating on a fluke.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Locutus
In the end, the game industry is about making money, and making money means selling to the masses (no book publisher can survive on niche literature either, they all need their Harry Potters, their Dan Browns and their Nicky Frenches to stay in business).

Maybe the main goal of publishers is to make money, but developers are an entirely different beast all together.

The thing is nobody knows what will be a blockbuster. The Sims sell, sure, but none of Will Wright's former efforts came close. Tetris sells, but the feat could not be repeated, even by the same developer. UFO: Enemy Unkown was a runaway bestseller, but the sequels couldn't cut it.

As a result, trying to make a game with the objective of making lots of $$$ is like catching shadows.

Originally posted by Locutus
Finding new audiences is currently a major theme of discussion among game developers, just check out the GDC keynotes, Gamasutra news and features, GD magazine, etc...

These people are barking up the wrong tree. As the proverbial saying goes, make a better mousetrap and people will beat a path to your house. Robert Townsend (a successful businessman and a management maverick) pointed out that, the main goals should be excellence and fun, and profit would follow. Google didn't get this big by trying to make $$$. They got this way by being the best search engine.

Of course, there are exceptions that resulted from a confluence of external factors. However hoping for this to happen is like trying to get rich by buying lottery.

[fed1943]

Interesting points.But,
Too daunting? To whom? Newbies? In what?
I am a newbie, as I know nothing of computers, actually I see computers as I saw wood in my old chess games.
And if I see people who is supposed to know of electronics/enformatic and to have the bright inspiration to invent new games/simulations, look for new audiences, I begin disbelieving their skills: the audiences are there, and will buy enough if they are able to create the product people wants.
Best regards,

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I am not sure I understand. Most of the 58 million copies were really sold to non-gamers. How do you make a game for non-gamers?

Exactly, that's the whole crux here. This is what the gaming industry as a whole has been trying to figure out for years. Anyone who reads industry websites and magazines or who goes to conferences like GDC will tell you this. You might not like it, but there are a whole lot of people in the gaming industry (yes, developers too) who want to appeal to a wider market, because that's where the money is. At present 9 out of 10 games loses money, it's the 10th one that keeps companies afloat. That doesn't just hurt the publishers, that hurts the developers too. Publishers can take a few hits, but for most development studios one flop means they they're out of business. And nobody wants to go out of business.

Yes, developers are in it for the fun, but they need to pay their bills as well. I already said earlier that Civ4 is more newbie-friendly than any previous Civ game and this is by design. Civ4 too tried to appeal to a wider audence than Civ1-3 did -- this is simply good business practice, and also human nature: we all want to be successful. Why do you think many great actors flock to Hollywood? Creative challenge? 99% of Hollywood movies is crap, yet they still attract some of the greatest actors, directors, screenwriters, etc in the world. Even the most artistic people in the world want success.

I mean, I worked on Civ4, I'm a very, very small part of the team that created that game and I know it's the best TBS game to date. Even if noone else recognized that and bought the game, I would still have the personal satisfaction that I helped make the best game of its sort on the market. Yet I still check the sales numbers every week to see how well it's doing. I want it to sell as many copies as possible. If it could sell 20 million copies, I would be in heaven, if it had only sold 500,000 I would have been very, very disappointed -- even while I already know it's the best game out there! But I still want it to sell as well as it possibly can. Most of that is personal pride and part of it is because I know that if I wanna be involved in the next game in the series, Civ4 is gonna have to be a success...

But mostly it's pride. The same was true for my CtP2 mod creations as well, and that applies to all mod/scenario makers, even though none of them are making even a penny for what they do: they all still want to be a success, they want to get as many downloads as they possibly can for their work and they want to be get critical acclaim. I can tell you from personal experiences that every single time someone says your creation sucks it hurts, even if that person isn't part of your target audience. No modmaker would turn down the possibilty to expose their product to 60 million people if they were given the opportunity, many would sell out their soul to get that if they knew it would work. Everyone wants that success, whether there's money in it or not.

Everyone does it, everyone in the gaming industry wants to sell as many copies as possible, even small developers that aim at very niche markets. Why do you think Stardock switched to 3D for their graphics? Read their post-mortem, they didn't do that because they saw it as a creative challenge (in fact, doing so nearly killed their project, they were in way over their head), they did it because they were tired of getting beat up in reviews about their ugly graphics, because this kept the GalCiv1 from selling more copies than it did.

I know we all want to think developers are these saints, these Van Goghs and Manets who only care about artistic freedom and creating the best games possible, but if this is so, how come there are hundreds of RTS titles that all play exactly the same? How come 90% of all shooters are basically clones of each other? How come the CtP series ever saw the light of day? How come more than half the games that come out are sequels?

Game developers too are constantly copy-catting each other (or themselves), crapping out unoriginal, uninnovative titles that are blatant rip-offs of some other games or that suffer from sequelitis. Yes, occassionally you get something new and fresh, most games mentioned in this thread so far as excellent examples of that, but those are the exceptions. The gaming industry produces many hundreds of titles every year but only a few of them are anything like GalCiv or RoN or whatnot. I open up Gamespot today and what do I see? Lara Croft staring me in the face Tell me with a straight face that's not about making money, tell me the guys who made that game truly saw a creative challenge there...

FWIW, I would like to point out that the Civ frenchaise has been more successful than the sim series. Civ games (including Alpha Centauri) have been consistent sellers, while most of Will Wright's efforts had been mediocre in terms of sales.

WTF? What are you smoking? Last time I checked 58 million units was still a LOT more than the 7 million the Civ series sold. Yes, they target different markets and there are good reasons for that, but numbers are numbers.

These people are barking up the wrong tree. As the proverbial saying goes, make a better mousetrap and people will beat a path to your house. Robert Townsend (a successful businessman and a management maverick) pointed out that, the main goals should be excellence and fun, and profit would follow. Google didn't get this big by trying to make $$$. They got this way by being the best search engine.

Actually, the Townend quote is "If you don't do it excellently, don't do it at all. Because if it's not excellent, it won't be profitable or fun, and if you're not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing there?" -- so according to him business IS about profit. Ever wondered why there's only 1 Google in the world? That approach works for them and the whole world is jealous of that, but very few people can repeat it. Did Microsoft get big that was? IBM? EA? Anyone, anyone at all? There's a reason Google's famous for their approach...

Of course game developers want to have fun and want to make great games, but if for no other reason they need success to be able to continue doing that in the long run. If you want to believe that game developers are saints that don't care one bit about money and success and are only in it for the creative challenge, look at it this way: if they can make even 1 game that sells 100 million copies, they can spend the rest of their lives doing whatever the hell they want, coming up with the most imaginitive and original titles they can conceive, without any worries about how it might do commercially.

[Jon Miller]

I know a lot more players who like playing Civ2 or whatever at low difficulty levels than really enjoy playing Civ3 (I don't know if they tried Civ4)

this is especially true of the female civ players I know...

JM

[Alex]

I agree with Locutus here. As I said in my first post in this thread, Civ is the only successful TBS franchise out there, because other developers know that the TBS genre does not sell enough to justify the investment. It is better for them to focus their efforts on creating generic RTS games because these games sell.

The gaming industry is getting much bigger than it was, and some games cost millions of dollars to be made. It wouldn't be sane to spend millions of dollars on the development of a game if you don't give a damn about how much it will sell. Hey, do you want easy money? Give your audience more of what they want - that is why there are so many expansion packs for The Sims. They will not spend lots of money, because they're not really creating anything from scratch, and the XPs will generate a great profit.

The romantic era of gaming is over.

[MrPhil]

Originally posted by Silver14
I think only people who have never played any previous Civ games can truly answer that. Settler and Chieftain modes are both so easy that anyone with half a clue should be able to play and win the game even if they don't understand most of what is going on yet.

Perhaps the reason why many people on these boards find The Sims 1 & 2 so damn boring is because what you see is what you get with them and there isn't really much else to figure out or do after your first few hours of play. Same thing with Sim City for me, may be interesting at first but doesn’t take long to get boring. Civ IV still has me interested after half a year of playing and unlike even Civ III, The Sims, or Sim City I never cringe when I think about playing it.

I think Civ IV is defiantly more open and friendly to new players then Civ III was.

Civ IV is my first foray into the Civ world and I LOVE it! It has to be one of the most addictive games I have ever played. I am sure there is still stuff I need to learn but, it really didn't seem that difficult to pick up the basics by jsut jumping in and "going". Now, I am by no means an expert and I am still stuck on the Noble level I think.

[fed1943]

Congratulations and thank you, Locutus, and you are right civ4 is the best TBS game ever. And it sells, keep selling because is good. And, as you make good product, you got a name. And that saves a lot of money.
So you will win more money. And if next month you don't have a chance to do a good game, do no game.
That's the simple way to win money. And I want you to win money because I know broken entreprises don't output products, and I like to play and I don't know to make my own games. (I belong to the audience).
Best regards,