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

[gunnergoz]

I thought that Will Wright's criticism has it's merits, but it ignores the fact that the Civ franchise has prospered because of gamers who appreciate the game's complexity and challenge.
If every strategy and empire game is designed for newbies, we'll end up with...RTS games. And gosh knows, we have enough of those to fill a trash dumpster already.
Wright misses the essential quality of Civ and other turn based games (or slow RTS games like Europa Universalis); challenge and staying power shaped in terms other than quick wrist action. What's wrong with designing games for thinking, deliberate people? What's wrong with expecting new gamers to have to actually read manuals, play a few games and actually figure out a strategy based upon the game's logic and the historical basis for it?
Wright is, whether he likes it or not, toadying to the marketing types that have dumbed down computer strategy gaming to a series of console RPG games and PC FPS/RTS twitch fests.
Mind you, there are plenty of customers for such games and I would not deny them their favorite pastime.
At the same time, to have developer's of Wright's reputation and industry standing, come out to argue that Civ 4 represents strategy games gone awry, does a great disservice to the community of gamers who actually enjoy such games. Already too many developers and production houses have scurried away from real strategy titles so they can get on the RTS/FPS/RPG bandwagon. A lot of talent and resources are no longer interested or inclined to support the community of gamers that enjoy studied, leisurely games of thought and real strategy.
So, in all, I'd rather that Mr. Wright maintain his focus upon his own genre and keep his mitts off real strategy games; if he finds them too daunting, well, he can always go play one of his own titles.

[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.

[Solver]

I actually laughed at that statement somewhat.

It has some merit, but it just seemed funny to me that it should come from Will Wright who makes "toy" games that are, in a way, more opposite to Civ-style games than shooters.

I don't think that Civ4 is any daunting, though. It actually offers some hints on how to play, etc. It is, in my opinion, very easy to pick up for new players. Of course, since Civ4 is a strategy game, there is always going to be a steeper learning curve involved. You just can't possibly make a good strategy game that you can have full understanding of in 30 minutes - those are mutually exclusive options.

Civ4 provides a fair number of hints on how to play, and is, IMO, much easier to get into than Civ3, for example. With Civ3, you were completely out in the dark. With Civ4, you'll play your first few games somewhat blindly (the learning curve part), but you'll still have some idea and feedback about what's going on.

Hmm. That said, my award for best interface and best newbie friendliness goes to Rise of Nations. I'm yet to play a game that comes anywhere close in that regard - shooters notwithstanding, as they don't really have much of an interface to speak about. In Rise of Nations, textual hints appear in many places if they're on, and they explain the concepts, give hints on what to do, etc. A message "Build more cities" might be displayed over your capital if you aren't building any. Click on an enemy Knight, and it'll say in the bottom "counter with Pikemen". RoN is the standard for which every game should aim.

As for Will Wright... well, I certainly respect the man for his impact on the industry and his achievements. I don't like his games, except SimCity, but he's certainly one of the people with a great understanding of the industry.

[LordShiva]

I think Civ4 is too open and n00b friendly.

[Son of David]

Well although I loved SimCity 2000, and enjoyed SimCity 3000 quite a bit, I have to admit that I only played half an hour of SimCity 4. Pretty much same old, same old.

I'm sure we've all seen the Sid Meier interviews where Sid gives Will Wright great praise. I think Will Wright is just jealous.

Civ is a game for adults, but these 'Sims' games are crude and obnoxious.

[mike2h]

nothing daunting about it if you can read & have played any type of comp/cons game. between the book, the tutorial mode, & the 1st difficulty level, if you cant play it you just do not have a true interest in these type of games & probably have issues playing any type of game(assuming you are giving it a fair shot wether you like strategy games or not).

[Imran Siddiqui]

It's daunting for Will Wright because the game actually has a stated goal to reach for .

[MasterDave]

I would expect that those of us who post on this forum would naturally deride Will Wright's comments, as we are mostly preaching to a choir of hardcore strategy gamers here. However, the very strong sales figures for Civ4 that continue to be strong six months after release would also serve as decently objective proof that Civ4 is NOT too daunting for new players.

I think that Civ4's interface is one of the easiest to navigate in the series to date. Civ 1,2, and 3 were all certainly more "daunting" in this regard. Civ 4's interface layout is, in fact, very similar to RTS mainstays such as Warcraft III.

[Solver]

I don't see why anyone should be in the one camp but not the other. I'm a hardcore Civ fan, and I don't like Will Wright's games, but that doesn't make me treat him personally with any kind of disrespect or such. It's just clear that the games Will and Sid make are very, very different.

[Locutus]

Like Solver, it did kinda make me chuckle, if for a different reason: one of the design goals for this game was to make it as newbie-friendly as possible, to really make it open and allow anyone to jump right in. And Civ4 didn't just add a bunch of new features like any sequel game does (and as Will Wright claims), quite to the contrary: it mostly revamped and improved existing concepts. The only major new gameplay features were religion, great people and the promotion system. But Will Wright is apparently completely oblivious to all this, that's somewhat amusing (but while it says a little bit about Will Wright, it certainly says a lot about Civ4 as well...)

While I do agree with Solver that Civ4 is a huge step up from Civ3, I also agree with Will Wright that we're not there yet. The biggest problem is the user interface; frankly that's something Firaxis was never very good at. Even in Civ4 it still relies too much on icons, on keyboard shortcuts, on the user knowing his/her way around the game. RoN is an excellent example of how it should be done. I tried to help remedying this early in the testing process, but later on (when it really mattered -- as anyone who's seen the public screenshots when the game was still under development will have noticed the UI really only started to take shape prettyy late in development) I was too busy designing scenarios to have much time for that. This is really the one area I'd like to see the franchise improve in the future, a good UI is beneficial to both beginning users and to veterans.

But of course, Will Wright isn't just talking about that. The real problem he's addressing is that most games in general are just too damn complex for most people (yes, even FPS games). Not to gamers, but to the rest of the world -- all those billions of non-gamers or very casual gamers out there. My parents or sister don't play Civ, or any other traditional video game: they just don't get it. Most games just have too too much going on, or they don't know what to do, or it's going to fast, etc. Of course, Windows and Word are pretty damn complex for them as well: whenever I visit my folks there's *always* something they need me to help them with, whether it's because Word doesn't print page numbers or because they need a file but they can't find it anymore, etc. Pretty simple stuff that almost everyone on this forum could fix, but they still need my help.

That's the type of people Will Wright is referring to, those are by and large not being catered to by the gaming industry -- and that's a VERY large group of people. My sister just *loves* the Sims, my mum is a hopeless Tetris addict and my dad enjoys a game of Solitary from time to time. There's potentially a LOT of money to be made with simple games like that (the trick is to actually make the money, as most people aren't willing to spend a whole lot on simple stuff like that, Sims being the one exception).

That's not to say such games should completely replace today's complex games that cater to more hardcore gamers, but that does explain why most games only sell 1-2 million copies (and that's really considered a LOT in the gaming industry, less than 1 on a 100 games actually sells more than a million copies and, more importantly for the people in the industry, 9 out of 10 games sells less than it was expected to) and why the Sims franchise has apparently sold 58 million units to date...

[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.

[Solver]

Yeah - Will Wright, essentially, creates "toys", not "games". My sister also loves Sims (me cringing everytime she mentions the game), and she's not into any other computer games.

I don't really think it's fair to say that most games are complex for most people. I'm not of a too high opinion about the intelligence of some people, but frankly, everyone who's a teenager, not to mention adults, has what it takes to play Doom. Of course, if they want to, and if they want to get over the technical stuff. Even controls counts as technical stuff.

It's indeed a fact that for most people out there who use a computer, Windows and Word and pretty much the limit of what they use, and they find Word hard, and they can't use all of Windows's basic functions right. It makes me sad, too, but it's a somewhat unrelated subject.

However, I personally find Civ very easy to explain to people. Or maybe the general TBS game as opposed to Civ specifically. I mean, if someone unfamiliar with games and computers saw Doom and asked me to expain, that wouldn't be too hard. If asked to explain Civ, I just say that it's a boardgame on a computer. That's what, in essence, Civ and TBS games are. You could even play Civ4 on a tabletop board, only you'd have a lot of dice rolling and a lot of numbers to keep track of.

In that sense, though, I think Civ is accessible. Most people aren't too familiar with videogames, but they are familiar with board games. Therefore, the concept of a TBS game would be easy for them to understand. On the contrary, a game such as Rise of Nations or any other RTS would be very hard to explain to to someone not familiar with games.

But viewing the amazing success of the Sims and such games, it's indeed important to remember about their distinction from other games - they don't have a goal. There's no victory condition, you don't "beat" the game, you don't complete the main quest, you don't get a high score, there's nothing like that. As far as I'm concerned, it's one of the things that turns me off to Wright's games, but you can't deny that goal-less "sandbox" games appeal to an extremely wide audience.

Oh, another interesting thing about the Sims. I am under the impression that most people (my sister for sure) like to play the game with cheats for money. Get a crapload of money, and from there, build a house, whatever. I just find it fascinating that this is so popular a way to play, whereas the "standard" way to play the Sims would be, after all, to do stuff to earn your money - which is the only thing about the game which at least remotely resembles fun to me, as it's strategic, sort of...

[Solver]

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.

Yep, and all depends on what you compare it to. If you compare Civ4 to Sims, then just about any 11 year old could play the Sims alright, but any random 11 year old isn't guaranteed to understand Civ4.

[Silver14]

For some people Chess is too daunting. Just because they can't figure it out doesn't mean I want to pull out checkers and bore myself.

[Smellycowsquid]

no