What Advantages Has STEAM Brought to 2K, Firaxis and the Civilization Franchise?

[Asher]

Steam brings:

- Achievements (I like)
- In-game friends UI (ctrl-tab), messaging, voice chat
- Multiplayer matchmaking support
- Ease of updates

I love it.

Firaxis saved time and money by utilizing Steam's pre-built APIs and functionality, rather than reinventing the wheel. We get a more stable gaming platform with awesome cross-game support.

I like logging on to Civ, viewing my Steam friends list and seeing a couple of my friends are playing Team Fortress 2 or Fallout 3, then just sending them an invite asking them if they're up for a Civ5 game. They say yes, they get joined up with my hosted game. Why the hate?

[pdxsean]

- Multiplayer matchmaking support

The ability to set up a private MP game and invite a steam friend directly to the game is really handy.

[cpekerkan]

I have a problem with the concept of DRM, not the Steam itself. Saying that, forcing people to install and sign up to it is beyond reproach.

Patching, extra profits, they are all minor details, Streamlined MP is sort of nice but it could have been done like Impulse/ Elemental style.

But than again, they are still writing their games in Phyton and calling it a feature at Firaxis...

[Asher]

What's wrong with using Python as a scripting language?

The core game is written in C++ in any case.

[Nikolai]

In theory, Steam improves the patching process, and provides a stable multiplayer platform. There are usually problems with Civ multiplayer, so the second part might be important. Auto-patching takes care of an oft-repeated troubleshooting step (asking about updates), since not everybody remembers/can be bothered to do it manually. I think that plus buying just one DRM license is why the physical media version also requires Steam.


Yeah, we all know how much fun it is to play a beta. (And seriously, the game is in the wild already, so much good did that DRM do...)

Huh? Being a beta has nothing to do with this. The fact is the game didn't get pirated before release. Steam did good in this regard.

[cpekerkan]

Where d u think the performance hit is coming from Not the gfx, which are nice looking with animations, OK gorgeous, but hardly taxing for a modern GPU...

Higher level languages always have two characteristics.
1. They are easier to understand, write modify.
2. They will need to be parsed/processed to what the CPU understands. Hence slower...

Incidentally, they also make porting to and from console a breeze.

[Asher]

I'm well aware what higher-level languages do and do not do. I worked on C/C++/Fortran compilers and do lots of performance profiling and optimization.

I've not seen anything which indicates Python is a massive performance hit in Civ5. It was used in Civ4 also. It's used in many, many games...as are other languages like LUA. It doesn't make sense to not do these in a scripted language -- if you do it in things like C++, that makes modding and scenario design ridiculously difficult. It'd be a dumb design.

[cpekerkan]

We are kind of derailing the thread here.
I can't think of any other reason for 2+minutes turn times on huge map during and after Industrial Era. On a way above the spec machine...
I am just majorly pissed and trying not to vent. (@Firaxis)

[Asher]

Maybe rather than randomly calling out certain aspects of the design as the culprit, you could do some actual research first.

[cpekerkan]

Not gonna get into it...
My field is also IT...

[Asher]

Will be sure to PM you if I ever need my password changed.

[Zoetstofzoetje]

Will be sure to PM you if I ever need my password changed.

lol

careful asher, he might be a BOFH!

[cpekerkan]

lol

careful asher, he might be a BOFH!

ROFL Naw, I was much more amicable but never did admin work.

Usually I just lurk on the forums but Civ5 pissed me off. Must be getting old.

[MxM]

Steam brings:

- Achievements (I like)
- In-game friends UI (ctrl-tab), messaging, voice chat
- Multiplayer matchmaking support
- Ease of updates

I love it.

Firaxis saved time and money by utilizing Steam's pre-built APIs and functionality, rather than reinventing the wheel. We get a more stable gaming platform with awesome cross-game support.

I like logging on to Civ, viewing my Steam friends list and seeing a couple of my friends are playing Team Fortress 2 or Fallout 3, then just sending them an invite asking them if they're up for a Civ5 game. They say yes, they get joined up with my hosted game. Why the hate?

Why hate? DRM and removal of the choice for us to have CD only game or game with another downloader (D2D or Impulse). Being forced to something generate hate. Being forced to something restrictive (Steam DRM, necessity to run steam to run the game) generates more hate. And while all of that you listed is good, that could have been done differently and less restrictive to just Steam. You behave as if all those things has never been done outside of steam.

Also, when there is just one distributer who wins the competition (effectively Steam) it creates a monopoly, which is bad for us, customers at the end.

[Asher]

Steam is far less restrictive than all of the other DRM on other games you've been happily buying without complaint for years (SecuROM, etc). You can still buy it on CD/DVD.

And while all of that you listed is good, that could have been done differently and less restrictive to just Steam. You behave as if all those things has never been done outside of steam.

Many cannot be done outside of Steam (eg, unified PC gaming friends lists & invites). Without using Steam, the development effort and infrastructure required for Firaxis is far, far larger than with Steam.

Long story short, the whining about having to run the Steam client in the background (which is not really much more resource-intensive than having to run custom code Firaxis would write to implement the same functionality) is nonsensical. So, too, are the complaints about Steam DRM, considering it's a far less intrusive DRM than SecuROM (which ACTUALLY adversely affects performance, unlike Steam).

People just don't seem to understand what Steam provides. They're too busy with knee-jerk reactions because they view it simply as mandatory bundled software (I buy tinfoil hats, GET OFF MY LAWN!!!) rather than infrastructure code Firaxis was able to leverage to save time and money and provide users with high-quality functionality that most people seem to really enjoy. The "community" feel of Civ5 via Steam is awesome compared to the isolated nature of Civ4.