A open letter to Firaxis (don't let this great game die)

[Deimos]

Ideological Differences.

Isn't that one of the defining differences between CivII and SMAC? (I've never played any of the civ games, but from what I have picked up from others discussions over the differences, this was a big one.)

SMAC, at its core, is about the interaction of different ideologies and how they can/cannot get along.

SMAC has many SP's/unit abilities/actions that are unethecial, and here's the great thing about the game: you don't have to use/do them!

If one ideology is going to go so far as to completely eliminate another, it is committing genocide, and a "torture the leader" movie is appropriate.

If you are prepared to commit genocide, then, you should be prepared to accecpt the baggage that it comes with.

I'm with stuntman19. Doom contains a much higher level of disturbing content that SMAC, IMHO. How can you be ok with that, but not be ok with a stylized, simulated torture session?

On a side note: If a CGI movie about a simulated torture has caused one of your friends to suffer a bout of depression, then I would like to suggest that this person seek professional help, since there are probably other RealLife(tm) issues that need to be addressed.

[drewski]

I hadn't really given it much thought until I read Dry's post.

My wife will occasionally ask me what I'm doing and when I reply that I'm playing SMAC, she'll say, "and how are you trying to win this time?" (She's not really a gamer at heart, but she has listened to my description of the different victory conditions.) I usually have to respond that I'm busy conquering or beating someone into submission, as the AI is usually at odds with me. She sometimes asks, "why are you so mean?" I kind of shrug and think, "it's a game, that's how it goes."

Once, she walked into the room just when I had eliminated a faction, and she saw the torture scene. "That's terrible," she said. It hadn't really crossed my mind that, it was, in fact, terrible.

This will in no way influence my future playing vs. non-playing of SMAC. I enjoy the game and its challenges, but now, having had my eyes opened to the one-sidedness of the options, I feel that things could, in fact, be improved. (It wouldn't have been all that difficult to have the game check your SE settings at the time of a capture and choose an appropriate ending sequence for particular cases. On the other hand, it wouldn't have been too hard to make spore launchers less impotent or AI city trades less ridiculous etc.) I think there many other issues/bugs that could be addressed as well and I'm not sure how many SMAC fans would be more excited to see different choices for dealing with captured faction's leaders at the expense of other fixes... not that either are being awaited with held breath.

[Nigel]

I'm a little confused by your post, Dry. You comment that you and your friends see the trend toward 'virtual reality' as something bad, yet your friends play these builder games and take the whole content seriously. Maybe you could get them to play again by cornering them with logic.

[Dry]

About Doom and violence:
like many other things, violence is also a question of context. If you see a girl with short skirt at the office, you will find her "sexy". If you see her half naked at the beach, that's just normal.
Doom IS a game about violence, you expect it, you choose to play it.
Smac was expected as the follower of Civ2. In Civ2, you can role-play a little bit and choose to be a "nice" leader or an "evil" leader. All the violence you do (and my friend ARE violent in Civ2), you choose it.
I think that Civ2 had great success because you could play different styles. Of course, Smac also, but it contains more unchosen violence than Civ2.
One good sign for me of this is that I see (saw) more girl posts on Civ2 sites than on Smac sites.

Deimos:
This friend IS following a therapy, for more than 15 years.

Nigel:
Virtual reality is not bad per se, it is bad if your whole life is only virtual.
Television is not bad, television is bad at the rate of 12 hours a day.
Virtual reality is like drugs. It is a way to avoid reality. The problem of virtual reality is the same as the problem of drug: it would be nice if there wasn't this dependency problem (or do you say addiction?).
There is no problem of sometimes, to forget your everyday problems to go in a dream (or nightmare) world. The problem is not to become addicted. With some drugs you can become addicted very fast, that's why they are forbidden. You can have the same effect with virtual reality.
Who cares about eating one cookie, what about eating 100 cookies a day?

To All:
Please, don't see things as just "good" or "evil", it depend on the context and/or in the amount.

After this post, I thought a little bit more about the whole thing: the difference between my friends and me, is that I saw SMAC more as a wargame than as a builder game, they saw it more as Civ3.
Smac was made for gamers, Civ2 was made for a more wide public, even to non-gamers. In that way Civ2 can be called a "great classical", Smac only deserve the term of "very good game".

[mark13]

OK, so a bout of depression may be taking the whole ethics kick a bit too far, but despite that, Dry does have a valid point. It is not particularly ethical for one faction leader to torture another, however, neither is it particularly ethical to attack a base with several million citizens in it. I believe, however, that the two scenarios are very different....

1) you defeat another faction leader, and decide to have them put in a chamber and ceremoniously tortured for your own personal pleasure. This, IMHO, is very wrong indeed, and the writers should indeed edit this out of SMAC2, if there were to be such a game.

2) you attack an enemy for the survival of your faction. This, in most cases, is justified, as they would no doubt do exactly the same to you given half a chance.

Although there are indeed other issues which *need* to be resolved for any sequel, it wouldn't do any harm to get rid of these tasteless and ultimately unethical sequences, as they do not add to the flavour of the game at all.

[stuntman19]

Dry,

You've totally lost me, one can play smac as Morgan and not attack anyone. I've won a game as the Consciousness and not fought a battle or had even a vendetta.

Your DOOM explanation makes no sense either. How can one approach depression from smac and still play DOOM? Maybe when your friend goes in for his next counciling you should go with and get some help too.

[Alinestra Covelia]

I think Sid Meier should make a new type of turn based strategy game. It would depart from the precedent set by the original Civ trilogy (Civ, CivII, SMAC) and be much more human and individualistic.

It could be called


THE BIG BANG by Sid Meier.

Hmm.... no. Maybe not. Sorry.

[Aredhran]

Sid Meier's BIG BANG

Good one, Alinestra !

[WhiteElephants]

Dry -- I don't agree with your friends because you do have an option. When your beating your opponent bad enough to have him down to his last city he/she usually submits and asks for a submission pact. Now the only circumstances where they won't, that I have heard of, is if you used a planet buster on them or nerve gas or which makes torturing the leader petty in comparison. Another situation I am aware of is if you already have three submissive pacts which would then make the torture unaviodable. Someone else already mentioned that your friends are in fact commiting genocide on an ideaological basis anyways so I feel torture is a rather moot point. There is no one twisting anyones arm in SMAC to conquer another faction or commit atrocities. You can subvert bases with probe teams or just plain play defense. I also have to disagree about the SP slant your friends have taken. It is easy to look into the past and pick and choose which marvels of the world are deemed achievements of mankind, but a far greater task would be to look into mankinds future and speculate as to what achievements are possible. I believe that CIVII completely left out bio warfare which is certainly scientific achievement of mankind although not a real happy-go-lucky one. Besides, do your friends really know what the implications of a virtual reality or a self aware colony really are? Of course not, they can't even estimate the far reaching implications of the Human Genome Project let alone scientific break throughs that might not even occur in our lifetime. I also think it is a bit presumptuous to assume that democracy is the pinnacle of governmental administration. I think they would have to agree that forms of government have their place in time and that it would be hard for me to imagine that democracy doesn't have it's place in time as well. In summary, I think it is rather sad that your friends feel like the game is compelling them to conquer other factions and commit atrocities, perhaps the self aware colony is already in place?

[Nigel]

Sid Meier: the opiate of the middle class?

[RedFred]

My own experience with Civ, CivII, SMAC and SMACX is that each successive game was more violent. So I agree with Dry's assessment. Although it is possible to have a violence-free SMAC game I would suggest that it is an extremely rare event. SMAC, and even more so, SMACX is tilted toward fighting. I'd also have to say that Stuntman19's idea about playing Morgan peacefully has never worked for me...soon as I switch to FM all the AI factions decide to pound on me.

The debate about the torture chamber has raged since the early days of .owo. Personally, I am not fond of it.

White Elephants has sort of touched on one aspect of SMAC that interests me greatly. Our technology in year 2000 has started to outstrip our ability to form a consensus on what is ethically acceptable. It is easy to see this trend accelerating over the next hundred years. A great feature of SMAC is that it makes me think a bit about things like euthanasia, genetically modified humans, ethical research, artificial intelligence, new styles of government...

This game has an unusual level of complexity to it which I really appreciate. Sure it doesn't take long to be able to whup the AI at Transcend level. But to truly master this game at every detail is extremely difficult. I will freely admit that I am learning new stuff all the time.

I believe that another reason this game will be viewed as a classic is due to the unusual level of detail given to character development. This game is short on pure villians and pure heros. No question that each faction leader has their own style. It is also interesting that everyone has a favourite and a least favourite faction to play, but that all factions have supporters and detractors.

Many ideas have been proposed on a new storyline for SMAC2. I have no idea if there ever will be a SMAC2, but I for one would be interested in seeing what Firaxis could come up with. For me just a reduction in bugs, a slightly better Design Workshop and a different planet to land on would be all it would take to make my ears perk up.

[Deimos]

quote: For me just a reduction in bugs, a slightly better Design Workshop and a different planet to land on would be all it would take to make my ears perk up.

If you would like a more bug free version of SMAC/X, check out Loki Games. They have ported SMAC/X to Linux and are fixing a bunch of bugs in the process. The game has gone gold, but it hasn't shipped yet due to "packaging problems", whatever that means.

[Dry]

One last word about my friends because like I said, it is difficult to argue for others.
Last word is:
The Topic here was "A open letter to Firaxis". What I wanted to do here was to pass an information to Firaxis designers, explaning why some civ player did not play Smac. I saw here posts were everybody said "This game is great, go ahead".
I wanted to be more constructive say something like "If you are designing a sequel to smac, here is the reason why 3 civ player - among thousands of others - do play Civ2 and not Smac".

So now, about my opinion:
I remember some interview of Sid Meier about Civ. He told he designed a game he wanted to play, and not a game that will please marketing (concept of beeing free, and not thought probed or controlled ). The result was a hit.
I fear that Smac was more a game to please people (or marketing). The result is a good game, but not a hit.
In this way I didn't felt the "Sid Meier's touch" in Smac. The game *is* good and I feel SM's presence in that game, but as a consultant, not as chief designer.

Civ2 was a game allowing great freedom in scenario design. We all saw hundreds of scenarii on the net. I expected Smac to be even more configurable: SciFi is more able to give freedom to people than history. I would have expected for example, some variety in the planet choice (arctic, jungle, desert,...).
I think the ideas were there: workshop, SE, txt files,... *are* something in that direction - and this is why I say I feel SM's presence - but on others points (always same planet, same worms), I have the feeling the game is not finished.
An idea for a (cheap) sequel would simply be: an extension. Different planets (more or less hotile), different native life, with different sentient levels, to have some kind of Colonization Smac.