"Civ 2.5?" from October 6, 1999

[Darkknight]

That is actually scary.
I'll never (cor look at that sunrise skies totally pink) well wouldn't say never really you know it could happen. ummm excuse me but I'm too tired to think straight.

If you actually read the bit at the back of the civ2 manual ( every fanatic has probably read it 10 times like me) You'll find out that Sid Meier had nothing to do with it. And his name only appeared i the credits as original design.

Must go head just about to hit de keyboad

[Theben]

It figures...

that it's all your fault.

[Ralf]

I dont think we should over-emphasize the everyday presence of Sid Meier. Instead I think most of the early basic game-design decisions & sollutions have already been made - and also, that most decisions where made in coallition with all the team-members. Sid perhaps played/playes the role of the inspiring game-design leader, but still - I really think they work as a team with this project.

As for the "Sid Golf" project - I really dont see the problems here. Firaxis is a small company, and they must put their eggs in several baskets, to be sure. Developing a strategy-building game about Golf has never been done before, and Golf is afteral a very popular sport. The advertisment-possibilities in Golf-magazines are great. Although I dont enjoy Golf myself, I can easily see why investing time & money in such a project make good sense.

[yin26]

Ralf:

I'm sure Firaxis agrees with your reasoning, but a number of small companies have made the same choice with DIRE consequences. While they have avoided putting all their eggs in one basket, they've also increased payroll and rent by orders of magnitude. In a sense, they HAVE to have two games coming out just to cover the bills. This must by default create room for split personalities and intense "negotiations" as to what resource will go to what game.

It's this kind of 'overhead creep' that puts companies in do or die situations. Frankly, I think they should have stayed small and focussed. Less money made but much less money paid out. AND, I believe, that tighter and more dedicated small group dynamic would have produced potentially much better games, albiet released on a much slower pace.

We'll see I suppose.

[yin26]

Dan's recent exuse for not updating the Website ("We have TWO games in production..." blah blah blah) seems to support precisely what I argued above. Too bad, actually.

[tniem]

Originally posted by yin26
Dan's recent exuse for not updating the Website ("We have TWO games in production..." blah blah blah) seems to support precisely what I argued above. Too bad, actually.

I don't know. I still would have to believe that the reason Dan has not updated the website in a while is that they have no real news to report. They are testing making changes and what not and are leaving the hype to the gaming magazines and fan sites.

I can't believe it really has to do with no time.

It can't take long to add a little blurb about what magazine has given a new review, which is at the very least what they should be doing.

This new civ3 site may be the reason, but I still believe that the biggest thing is that they have nothing new to put up so they aren't releasing anything. Hopefully that leads to a later release date. After all if October was still on the table it would be time to start cranking up the hype within the next week...

[yin26]

Oh, I agree with you totally. In fact, I've already lambasted Dan for his lame excuse(s). What I mean to say, however, is it seems the company as a whole is running around like crazy trying to handle two projects at once, so something as relatively "minor" (from an internal operations point of view) as the website gets more or less put very low on the priority list. That, in turn, leads to an inexcusable (from the fan's point of view) lack of or error-prone communication with the public.

Although it's a "what if" scenario, but what if Firaxis only had Civ 3 on its plate? I bet we'd have an outstanding website and much better screenshots to date.

Anyway, I'm sure Firaxis is more than happy to let fan sites and gaming magazines do all this work for them. They have never shown much saavy in dealing with the public at any rate. At least Maxis will show them how to make a vitual golf community...and there's always hope that somebody at Maxis will take a liking to Civ 3.