Definition: Second-System Effect

[St Leo]

Source


When one is designing the successor to a relatively small, elegant, and successful system, there is a tendency to become grandiose in one's success and design an elephantine feature-laden monstrosity. The term was first used by Fred Brooks in his classic "The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering" (Addison-Wesley, 1975; ISBN 0-201-00650-2). It described the jump from a set of nice, simple operating systems on the IBM 70xx series to OS/360 on the 360 series. A similar effect can also happen in an evolving system; see Brooks's Law, creeping elegance, creeping featurism. See also Multics, OS/2, X, software bloat.

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St. Leo
http://www.sidgames.com/hosted/ziggurat/
http://www.sidgames.com/forums/

[Diablo, Bro. of Mephisto]

Your point is?

[The diplomat]

I think his point is that he is worried that firaxis will fill civ3 with lots of features and in so doing, abandon the simple and elegant game known as civ2.

Am I right?

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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[- Groucho -]

If that is his point (which I agree is likely) then I think it is a useful word of warning to Firaxis. Is there a better example than lawyer units?


[and I am a lawyer in RL, so believe me, I know what kind of havoc can be done to an elegant system by the addition of lawyers.]

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Echinda
"That which does not kill you ... will likely try harder the next time."
[This message has been edited by Echinda (edited January 24, 2001).]

[DarkCloud]

I think the game should be made like Civ II but not like ToT;

Leo- why did you get a PCR?

[Biddles]

Sid know's about that. He has said, everything added to the game takes something away, so the addition has to be justified as greatly increasing gameplay.

[raingoon]

Well said on all counts. There's no overestimating the danger of feature creep -- nor Sid Meier's cognizance of same.

[St Leo]

Leo- why did you get a PCR?

Jesus Balsinde of the new Spanish CivII Forum told someone to try spamming and see what happens. I took him up on his offer and posted a couple distinct messages with the sentences containing 'spam' in them. MarkG smelled that spam a k-metre away and had to give out a PCR to fill his quota.

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St. Leo
http://www.sidgames.com/hosted/ziggurat/
http://www.sidgames.com/forums/