Why no PBEM now isn't the biggest problem in the world

[TheLimey]

Big Dave:

I believe you missed the most important point of mine:

'If the core game was good enough, got good enough reviews, and consistent continuing income'

This is absolutely critical. I was disappointed with the initial quality of the game as it stood. Many magazines, and online gaming organizations gave CtP a less than glowing review which meant that after the intial rush of sales- based around the 'Civilization: Call to Power' name. The continuing sales did not support the kind of support that would be necessary to 'fix everything'. This was an understandable commercial situation.

They DID however patch a number of areas.

Firaxis on the other hand, were guilty in another way; they had a continuing success (relatively speaking) and then did not patch some absolutely key errors and omissions that many SMAC players still feel sore about.

When it comes to CtP2, we have a whole new ball game, although i'm not in any position to give a statement over its initial quality, it is possible that it is good; and good enough to get good (or even great - its not like it has competition) reviews. That being the case *and* it getting good continuing sales (again, another leap of faith, but not impossible to imagine) then there would be no commercial reason not to improve the continuing sales of a still viable product, by giving consumers more of what they want.

[MarkG]

note: in the end, smac and ctp1 had practically the same sales(with ctp1 a few thousand copies more)

[Big Dave]

Paulypav,
Activision released 2 patches for C:CTP. And the end result was that the most customizable game in the world wasn't playable with multiple mods. They left the job unfinished, all the features should have worked.

Markos,
That's my point. While reviews for C:CTP stunk the game generated as many sales as SMAC. (BTW, Firaxis is slime for not supporting their product either, no double standard here.) So C:CTP generated enough revenue that Activision should have continued to support it. I would have bought a $20 add-on pack with mod support fixed, flat map support, and a few cool (or even lame!) mods. In the above scenario Activision should have been able to justify a reduced or part time programming staff to continue to support C:CTP while CTP2 was being developed? And the lifespan of a civ style game is 3 to 5 years if done properly. Between the mods and the general replay value of the game the replay value should be at least that much! Again, I think this because we're operating outside of Activision's core dicipline. They are primarily an action/shooter type of company, they don't understand what makes TBS players tick. With shooters you always have to update the graphics and get a new game out pronto because people with no lives will solve the 50 levels you sent with the game in short order, i.e. the game has little or no replay value. OTOH, they've done an excellent job expanding C:CTP from the original Civ and Civ II. One more patch could have fixed the mods so that the ModPicker utility wouldn't have been needed.

Anyway, I'll probably get CTP2, after it's patched to (IMHO) a reasonable level.
Respectfully,

David