Well since we have figured out that Take 2 is publishing the game, do you like the idea of Take 2 publishing CivIV?

I honestly like the idea. they put out great games like the GTA series.

Not sure if this means anything but Take2 acquired 2K and their intellectual property from Sega the day before. 2K will be the publisher of cIV under the Take2 umbrella. I understand 2K's strength to be in sports area and TTWO just signed a deal with MLB for 7 years. Would it be better to understand 2K's impact on the game?

I am optimistic. ;)

not sure. I have no real fears, as still Firaxis is developing Civ4. I am not sure how the publisher will influence the patching policy of Firaxis to the better or worse.

I saw lots of GTA: San Andreas ads on the side of buses here in NYC. It'd be nice if they do that for Civ4 too. :)

Very few publishers advertise games on buses AFAIK.

Take Two has a top notch marketing machine. They'd certainly know how to market the game.

But marketing also has an impact on the game. For example, if you define the target market of the game for a certain audience, then that starts to define the direction of the game.

Also, when you're marketing something new, you often use your old products as a frame of reference.

If you hold those things to be true, they may try to apply a few marketing lessons from sim-strategy games like Tropico, strategy games like Age of Wonders series, or sim games like the Tycoon series.

Certainly they'll find great ways to sell the game. The impact on the features of the game will be marginal. But will even that small impact be good? When I take a look at a series like Grand Theft Auto, I have to think that this is a company that believes innovation breeds success, instead of rehashing old formulas.

And Civ is a franchise that I don't want to see stagnate.

I think they'll do a good job. I mean, it is Civilization after all. That's a pretty recognizable name, and I don't think they would screw around with it. However, I am a bit concerned that they might make Friaxis "dumb down" the gameplay, to appeal to more casual fans...that would suck.

I don't think there's much gameplay to dumb down, to be quite honest. They couldn't make it dumber unless they cut out anything that wasn't directly related to military. Cut out temples and libraries and the game basically becomes a really long turn based Warcraft.

I think they might call for the elimination of boring micromanagement.

If a game like Tropico is any indication, they believe that there's a lot of fun to be had in running your own country without declaring war. I want Civ to be Civ, but if there's one game that Civ could use a bit more of, it's Tropico.

I trust them more than infogrames - again, the fact that they don't seem to stifle innovation because of it's risks could be a good thing.

Then again, they may ask Firaxis to take a 'direction' that allows better marketing.

The only reason they would have bought the franchise would be because they see more value in it than what Infogrames saw in it - that is the way that economics work. So the question really is - What did take2 see in the civilization series that infogrames didn't?

I really doubt they will seriously affect the game - a large chunk of the audience would be buying civIV based on their experience with the previous games. If there is nothing left from civ 1, 2 and 3, the carry-over audience will disappear. This audience could be up to 20-50% of all buyers, and not necessarily dedicated players like us, either.

I'd be worried they'd 'dumb-down' it as an X-box console game with "Rise of Nations" play but capitalizing on the CIV brand label and 'info-historical' concept. Imagine basically ripping the Civlopedia, turning it into cut-scene movies and mating it with a tweaked real-time-strategy version of CIV. And then marketing it to public schools/parents wanting more substantial games than Manhunt.

It'd probably sell well.
Hard-core Civers will just be pissed and keep modding.

In fact, I'd almost bet that's the direction they're going to take.

I'd bet the game would be called something like Civilization: Test of Time.

OTOH, there might be room in the deal for Firaxis to quietly publish a true CIV4.


(Paranoid delusions subsiding..)

I imagine that they will want Firaxis to plug along with the TBS design they've been working on for the past year and a half or more. I don't think that after they spent that much on the franchise, they'd want to throw out the work that's been done on the next installment.

Yeah, I think any talk of them changing the genre of the game is pretty silly. They'd sooner just invent a new franchise. The Civ name is only valuable if it means they can use it to bring back the same old Civ players.

Like I said, I couldn't imagine them dumbing down the game much more unless they made it even more military focused.

Would Firaxis have had any say in the deal? I would have expected that Jeff Morris & Sid Meier would have wanted to retain control over the direction of the game, and hence it TakeTwo decided that they wanted to publish a dumbed-down RTS game, then the deal would never have been signed.

I just hope they take their sweet time... however long it takes to get it right. 2006 if need be. I don't want to buy another buggy mess like the first PTW!

I am hoping for the best. Echoing the statements of others, I think that as long as the game development is in Firaxis' hands, everything should be fine. Where Take 2's impact would be seen is in the post-release support.

Marketers are smarter than you give them credit. "Dumbing down" games doesn't make money. Playing to a wider audience makes money. And a wider audience doesn't mean dumber audience, despite what some elitist intellectuals will tell you.

A wider audience means looking at Civ's closest cousins. What games are similar to Civilization? You've seen them thrown out here. Age of Empires, Age of Wonders, Age of Something or Other. Rome Total War. Call to Power. Tropico. They'll look at the sales figures of all of those and figure out which of those audiences Civ is poised to "steal from". Then they'll ask questions like what can be added to Civ to grow that audience.

They won't dictate to Firaxis what features will or will not go in, but they could make general comments like "people seem to go nuts for more customization" or "we need to get Civ online right off the base release". They may even say "people like games that let them relive history, as opposed to rewriting it" -- or the exact opposite "people enjoy the scenarios, but they seem to love being able to rewrite history and ending up in a situation where the roles are reversed".

Marketers, if they're going to have any say in the product, it's giving very broad and non-specific goals. That's if they have any say in the product at all. With a game like Civ, they probably trust that it's done something right so far, too.

Don't they also control how much and how often info is released?


I am hoping for the best. Echoing the statements of others, I think that as long as the game development is in Firaxis' hands, everything should be fine. Where Take 2's impact would be seen is in the post-release support.

True, probably what will matter the most is their policy on patching the game, and game support.

Marketers are smarter than you give them credit. "Dumbing down" games doesn't make money. Playing to a wider audience makes money. And a wider audience doesn't mean dumber audience, despite what some elitist intellectuals will tell you.
Maybe its not the Marketers I'm worried about. Maybe its the 'tv generation'. ;)

Were they the ones that released the abomination called battlecruiser 3000AD?

"Civilization" itself is a pretty famous brand name. Marketing it as numero 4, for a more mass media version wouldn't be necessary.

Realistically, to make an established thing more popular, you have to make it more appealing, which means relatively---"dumb it down". It's just not impossible to "dumb it down", and still keep the hard-core/"scholarly" fan-base still happy. E.g. the great Tolkien movies with all the video/sound/acting richness keep to the textual scripting & dialogue, but there still not documentary. (I never understood Tolkien-scholars, and only ever liked the Hobbit, personally.)

I'm just thinking the next Civ project will actually, at the last minute, not be numero 4, but a more "broad-appealing" project. I've seen this before where they string along the established fan-base, but try to get more mass-media for more "mucho dinero".

Considering I like how far Civ has come---I'd probably never play CIV 1, even with CIV3C mod. I might occasionally like a "dumb-down" quick-play civ, but if they try to sell that to meet as the Civ-heir/CIV4, I'll say "screw it".

Considering Take 2 is mainly console games these days, I expect that (Am I wrong?). I think GTA is a good design, just not what I like to play. Staying with ATARI, which is making a lot of good strategy PC games these (I'm interested in the coming D&D RTS with dungeoneering coming out, an Act of War is pretty good for a mostly C&C game---better than EA's stuff).

Derek Smart was supposed to be the leader of that thing. I think they foolishly contracted with it. They've been around a while, I think I remember some Doom-clones from them.

GTA made 'em rich.

Were they the ones that released the abomination called battlecruiser 3000AD?

I just checked their website.

I'll give them kudos for Railroad Tycoon and Tropico

Yeah, they published battlecruiser 3000AD

Movies are a mass market phenomenon. Games are not.

Civilization 3 moved about 2 million units. That's considered an enormous success in the game industry, but not in the mainstream sense. Tetris for gameboy sold 33 million units. Just because Tetris sold that many games (for one system) does not mean that every marketer is going to follow the Tetris formula. There's a lot of money to be made for a game that sells even 5% of what Tetris did.

That means identifying the target market. The Civilization game will never be a mass market success. It's not made for soccer moms. Marketers will not target soccer moms.

The marketers will target whoever COULD be a civilization fan but isn't. That means gamers -- first and foremost. But they might add "gamers who like historically themed entertainment". They might look at the segment of people who played Age of Empires. They might look at people who bought Band of Brothers on DVD. They might look at people who watch the history channel. But they're also gamers. Or they might pick "gamers who like strategy". So they'll look at what they think made Starcraft or Myst successful.

My worry is that they'll look at the starcrafts and the mysts and decide to turn the game into an ancient-to-future war simulator. It's really only a few steps backwards for Civ to become that. My hope, though, is they'll see money in differentiating themselves (another important goal for marketers) from RTS style action -- which players can already find all over the place -- and try to make Civ more of a builder game.

In dollars and cents, Games are way up there with movies. Including all electronic games, I believe Hollywood finally met it's match.

Civ probably isn't up there that high.

But I swear---"dumb it down", imbue the design with marketability from day 1, and get national attention (Civ already did that a few times!), it'll be a money monster.


Things that people like:
1. being entertained
2. feeling better for buying something (e.g. smarter, cleverer, etc..)
3. doing something to help their kids get ahead and out of their hair sometimes.

I'm not saying it'll be like college prep. Just tons of "historicity" movies; dramatic, romantic, and cartoony if it has to be; combine some chess/checkers like strategy with arcade/FPS, and keep a minimum of the Civ rep (educational, accurate, historical, customizable scenarios, thinking game/simulation) and they could make a serious moneymaker of it.

But I also see I was being paranoid---take 2 has lot of typical PC games in their inventory, so they might be content with a CIV4.

Movies are a mass market phenomenon. Games are not.

Civilization 3 moved about 2 million units. That's considered an enormous success in the game industry, but not in the mainstream sense.

They did pick up titles such as RailRoad Tycoon and Tropico, not exactly the tvGeneration bit. While I think the oppurtunity to be 'el presidente', along with the sick humour, was awesome, most of my early 20s friends do not understand it. RRT was the same way, great game but definitely appeals to a niche rather than broad market. Take 2 seems to appreciate games as an artform and a quality one. If anything they will want Civ 4 to revolutionize what TB games are, the same way RoN(different company I know, but I love Brian Reynolds work) revoultionzed RTS.

Yeah, I don't think mass market is going to be the approach with Civ 4. They're going to want it to be the favorite game among strategy gamers, not so much the favorite game among gamers, or even among all people who like to be entertained.

Strategy or sims. Those are the two most logical markets for Civ to compete in.

i dont care

It depends if we have to buy two more add-ons to have the same initial game .. :joke: ... I voted yes because I believe the advertisings... :D

I dont understand why it should be something bad or good. Civ4 will be published, excellent.

You do realise this thread is more than half a year old.

I voted not sure.

They were panned for the early/unfinished release of Stronghold 2. Apparently forced it out the door long before it was ready. This was months ago. Firefly still hasn't fixed the problems. Firaxis and Sid should have more clout, so things should go better for them.