Will Civilization Revolution end up making Civilization V more complex?

Warning: Poster is about to torture some logic. Look away if squeamish.

In the various Civ:Rev threads one of the major concerns that keeps appearing is the idea that if Civ:Rev is successful, CivV will incorporate some aspects and essentially "dumb down" the franchise to increase popular appeal.

I'm here to say: what if it's the opposite? What if Civ:Rev is successful, and as a result, CivV becomes an even more complex ("smart up"?) gaming experience.

Here's what I'm thinking:
CivRev comes out and is a strong seller on the consoles/handhelds, pulling in a lot of non-Civ players. But instead of non-Civ players, it also lures a substantial number of current Civ players who are looking for something simpler to play in a shorter amount of time.

At the same time they're announcing CivRev, BTS is coming out with more complex game mechanics (i.e. espionage and corporations). There have already been concerns posted in these forums that the game is becoming too much to manage with those additions [Note: I never consider issues with complexity a sign of (lack of) intelligence. It's more of a personality issue; some people just aren't organized enough to deal with ten million concurrent rules, or some people aren't patient enough to spend fifteen hours on every turn].

At the same time, there are those demanding even more complexity: new economic systems, different tech systems, etc (go visit the Ideas and Suggestions forum for more examples). Then of course you have the fifty million HRE threads, many of which are driven by the notion that Civilization has a greater imperative to be an historical simulation rather than a game.

So might I suggest the following may (should?) occur:

CivRev comes out. It's a hit. But instead of merging CivRev into CivV, a divergence occurs:

CivRev will remain on consoles/handhelds. It will add some complexity with subsequent releases, but at no point will it be as complex as Civ IV.

CivV will remain on the PC, but will become an even more complex game, embracing more historical reality and advanced game mechanics. Those who are already starting to feel overwhelmed by the game mechanics in CivIV will be encouraged to remain with it until CivRev2 (or even CivRev if they can stomach it), while those who demand a more rigorous historical game will be satisfied.

While having two clearly delineated paths may fracture the Civ community, I suspect instead that it will grow it. More players will be satisfied because they'll have the option of how "deep" a Civ experience they want, and I'm sure many players will follow both lines, choosing which game to play based on availability of time, etc.

...so that's what I'm thinking. Is this a vision, or a foolish dream?

There is just one really small problem with this theory, which would be really cool...Firaxis is living out of money!

PC gaming is on the edge of dieing out, even if there are some good titles here and there. A PC game is high risk, because it will be always buggy on some machines and with the success of consoles the sales for PC games are lower every year. If you make the game even more than complex, its even more high risk, because you need more time to finish it = more costs, and you can't sell it to such a wide audience = less profit. To sum it up: its a bad idea and Firaxis won't risk it.
On the other side, if you make a console title, it will work on every console, and it will sell significantly better, even on a higher consumer price and with a larger profit margin.

If I look at this tendency as a gamer I have to cry, but as a businessman I would instantly choose to develop only for consoles, and maybe port it back to PC.

Razor2 said:

PC gaming is on the edge of dieing out, even if there are some good titles here and there.

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As far as I know, there are more people with computers than there are people with a console, and in the near future, this isn't going to change, meaning that PC games will always have a much, much larger market than console games.

So, uh, no.

Tanktunker said:

As far as I know, there are more people with computers than there are people with a console, and in the near future, this isn't going to change, meaning that PC games will always have a much, much larger market than console games.

So, uh, no.

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A much larger potential market. A quick look at actual sales, however, shows that a mediocre seller on the a console sells many more copies than any non-World of Warcraft PC title. (The 800 pound gorilla in the room does need to be mentioned).

Tanktunker said:

As far as I know, there are more people with computers than there are people with a console, and in the near future, this isn't going to change, meaning that PC games will always have a much, much larger market than console games.

So, uh, no.

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I agree with you. PC games are hardly dying; and the market is huge. What may happen is that smaller franchises may die out, and we will see a painful consolidation--which happens in any industry with too many entrants.

Per this discussion and corollary to my original post, Civ Rev, if successful, would eventually support Civ V financially (due to the reasons mentioned). Obviously we shouldn't expect Firaxis et al. to sell Civ V at a loss, but a successful Civ Rev franchise would permit smaller margins on Civ V.

Don't count the number of computers alone...the majority of new PC hardware sales goes to business users, and not to gamers. Naturally the PC games won't die out in the next 5 years, but what I wanted to illustrate is that it makes more and more sense for a company to develop games solely for consoles. It simply sells better.

By the way the "consolidation" is currently killing some of the best genres of the industry, some of which can't be played on a console. Try to develop a serious RPG, RTS or a building simulation like SimCity or Civ on a console. Either it won't be playable or it will be dumb as hay.

The real "consolidation" of the industry was about 10!! years ago, when at the end of the 90s the smaller companies went bust one by one. Today the problem seems to be that even larger developers are being eaten up by this tendency. Just look at Westwood or Interplay. No console ---> no money ---> you go bankrupt.

I would agree that civ has become very much into the micro management, but i am hoping that they will build more AI mechanics that a player can use to run his cities, and keep adding to the mecanics at the same time.

I would hate it if civ moved to console and watered down all of the features of the game at the same time, but i think that if they didn't have an AI mechanic to manage your cities that this would be neccesarry for them to do. mostly because i think the only was a game can be succesful for a console is by being fast paced, So i would assum that that may send civ into a real time stratagey genre.

also if there was a civ game that players from both pc's and consoles could play online together, that would be nice. but the most important feature of civ IMO is mod's i dont see how anybody could mod for a console game.

Too much speculation with too little concrete evidence. You really can't make a good prediction at this point in time. Don't bother discussing it, it's like thinking about how many users will migrate from the PS3 to the PS4- there's too little information, too little precedence, too little to work on. Speculation is often unrelated to reality.

What I think is that there will be two Civilization franchises, one on consoles and one on PCs. Firaxis has a very good core market when it comes to the PC platform. There wouldn't be four installments of civ if there weren't enough civ players to make it profitable. Civ 4 has two expansions! That's a lot in the industry, only the best selling franchises get that much attention.

The PC market is going healthy from all indicators. There is only one looming problem, the increase of costs related to creating a blockbuster hit, but that problem is shadowing the entire game industry. It takes millions more to create a great game today than it did a decade ago.

We are seeing a transition from one graphics API to another, from DX9 to DX10, OpenGL is also going to be updated. DX11 is in the works. These APIs take millions of dollars to develop, they wouldn't be unless there was a big enough demand for them. Granted, OpenGL also appeals to high end graphics users such as artists and animation studios, and DX is used on the Xbox, but PC gaming makes up a large portion of their userbase.

The PC industry is moving forward, perhaps it has slowed down but no industry can prosper without hiccups. Do not force me to remind you of the video game crash of the 80's.

So, with a healthy market in an industry that is looking forward and a solid fanbase, Firaxis has every reason to keep Civ on the PC platform.

As far as how different the two franchises will be, I can't tell you a thing, and that's the heart of the original poster's thoughts. I've always thought that Sid has driven the game in the direction where he wants it to go. Of course, there's a lot of input from our oldest users, and I don't have to name names, they're so well known here. I don't think market forces really drive the game's development all that much. Sid wanted to make a console Civ game, that's why we have Civ Rev. The only influence of game sales on the game's development is really how big their budget is! Publishers are out to make money after all.

Will Civ 5 be incredibly complex and its sister on the consoles be simpler? I have no bloody clue, and I can't say a thing. All I know is, there WILL be future civ games on the PC and it's a good possibility that there will be future civ games on the consoles.

I would hope so,
but look at Master of Orion 3
which had a high cmplexity and something that was described at not being a learning curve, but a learning cliff.

IMHO this was the main reason for this game not being commercially successful.

If Sid is wise he won´t add more complexity to the game but instead add just more graphics,
if however he has a heart for intelligent hardcore civers, he will add more complexity

A problem with counting computers is that many of them can't play modern games due to lack of something like a video card.

Complexity isn't the only thing, or even the main thing that killed Moo3. The main problem was, the complexity wasn't well-organized, and didn't add up to a game that was actually fun to play. Civ IV can handle a lot of complexity and still be fun because it's so very well designed.

Razor2 said:

PC gaming is on the edge of dieing out,

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What? What gave you that idea? I think this might beg to differ...

There are more people using Steam alone than there are on any of the next gen consoles, and there are more people playing World of Warcraft than there are playing any game on any of the next gen consoles. PC gaming isn't dead or dying, that's just one of those things that people have repeated often enough that others start to believe it. If you look at the numbers, nothing could be farther from the truth. Even companies which have traditionally had no stake in PC gaming like Capcom are starting to enter the market.

People have predicted the imminent death of PC Gaming for more than a decade.

Don't believe that'll happen anytime soon.

With games like Starcraft2 and fallout3 on the horizon I don't think PC users are going to suffer too much

Also, consider the fact that South Korea has one of the biggest PC markets, very few gamers there play consoles. Also, 90% of their population has high-speed internet access.

And PC gaming is more popular in emerging markets, such as China, and will probably grow a lot more in Europe. Who knows, they might even begin to be a boom in Africa, if we can get more money pumping in there by having them sell their raw materials.

Maybe I wrong but I serious doubt PC is going to die out with a console costing the same as a descent tower. Am I the only one here where the cost of the new consoles has turn them away? While I got the PS2 the day it came out I haven't even thought about getting a PS3 with it's $500-600 price tag.

The last console I bought was the Atari 2600 during the 80s.

When I switched to computers I never ever found a desire to return to consoles. The games I prefer (Strategy, Simulation) normally work best on PC or are not even available on consoles.

I don't have figures to hand to be sure but another issue with PC gaming is piracy. A quick search on any of the torrent sites will show Civ4, Warlords and BtS all ready to be downloaded and burnt. Major potential sales are being lost this way.

I think until this is seriously looked at, PC gaming will be in the emergency ward, if not the morgue just yet