Beyond Earth

Fippy said:

Drew is right i fear, in these times of social media nonsense quality dies out -.-
From an interesting article i just did read:

Most marketing departments seem to spend:

85% of their time discussing and debating SM: which are the best social media channels and how should they be used, when, how, and by whom...?
10% of their time discussing and debating marketing issues: what is the message to whom and why should they buy from us when they could buy from the competition?
5% of their time discussing the product/service: have we got the right product with the right features and benefits for our target customers?

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The 5% part seems reasonable. The marketing department has a purpose, and that purpose is to sell the product as it is. Wisdom from the car lot: don't see what the customer wants to buy, sell the customer what they can see.

Problem isn't so much what the marketing department does, it's how much money they give the marketing department to do what it does

Computer games in general are going downhill fast. The market used to be smaller and made up of a greater percentager of nerds / serious gamers / w.e you want to call them/us ^^
The developers themselves usually fit this mold, and the companies were smaller, so the individual contribution of a few developers outweighed a Board pressuring them to make the most money possible. To make matters worse game reviewers are small and many and are stuck at the whims of the companies selling the games. So it's not as if a well developed game is going to get better press than a pretty turd sandwich. So you might as well spend your entire budget making the game pretty, so you can have some pretty pictures to sell and focusing how you're going to market it. Most buyers either won't care or won't know whether the gameplay is flawed.
And as a result nowadays virtually every game has really flawed gameplay, further making people unaware/uncaring to it.

Now Paradox is all that's left. While i'm enjoying EU4 there are inherent problems with it and I know I won't end up enjoying it as much as civ4. It makes me sad, but at least Paradox's development team seems pretty unanimous in designing what they think to be a good / balanced game (even if they got some weird ideas). Still with all the DLC buying the game as it comes out would end up costing north of $100.

drewisfat said:

Still with all the DLC buying the game as it comes out would end up costing north of $100.

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Well..... let's assume for the moment that all the DLC combined cost $150 (random figure, assuming purchase at release w/o fancy huge discounts)

Is buying a few cheaper, prettier, but less immersive games worth your money? Certainly. However, their individual shelf-life may however be a tad short.

Is buying a single, well-designed, immersive game also worth your money? Some people may balk at the idea of coughing up the lump sum of money for a single piece of software. But in the end, is it worth it? Certainly. if you enjoy the game/genre, the shelf-life of that single game is likely to exceed several inferior games of the same monetary value. (Civ 4, Starcraft BroodWar, etc.)

If Paradox switches paradigms and begins catering for the now-mainstream difficulty of games, then eventually someone/something else will fill that niche (so long as there is money to be made, and the desire to do so).

May have to wait a decade or 2 though

(Paradox mainly was working out a few key mechanics over the course of patches/DLC that were not always popular, but ultimately the idea was to make the game more challenging and less about blobbling. Regardless, the game is fantastic and I think they've reached a good point now with the latest patch/DLC. EU4, like Civ4, is always a game you can play and come back to..enjoy for years)

Anyway, the game that really open my eyes to problems of game developers was the first "Assassin's Creed". I was excited about the concept and bought it not too long after release at a modest discount...but still quite a bit of money. Played a couple of hours and my eyes started to glaze over. Pretty girl with nothing going on upstairs. I've been stunned by its continued success, but there you have it - developers can feed slop to the masses. (also, pretty much turned me off to that and like genres ever since)

Of course, I pre-ordered Civ5 on faith and...man..did that turn out to be a bad decision. That learned me real fast not to ever preorder any game ever again.

Haha yeah I really thought assassin's creed was going to be my favorite game of all time. Ironically I would have stopped playing after a few hours if my ex didn't force me to beat / watch her beat it.

Seriously cool concept, but had extremely basic and repetitive gameplay over and over again. And the sequels didn't fix it at all, just added like 1-2 new things to incorporate into the repetitive gameplay. Sneaking lost its purpose when you can just kill everyone once you learn the ropes : /

Props for Paradox. They may not do everything right and they can be kind of snarky at times but they have the heart for making fun semi-historically based games with massive replayability. I've finally bought EU IV as the Art of War expansion looks awesome.

If only they'd do a Civ style game that spanned 6,000 years. Maybe it would wake Firaxis up if they had some competition in the genre.

Props also for Stardock. They certainly aren't perfect either but they are trying and getting better with time.

I think both these companies benefit from permanent staff that are well taken care of compared to the hire and fire 'em system of Firaxis.

Perhaps because of my age I fret less about this. I can still regularly pour all my gaming time (which is a lot) for weeks on end into Civ IV, or X3, or some others though they need longer 'cool down times' between binges...and don't really see that I have so much lifespan left that that will ever not be true. I would worry about 'the state of game creation' if I saw any chance of ever feeling like I was out of games, but I can't see that happening.

I get new games now and then, and some I play a lot and some I play a little...before I wind up back at the regulars. I'm planning on picking up Civ V when I see a 'complete' package at a reasonable price. By all indications I will play it a few times and permanently retire it, but no huge loss if that's how it goes.

I think I'm in the same camp as Timsup.


I owe thanks to the internet for helping me avoid wasting time and money on games that suck.

I haven't played (other) computer games regularly in ages. I played Civ2 for a long time, and if Civ4 had been as bad as Civ3, I'd probably still be playing Civ2, and enjoying it. I'll probably play Civ4 until a worthy successor comes along. Which might be "never".

I tried CiV. Meh. I tried the CiV:BE demo. Not even Meh. I still play SMAX. I play GalCiv III. For that matter I play MOO2 on DOSBOX. BE doesn't compare favorably to any of these games.

Ambidexter said:

I tried CiV. Meh. I tried the CiV:BE demo. Not even Meh. I still play SMAX. I play GalCiv III. For that matter I play MOO2 on DOSBOX. BE doesn't compare favorably to any of these games.

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I haven't got GC III. When I'm in the interplanetary empire mood though I tend to play Space Empires V more than GC2. Have you ever tried that?

drewisfat said:

Computer games in general are going downhill fast.

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Not only computer games. Any 'Big Bang Theory' fans here ?
Only a few of the last 12 episodes (mainly season 8) have an acceptable level.
Even the acting is getting worse and Kaley's short haircut is also not an improvement.

My biggest aversion against civ5 and civBE are the turn times.
I've clocked 20 seconds per turn (standard/large map size, early game) from several let's play... vids. That's totally unacceptable.

and Kaley's short haircut is also not an improvement.

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Big agree. I don't think the acting is getting worse, more that the writers are getting lazy.

As long as the rating are good, they'll keep on shoveling out the same dreck.

Currently there is some unhappiness on the Civilization 5: Beyond Earth forums about people being unhappy about the game and finding it unacceptable.