I wouldn't be too worried. This is pretty much the standard cycle for Civ (and other similar games). Their older versions have a loyal playerbase (or people who just own the game and don't want to pay for the next one yet), and the new one has teething issues and such. Over time the numbers pick up as patches, DLC and expansions improve the game and update the content.
Also, Firaxis know that extending the life of Civ5 isn't profitable long term. It is always much better to release the next version before the last one has died off. Virtually every successful company follows this pattern. When you release a new product it grows (often following the same pattern people are pointing out here, where the previous version still outdoes the new for quite a while). Eventually it will peak and begin declining due to sales saturation, disinterest etc. You keep it fresh for a little while, by adding DLC or whatever, but these dont stop the overall decline. Before that decline becomes too significant you release the next version, as this keeps things fresh and makes it easier to bring over existing customers. Having your product and/or name out of circulation for too long is potentially disastrous.
Apple and Google are both masters of this. Microsoft do too, but used to be even better at it.
I'll finish your sentence.....
"and catered for the casual gamer to make money rather than making a good game for the traditional fanbase."
Oh..... isn't that what 2K is doing?
As you point out games need money. Developers just cannot make a game for the love of it these days (unless it is a low budget indie game), as developers live on the knife edge. Unfortunately casual gamers are the biggest market. Especially as the glory days of the TBS are seen as being in the past, so financers are even more reluctant to drop large amounts on hardcore TBS games.
I would love a deep, engrossing Civilization title but it's just not on the cards unfortunately.
And while it sucks, it's not Firaxis' fault. They are a small time developer in a horribly high risk/low return industry, and each major release is a big risk that could end the company.
Did they REALLY thrive?
- CivSocial: failed.
- Sid's Dinosaurs: scrapped.
- CivRev2: failed outside a couple minor markets.
- Civ4 Colonisation: luke warm reception didn't do as expected, support scrapped.
- CivBE: luke warm reception didn't do as expected, support scrapped.
- Lost an entire team to BHG.
- Lost an entire team to Oxide.
- Lost an entire team to Stardock.
- Lost an entire team to other indies such as Mohawk.
- Firaxis had to sell out to Activision, and then to 2K just to stay afloat with enough financial backing.
Games development is a tough industry. There are many more failures to successes. No one company can boast continuous success.
Isn't it quite common for developers to have entire team changes with great regularity. The industry is prone to such things due to the development cycle. So people get dropped after a game's release and then others get hired (or re-hired) as they really kick into gear with the next one.
Also note that games like Colonization and BE would have been much cheaper to make, and less resource intensive as they were using what already existed with tweaks. But, it also looks and sounds (based on what employees have said at times) that they do operate under significant constraints so can't always achieve their end goal.
And this is why it's important to not pay for unfinished games. Selling and marketing garbage half-baked releases makes money. Fixing them after the fact does not. So if you remove the incentive to release finished games, you get crap games that the developer forgets about as soon as they collect the money.
Actually, it's not that simple. Because games are so expensive to make while costing exactly the same now as they did 2 decades ago, it is getting harder for most developers to release games with the full range of features. They need to streamline and simplify to be able to release the game, then once they make money (which directly gives them more cash, but also allows them to chase further investment) they can then add more to it.
Completely cutting off support to these smaller developers would be disasterous. It already has been. How many of those awesome, creative developers that we grew up with and loved (and who really made gaming what it is today) still exist?? Instead we have EA and ActivisionBlizzard who dominate the gaming market and we get the same games updated and re-released every year.
