Announcing Civilization Network for Facebook!

You lie. There're online networks that allow you to play it online, much like Brettspeilewelt, but there is no MMORPG.

It's a blatant and cynical cash-in to coax dollars out of people who can't keep up with real Civilization gameplay. A stab at the 58 million player farmville pie. Frankly, I think it's silly that more people aren't grousing to the facebook account.

 

the man truly is mad as a hatter

 

I do not lie - check out www.playcatan.com. While this allows you to play the various catan games online, check out the content you get as a premium account holder: you get to become a citizen in the Catan Online World. I've not seen how it works, but that is pretty MMORPG-ish to me...

 

This announcement, coupled with the fact that the newly-opened software engineer jobs at Firaxis specifically mention development for game consoles suggests that the next release be titled "Trivialization."

 

It looks as stupid as a social network-based civilization chain letter game. The real draw of premium accounts on playcatan.com is being able to play the catan expansions - something you can do on Brettspielewelt for free, anyway.

 

More than anything else, what this means to me is Civilization at work. That is an unprecedented level of win.

 

i can think of so many sarcastic responses (to the commenters), but instead i'll say:

judging from other facebook apps, this might take very little development effort, so you all that are worried about it interfering with you getting civilization 5 might be worrying over nothing. *or* if there is a lot of effort put into this, it could be really interesting and innovative. (or both.)

and since so many people are complaining about console games, etc. getting in the way of a new civ, i wanted to point out that i'm still on a computer that can't run civ 4 (and older macbook) and i don't think my computer is that old. i play civ revolution on my ipod because of that (and because i just prefer it over playing on a computer . . i have 3 computer-based jobs and am studying in a computer-based field). and i would consider myself a pretty big fan: played civ until civ 2 came out, played civ 2 until civ 3 came out, played civ 3 until civ 4 came out, and played civ 4 until i sold my desktop.

assuming civ 5 uses modern graphics, it will be useless to me. but i'm not going to complain about it and think that sid meier should be serving *me* above anyone else.

 

If you imagine the game to be an attempt at continuing the series, or to provide the in-depth gameplay of the previous version, I'd say you're guaranteed to be disappointed. It's a facebook app.

On the other hand, it has the chance to be a fun multiplayer minigame with Civilization trappings--and at its best, a step forward in social network mutiplayer applications. It has the chance of offering some innovative dynamics.

If I want to play full-fledged Civ, I'll just play it. This just looks like a bit of fun and innovation.

 

What the man said. Furthermore, I think they are overestimating the power of Facebook. In my experience, most of the "new members" were invited by a friend, joined and then, after a look around, decided that they would not really participate in the rubbish going on there. Most of us just can't be bothered to click the button saying "Unsubscribe", that is all.

IOW, the business community, as usual, has no idea what is really going on.

 

Another problem with facebook is, that it is not as popular in some parts of the world as it is in the USA.
In germany for example the majority of people have not even heard of it, I myself just know that it exists because they mentioned it one time at MTV, but I do not use it.
We have here a site called Studivz, which a lot of people use and which is quite similar to facebook. So this new Civ game will not reach a lot of people in the world, because they do not even know that facebook exists, or if they know there country has it's own equivalent. Another problem with facebook is, that it is said to be a paradise for racists, because at Studivz they are banned, not so at facebook.
I see a lot of problems with this new civ spin-off game. But nevertheless I wish that this will be a success and really hope that Civ V is going to be again a real civ game and not like Revolution or facebookCiv simplyfied versions of a great game with the potential to ruin the series.

 

a facebook civilization game?

sounds like ****e.

 

Well, remember when CivRev came out? It's a lot worse than mainline Civ if you compare them. But it's awesome if you take it as its own.

 

I don't think it's a bad thing for Firaxis to try new ideas. If I used Facebook, I'd play it.

 

Although I hesitate to criticise the prospect of a new form of Civ that I have not yet seen, I would rather that we had a PC based Civ 5 and for my own preference an improved Civ Rev which I believe has great potential for further enhancements. Civ Rev is admittedly a watered down version of the real thing but is still great entertainment by virtue of the much faster pace whilst still retaining the basic principles of Civ. I do hope that Sid will bear this in mind when developing new ideas.

 

The more I think about this the more I detest it.

In a years time, people will not only have learned the disadvantages of being in Facebook, for indeed it is like being locked into your high school reunion permanently, but there are bound to be a hundred similar sites, one of which will do something novel and be the next big flash-in-the-pan. Two years ago everyone was talking about MySpace, now it's Facebook, next it's some other gimmicky BS.

This is a terrible bandwagon to jump on.

We are ready for a Civ 5, and nothing else!

 

Wow, that's pretty closed-minded. What if Firaxis decides to release something completely novel that's Civ-related, such as a new Colonization or CivRev? Would you really be that mad if that's the next thing to come out? (Although I admit, the odds of those coming out before Civ5 are a lot lower than Civ5 first, but I can't think of anything else at the moment, the Facebook app was unexpected to me.) What if Firaxis releases a new game of Sid Meier's Pirates! or (probably not) Alpha Centauri II? I think that this is a pretty good idea. Plus, one of the reasons MySpace declined was that it appeared in a negative light in the news a lot due to predators abusing it. People probably started thinking that MySpace was no longer safe and so it made it easier for Facebook to arise.

 

Or a new Railroads! (Wishful thinking)

 

If they were actually working on something totally new that would be great. The thing is, they are milking the Civ name at a time when a legitimate successor is quite overdue. It bodes ill.

 

Define legitimate. There wasn't much difference between Vista and 7, so maybe there wasn't much need to create a new Civ. Sure, we may be in a limbo state because there isn't a new Civ5 yet, but what is the average gap between games?