Bad news: Next patch on hold

[Bibor]

The problem with all this is that quite far into the development of Civ 3, the designer (Brian Reynolds) and the entire programming team from Firaxis left (and went off to create BHG, which released Rise of Nations). That meant that Firaxis had to hire an entire new group to take over and save the project from certain death. I don't know how much most people know about the game development industry, but doing that is akin to replacing the director, producer and writers and trying to end up with a movie that seems to make sense. Sure with a budget and time the movie could (and should) be great, but trying to come back from such a huge incident is difficult at best. Such an event often scraps projects or requires them to start completely over - a year of work down the drain.

And to make matters worse, Civ 3 was based off of Alpha Centauri.. which was based off of... So they were working with code that was 10 years old that someone else had written and had to make a game people would enjoy out of it!

If that's what people are talking about being "promises of MP" then they've lost grasp of reality. Firaxis lost tons of time and money because of that incident and had they used a patch to impliment MP it would have only gotten worse - especially considering the fact that few people ever download any of the patches, giving even less exposure (no game reviewer is going to write a new article about a game's PATCH!).

Since Civ 4 won't have any of that happening (we hope ), I have confidence that it will be a product far superior to Civ 3.

Yes, I know all this, I'm in the gaming industry myself (wrote many game reviews in paper CG magazines). You are right, from a certain point of view. Lets say, form a view of a man who is not paid to do this job (i.e. create CGames). But, alas, Brian Reynolds and others (programmers) *were* paid to create games, don't know how much but its their living. If this is true, the following *hard real life* rules apply:

1. No decent programmer creates a code without an extensive paperback handbook on his work. No "My code dies with me" maxims and stuff. Not on this kind of serious money level.

2. You (Firaxis) can't under any circumstances contract someone (Reynolds) the way he can leave a work unfinished. No normal court of law, even in communism , would let Reynolds get away with leaving the Firaxis *if* such a contract existed, until CIV3 was finished. I'm not a lawyer but I know this much.

3. Since Reynolds and the team left, but not Sid, this would ensure the Firaxis a rather *huge* advantage of being able to continue the series of the #1 game in the world. Now, tell me, is it wise to ruin the reputation of a not potential, but already a real golden goose game that is #1 on almost all charts in the world by releasing a half-product to the market?
A publisher that is late with the game (for even a year) is not popular anymore, yes, since some companies release their game to the exact promised date. But its still better to be not-popular than to lose another 2 years on patch-development and a dead-end set of add-ons (PTW, conq). This is true only if the money/time/workforce investment in Civ3 pathches/addons was minimal (see last chapter of my post).

4. I guarantee that 95% of todays leading programmers in the world played CIV 1 fanatically. Not because its no#1 game in the world, but because its sooo addictive to mathematical/strategical brain types which makes like 100% of good programmer population. Now tell me, is it really so hard to find a programmer who already figured out the mechanics of the game when he was 14? Now these same guys are 28.

Hell, look at only the the "corruption revealed" thread and all the CIV3 software in the download section. You get the picture...


***

Summa summarum: obviously the only reason for CIV 3 being like this is because the leadership of Firaxis concluded on following:

1. We will release a game (codenamed CIV3) that will be a half product. Noone will notice since:
a) its a civ game after all. who would not buy civ 3?
b) the game comes in a box package with excellent design. people will buy it.
c) graphics is far better than in civ 2 or smac, this will keep the masses happy
d) the hardcore gamers of Civ will develop the game for us anyway.

2. by putting imperative on patching the editor first, rather than the game itself, not just CIV 3 will *develop itself*, but the final product that we will find on Apolyton and Civfanatics sites will give us all the material we need for CIV4. I mean, these guys are incredible. I am so sorry now that we hardcoded the AI, because it would be already developed by those fanatics by now to a monster level.

I went too far, but you get the point

Kirby

 

[Commander Bello]

I'm very sad about learning that there will be no further patch.

I perfectly understand the economic reasons behind that decision, though I feel that the decision still is wrong, even from an economic point of view.

1) Everyone knows about Civ1.
2) Most people who loved Civ1 like to get sequels of it.
3) #2 is triggered by the assumption of said people that the sequel would be an improvement of the original game
4) If #3 proves to have been an uncorrect assumption, people are much disappointed
5) After #4, people are much more reluctant to go back to #2
6) If #2 dries out, the potential number of customers drops significantly
7) For Civ3 all 1) to 6) apply
8) Civ3 may be translated with C3C, since we are now in 2004
9) Is C3C playable as being "out of the box"?
10) #9 has to be answered with "no"
11) After #10, a player will stop playing it (leading to the fact that he won't buying any sequel anymore) or he will search for a patch
12) The search for patches will lead that enthusiastic player to site like CFC
13) On those sites the player will learn about "broken promises" (read the thread about more information about those broken promises)
14) #13 will make the player reluctant to spend his money again on a CivX
15) Bad support for a game, but putting it on the shelves again in an almost unchanged shape (Civ: Complete) may rise short-term sales figures for a moment, but won't enlarge the total base of potential customers for the next sequel
16) Having left the current sequel in an unfinished state will have a bad impact on your expected sales figures for the next sequel
17) The effort for the next sequel is very likely not to pay off from an economic point of view
18) At a that point, the game is dead
19) A dead game doesn't sell anymore
20) Think about patching again

There have been examples for this, already.
As you may know, most Germans are absolutely crazy about Soccer/Football/Fußball. There have been "football managers" in the past.
The most famous one once got a sequel which was almost unplayable (btw, it included 3-d-graphics as a "killer-feature"). People complained like hell, and they tried to release patches, which didn't solve the problem.
Said football manager (and to the best of my knowledge) the releasing company are history - despite the fact that every two years there are great chances to release a football manager (world and european championships)
q.e.d.

 

[Longasc]

The problem is the vicious circle: Drop support for Civ3 and leave some issues open, go on and bring out Civ4 some time earlier.

It will have bugs for sure. There will be expansions and bug-fixing. Now, there are probably still some problems, ironically some caused by the latest expansion...

but they go on with Civ 5...


This is customer unfriendly. The problem is, we support this scheme by buying the "latest" Civ version... we cannot resist supporting our own problems.

If ALL customers would say: No, we will not buy it until Civ3 is fixed or until Civ4 is in the bargain bin... they would consider patching the game.

The problem is, this is unrealistic. Even if all CIVFANATICS would do this, we are a minor and unimportant group regarding sales...


BUT: We are the true supporters and fans - and we create new CIVFANATICS or at least new buyers. My word of mouth propaganda and enthusiasm caused several people to BUY Civ3 and expansions and not to stay with a poorly cracked copy of it.

We create lots of potential customers. This will rapidly stop if we get pissed off:

"Yea, it's a great game, but they did not patch it to the end. *grumble*"



FIRAXIS, fix this game, or I will tell Michael Moore...



The Civfanatics forum provides a really good basis for finding the few remaining issues that true "Civ Experts" consider of importance.

There are lots of things that cannot be implemented, wishes that are better taken in account for Civ4. But there exists a list of the most annoying bugs: The Army/MGL problem, the submarine bug, ... and except the sub bug perhaps they do not seem too difficult to eliminate!

 

[Yashed To]

Just to make this a "critizising German hattrick", I'll add my two cents.

Trip, you're absolutely right that all those negative comments either here or in other forums won't really inflict a sales drop or a negative rep for either Atari or Firaxis or Sid or Civ.
And,yes, games mag reviews will have a much larger impact than any forum thread - but do you think they all will be purely positive about Civ4?

One of the most popular German games ever, "Anno 1503" (1503 A.D. in English?), promised a MP function for the game. It came out without one. They promised to include in in an upcoming patch. Patches and Add-ons came and went, but no MP. Finally, after a year they had to concede to the fact they weren't able to build a stable MP function.

Result? Angry, disappointed fans, of course.
But also articles in games mags, reporting in public about broken promises and programmers not being able to include a feature any other comparable game has.
Those articles are not only read by fans of the game. Add some angry reader comments in the same issue of the mag, an undecided buyer may consider not to buy the game, and further, none of that company at all.

Firaxis working on Civ4 is fine by me. I never got used to Version 3; features missing, others out of balance, others buggy. I still play Civ1, after 13 years, and I think I will even when Civ4 comes out.
But I won't play Civ3 anymore. This version didn't stand the "test of time" ...

 

[HellboundHeathcliff]

It looks like I'm not gonna buy "Anno 1503"

 

[Bibor]

To continue the topic: :LOL:

I played Rise of Nations once. Twice. Its boring. Trying to make civ real-time and fail. Hm... nevertheless, I if someone creates a CIV 4 before actuall CIV4, the series can kiss goodbye the sales.
For those unfamiliar, this just recently happened in the FPS genre of games. FarCry swept over the market making the upcoming Half Life 2 product meaningless. Half Live 2 can only dream to have more features than FarCry. Or sales.
If someone sucessfuly creates a new type of civ (not neccessarily a copy like Call to Power was) people *will* switch over. Good bye franchise. If it will give ultimately good multiplayer *and* singleplayer features and interesting play... Look at the new Uncommon Valor game. Its turn-based strategy. So what? People ADORE it. It's so darn addictive for PBEM (my friend a historian, speciality WWII Pacific )...
Remember the Panzer GEneral Debacle? Same thing. PG 1 - great. PG2 - okay. PG 3 - Sux hard. People's General - nobody bought it. Fantasy general - WTH?

etc...

 

[Antrine]

I have only read some rumors about CIV 4 and what is in it. And one is when it comes out Fall 2005?

Now I thiink Bibor has brought up a VERY powerful point, to wit, someone COULD beat them to the punch!

Who here remembers the game Empire? I played it before CIV and then switched when the upgrade version did not account for terrain impact on movement or combat as CIV did. Well I have been following this and would like you to look at this, for it bears hard on this discussion. This one comes out this year and will be beta tested soon.


http://www.killerbeesoftware.com/kbsgames/edee/

The heat is on...

 

[Longasc]

Panzer General 1 was my favorite game, I just loved it. Seems as if the Germans are still somewhat fascinated by overrunning other nations with tanks *cough*, but well... -> I will never understand how SSI really made each part after worse, worse, worse until it plainly sucked...!

 

[player1 fanatic]

Well, CtP is an perfect example how "geting Civ3 before Civ3" didn't ruined Civ franchise.
Mostly because Ctp was not good enough in quality.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

My condolences to those that are unsatisfied with the situation but you can't blame the powers that be's lack of confidence/interest in any further touching of that source code.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Considering the way Firaxis is listening to the fan base (as long as it actually affects the game design, not marketing issues!), I doubt this will happen...

Re: Panzergeneral
You're confusing something here.
PG1 was great. Allied General (PG2 in Germany!) was mediocre, Fantasy General a good game with bad sales, but Star General is completely forgotten now for good reasons...
However, Panzergeneral 2 (PG3D in Germany) was incredibly good, so good it still has a lot of active fans.
Then, Hasbro bought the game, and that's when the debacle happened, with PG3 Westen Assault and Barbarossa.

 

[Longasc]

Doc, you put it right - the real 3D parts of the PG series sucked. But I think Bibor is right in valueing PG1 over PG2 (US). But it was great, too, I agree.

I also liked Pacific General... bad campaign, but cool multiplayer. Had no prestige Bug as Allied General, I always got 65536 Prestige in Multiplayer sooner or later, sigh...

At www.wargamer.com you can find my after action campaign report of the American Campaign of Panzer General 2. Nobody corrected my spelling... urks.

Damn, getting way off-topic, sorry...

 

[Kemal]

CFC and Apolyton are nothing compared to the total sales of Civ 3. The vast vast majority of Civ players have never even heard of either, directly or through people familiar with them (such as yourself). Most people who buy games don't go online, do a google search for the game and go hunting down information in forums about the games. They go to Gamespot or IGN or other game reviewers. They don't dig through threads and posts and research things like that. They just don't. The membership and viewer stats are a testament to that.

Probably very true yes, and indeed the impact of this site on these large civ projects will be minimal.

Which is why I'm personally very disappointed with the way Firaxis addressed the problems that have existed with Civ/C3C from day one in their patching policy.
Instead of fixing the known major bugs to features they implemented but never got even close to get them working in the game (Scientific GA, AI armies etc.) , they dedicated their time and resources messing with obscure details in the game that
a) were only known by a very small fraction of players of the game, and
b) weren't causing any problems or discomfort with the majority of the players

such as the working of the FP, which also probably left all those who never visited CFC or Apolyton (the majority of players) with an unexplained, and unsatisfying change to the corruption model, as well as implementing stuff like removing radio from a tech tree...

Really the time that has gone in this could have been spent better, or at the very least could have resulted in the average player getting a product doing what they paid for. Since he's now still left with the very visible non-functional Scientific GA, Submarine bugs and the like, while he very likely doesn't care about whether a new corruption model has fixed obscure palace jump/RCP techniques that he has probably never heard of before.

It's really very disappointing that Firaxis leave it at this, as they had plenty of possibilities to get the job done but they have chosen not to take them. From now on I, and probably many others as well, will remember how they supported this specific game when deciding on buying a next Firaxis product.

 

[Commander Bello]

[...]
It's really very disappointing that Firaxis leave it at this, as they had plenty of possibilities to get the job done but they have chosen not to take them. From now on I, and probably many others as well, will remember how they supported this specific game when deciding on buying a next Firaxis product.

Absolutely right!

 

[The Last Conformist]

@Trip: Whether is is a rational decision from Firaxis' POV is not going to influence whether I'm happy with it or not.

 

[warpstorm]

I went too far, but you get the point

It's a shame that Trip got his facts right.

Brian cashed in his ownership of the company and left taking most of the original Civ3 team with him.

Having seen how game programmers do their thing, there wasn't a step by step plan on how to finish the project nor was the code-base particularly stellar (think about it for a minute - if the code were stellar would there be so many bugs) when they left.

Hasbro, who was the publisher at the time, didn't know jack about computer games and forced the schedule. "A contract's a contract. I don't care if you lost your team. Hire some new ones." They've since gotten out of the business.

 

[Commander Bello]

It's a shame that Trip got his facts right.

Brian cashed in his ownership of the company and left taking most of the original Civ3 team with him.

Having seen how game programmers do their thing (and having looked at the Civ3 code), there wasn't a step by step plan on how to finish the project nor was the code-base particularly stellar (think about it for a minute - if the code were stellar would there be so many bugs) when they left.

Hasbro, who was the publisher at the time, didn't know jack about computer games and forced the schedule. "A contract's a contract. I don't care if you lost your team. Hire some new ones." They've since gotten out of the business.

Well, Tavis announced some month ago - when the new function of the FP was to be explained - that this would now be the function as it had been originally intended.
How did he know, when all the team left?
And why didn't we hear about this loss of developers during all the discussion about why they did change the FP from the vanilla/PTW-style to the C3C-after-1.12-style?

 

[Rustwork]

earlier i mentioned civ4 being a patch, Trip pointed-out my inaccuracy. let me clarify, i'm asking what is considered a patch, and what is actually changing the game? it seems to me that a patch allows the game run without crashes or glaring problems that make the game unplayable. i understand that the game as is has a few issues, but i still enjoy it; it most definately is playable. some of what people are asking for in a patch they may get in civ4. realistically you could patch this game so much that it would be entirely new (patch C3C vCiv.4 ?). so when does a company move forward? let's just hope they give us a remarkable product when it comes. what other choice is there? they make the games and we play them. can anyone point me to a game that is as detailed and plays like civilization? i'd like to play it; when a similar game does come out i will play it. maybe this will be a firaxis game (civ4), or maybe it will be made by someone else. it doesn't matter to me. i just play games.

 

[Antrine]

Well, Rustwork go my link above on this page and in addition, if you want to read the Game Developers Diary, It is here,
http://www.killerbeesoftware.com/kbsgames/edeestatus.shtml

It covers from January 5th, 2004 to present on two week intervals.

Maybe a little pressure by competition will be helpful to our situation here.


"No matter comedy of errors that have passed...
there is always a way to make things work"

 

[CyberChrist]

Some real competition for the Civ series would be good, but to be honest then I don't think Empire Deluxe is going to add the pressure we are in need of. Having said that then I have the deepest respect for what they are trying to do, as Empire was one of my very favourite games ... in the days before the first Civilization came out.