E3 coverage dissapointing?

[mattcrwi]

I'm just wondering if anyone else is disappointed with the way E3 has happened for ciV. There was no playable demo and gameplay footage has been few and far between. There has been some good new information even if it is mixed in with all the old information. but being 3 months till launch, I would expect some gameplay footage.

Anyone else feel the same way?

 

[Dbob]

Yeah I am kind of disappointed, but at the same time they still have 3 months and they need to continually build hype until then. If E3 was held in August there probably would have been a playable demo with only a month left.

I'm happy we got some looks at the modern age, just wishing for a better preview of the non-military aspects of the game.

 

[mjs0]

I agree with the OP.
In 2005 E3 was 5 months before release of Civ4 and there was a lot more information and in depth previews than we have this time when we are much closer to release.
For example, IGN had two long previews during E3 and another big article a month later, still 4 months before release.

I'm still hoping IGN will have an E3-based preview up sometime today.

 

[Dbob]

I do remember that E3, but this time for whatever reason it seems like they are being tighter lipped on this version of Civ.

I mean, if the game comes out on time it will only have been about 7 months after they even officially announced that the game existed.

 

[mattigus]

I can't tell if the publishers aren't showing anything at E3 or if the gaming media in general isn't covering it that much.

 

[deanej]

It's because publishers these days treat games like movies.

 

[Tylerryan79]

I think the BBC interview was the best, only because they were playing it during the interview. I think they should have had more of this, showcasing different aspects and different civs. My main concern is how EVERY different preview/interview I read, things where different. "Theres 8 policies" "Theres 10". Thats one example, but there were more out there. My brain hurts...... Ya well overall, it kind of help put the flame out on the steam debate... always good to have a break but it did leave me wanting more, even just a little bit....

 

[Semmel]

I think this is due to the production process of Civ5. Shaffer said in many occations that Civ5 is prodiced incrementaly. So its kind of growing instead of constructed. I guess most features that will finally be in the game are finished month ago. What is left is optics, balancing and minor features that do not change the gameplay very much but make the game "playeble". So if you like to see some demo or something similar, all the little things have to work and many gamplay things that are not coverd within the demo dont have to be. So in games that are build, gameplay parts can miss and you still get a good demo. In Civ5 however, thats not possible because I guess, no one wants to see a Demo where not all animations are working, units not having a model and are replaced by little cubes instead and crashing the game everytime you axidently mouse over a mountain because the moutain menue is not implemented if there is a clowd floating nearby.

I guess, there is nothing to worry about. The worst that can happen is, that Civ5 is delayed. So you actually gain some real life experience instead of computer game addiction

 

[Mercade]

I'm just wondering if anyone else is disappointed with the way E3 has happened for ciV. There was no playable demo and gameplay footage has been few and far between. There has been some good new information even if it is mixed in with all the old information. but being 3 months till launch, I would expect some gameplay footage.

Anyone else feel the same way?

No, I think it's a whiny and unjustified demand for more more information, which isn't an entitlement. There's been quite a bit of information out there in terms of videos with gameplay footage, screenshots and interviews (read: articles) getting into many of the game concepts. It's just a few more months until the game comes out.

 

[mattcrwi]

No, I think it's a whiny and unjustified demand for more more information, which isn't an entitlement. There's been quite a bit of information out there in terms of videos with gameplay footage, screenshots and interviews (read: articles) getting into many of the game concepts. It's just a few more months until the game comes out.

Thanks for calling me whiny. </sarcasm>

As another poster has pointed out, when Civ 4 was being released there was much more material out there. I don't want to complain but there is precedent for more than the 30 seconds of gameplay footage we have total. The screen shots are largely of the gameplay footage also.

The new gamespot video that came out today has some good stuff in it so I'm not really that disappointed anymore but even in that video there is a bunch of rehashed footage.

 

[helpless_writer]

Let's be real everyone... Civilization though in the forefront of the PC world isn't one of those games that in general is a must have.

E3 is basically about consoles and even Microsoft rarely talks about PC games during their conference. Plus, most sites like IGN and Gamespot seemed too preoccupied with the latest shooter game to really care about something that required long term thinking....

Not to put down ciV or anything but I think we sometimes forget that though its one of the best games out there and is a long standing franchise; it still kind of is king in a niche market...

 

[Tylerryan79]

Even so, if they had put more information out there, it would have been covered. Look at gamespot for an example. They had their interview up the first say of E3. As for mercade calling people whiney for wanting more, are you serious? The poster asked a fair and simple question. If he started blasting them for not enough info, or was acting like a baby, then sure. I think he asked in a fine manner, and just wanted to see if anyone felt as he had.

I think, however, that we will get more and more information as time builds up. Theres really only so much they can reveal. I think they have told us most key facts of the game, but haven't expanded on them in great detail. Also I think they have given us enough to male us go "WOW", and then when they do go further into detail it's gonna be "HOLY SH@t!!!".

 

[GoodSarmatian]

We have gameplay footage, we can see and hear the animated leaders, we have some info on social policies and at least know the names of the several UUs, UBs and special abilites and I didn't really expect much more.
For me the new Civ 5 info was the only really interesting thing to come out of this year's E 3.

 

[Locutus]

I would disagree with the OP. I've been doing news coverage for events like this for many years and different games, first for Apolyton and now for WePlayCiv, and this year's E3 has certainly yielded more reports than any previous edition: for E3 2005 we had just over 20 news stories about Civ4 at E3 -- with the dates ranging from a few days before E3 until a full month after. Right now (only two days after E3 ended), WePlayCiv is already up to about 35 stories published, and I can assure you that a bunch more new previews from E3 will still come out in the days and weeks to come. Mind you, in both cases most of those stories are previews that mostly rehash the same points with just a few tidbits of new info, but the overall amount of information we're getting certainly isn't any less than in 2005.

As far as a playable demo goes, I don't think any Civ product has ever had a playable demo at E3 (certainly not Civ4), those don't pop up until a month or two before release -- which is when the real multi-media extravaganza begins anyway. It's still a month or two too early for that with Civ5.

And sure, there were less screenshots this time around, but there was actually more and especially much higher quality video footage of the game in action this year than in any previous E3, and these actually showed the game off in a clearly close-to-finished state -- the Civ4 builds from May 2005 were still a LONG way from being finished, they didn't have any of the final UI in yet. Based on this year's videos I was able to capture a ton of (mostly high-quality) screencaps -- the WPC E3 Gallery has 100+ images in it already, considerably more than E3 2005 generated. And I suspect that once the print magazines get around to publishing their reports we'll see some new screens from them as well.

True, IGN dropped the ball big time this year with their less than mediocre coverage, but there have been other sources to pick up the slack. GameSpot's coverage was great; as always Jonah Falcon posted an excellent preview as did The Escapist; the Three Moves Ahead podcast was simply outstanding; the BBC feature showed off some great new stuff; GameSpy had a nice original take on events and IMO the best written article of E3 was posted by a French site I'd never heard of before: Factornews. To top it all off (for now), today 2old2play posted a complete audio recording of the E3 demo they attended. Information-wise, what we got this year was at least on par with E3 2005, if anything it was a little better. In addition, Civ5 won a lot of Best of E3 awards this year, far more than any previous year. Firaxis and 2K Games definitely made a BIG impression on the people who attended the show.

Maybe it just seems less because most of the the big changes -- hexes, 1UPT, new combat model, per-tile border expansion, all the civs included -- were already broken ahead of time, so the new stuff that we learned about in the last week seems minor by comparison. Also, the Civ4 builds that popped up around E3 2005 were leagues ahead of the screens we'd seen previously, whereas the the first Civ5 images we saw earlier this year seem to have been pretty close to final already. But as far as more video footage and playable demos goes, we never see much of that before July anyway (for games with a fall release date) -- look out for GamesCom in August and PAX Prime in early September to offer playable demos not only for journalists but for regular folks like us as well (for those of us that can make it out to Cologne or Seattle anyway).