Have They (Firaxis) acknowledged anything to anyone?

[Psyringe]

Please explain. I really do not understand what you are alluding to, never having visited the WoW forums.

WoW has "official" forums, which were totally swamped by complaints and flame wars during the release (which was marred by technical problems, server shortage, and all kinds of other difficulties). There were people basically crucifying the game designers, then burning them, then grinding the ashes to powder, then rolling the powder into small balls and hammering them into the ground again and again and again. With an anvil.

I think this can be seen as a hint that the situation wouldn't have been better if Firaxis had official forums on their site.

I don't know whether WoW had company staff on their forums at this time. I know that Guild Wars has someone specifically attending to the fans (Gaile), and she does quite a job with this. Interestingly, Guild Wars doesn't have an official forum, Gaile is active on several fan sites.

 

[Sorceresss]

OK. THXxx.

 

[Efexeye]

I know that Guild Wars has someone specifically attending to the fans (Gaile), and she does quite a job with this. Interestingly, Guild Wars doesn't have an official forum, Gaile is active on several fan sites.

Yeah, it's surprising what a difference having someone like Gaile around makes- it's awesome that A.Net has a Community Relations Manager, and, whatever they pay Gaile, it's not enough.

 

[Zydor]

Expectations are changing, as the User base of Games expands. The expansion of relatively high powered PCs into peoples homes is ever increasing, driven by many factors. The consequences of this for the gaming industry are potentially profound. In the past, the core of gamers - as such - was knowledgeable, had a keen hobbyist approach promoting a common interest in discussion, development and improvement. In general a good environment.

There in lay the problem that could overtake some Producers in the gaming world, without some agile thinking and incremental restructuring of the business model to cope with it. An ever increasing proportion of game purchasers will be of the "consumer" end of the market equation. That segment of the market place takes no prisoners, the product has to work or the rumbling starts. They will not understand or care about the perfectly cogent, logical and well expressed reasoning behind the production and testing issues with complex software expressed on this thread. "I paid my money it better work" will be the tenant of feeling. This group will be the significant majority of purchasers - if not now - certainly in the not too distant future..

The traditional ways of gaming production, release management and commercial practice aka release time, QA levels etc, is going to have to evolve together with a more coherent PR driven Release Management philosophy. Any Company ignoring these aspects are going to face a rapid hit in the Market place. Commercial pressures are tough now, they will be even worse when the Majority Customer is "the Consumer" not "the Gamer". This release has caused heat as has been discussed, I believe that level of heat is going to be relatively minor compared to what could occur without changes in the Gaming Industry "Best Practice"

Regards
Zy

 

[MadMaligor]

@Zydor -


Your post was a good one but it follows a model of consumer based reaction to products that have a non judgemental value. Let me give you an example...

Take a moment and think about your train of thought when purchasing a refrigerator. If you go to buy a refrigerator...you expect the refrigerator to work. You expect it to have the functions and the capabilities listed on the product guide. You expect it to have a certain life span or reliability. When those things dont work correctly, you return it, and you expect to get your money back.

Now think about how you buy a movie ticket. Your expectations are different. You do expect the film to actually occur, the sound to work (relatively), and to be there for an alloted time. You do not expect however for the film to be perfect, or exactly what you wanted, heck it may even be terrible and something you will never watch again. With games it is much the same.

But if there are problems in with a movie (bad projection, sound, or you walk out in disgust) you will almost always get your money back. If you finish the movie however, your chances of getting your money back are greatly reduced.

With games the expectation is changing to something similair but different. More and more people expect to beta test a game when it first comes out. Very similair to watching a movie when it first comes out without many reviews to rely on.

The difference between the two is that the gaming industry has to deal with piracy (on a different level than does the theatre). They must assume the consumer has copied the product (a theatre doesnt). So if they allow returns, the losses would be staggering. And if they spend an egregious amount of effort on copy protection, they create entirely new problems without the guarantee of success (how many times has a copy protection come out only to be cracked so quickly it made the devs heads pop off in frustration).

Anyway those are a few thoughts I had when reading your post =)

Mal

 

[EdCase]

<snip>
The traditional ways of gaming production, release management and commercial practice aka release time, QA levels etc, is going to have to evolve together with a more coherent PR driven Release Management philosophy. Any Company ignoring these aspects are going to face a rapid hit in the Market place. Commercial pressures are tough now, they will be even worse when the Majority Customer is "the Consumer" not "the Gamer". This release has caused heat as has been discussed, I believe that level of heat is going to be relatively minor compared to what could occur without changes in the Gaming Industry "Best Practice"

Regards
Zy

You refer to the console market, right now not in the future. The net result is simpler,pretty games.
The PC games market is mainstream,although more of a niche market as the years pass,there is no doubt. But will always be dominated by, to use your wording, the gamer NOT the consumer. The consumer wants instant gratification, a casual leisure activity, the gamer generally views it as his/her hobby.

 

[Harkonnen]

MadMaligor
In you analogy "The consumer" has seen light occasionally going on and off, the whole movie stuttered, some speakers fell on the floor while others sometimes gave noise. I.e. these were the technical problems.

"I didn't like the movie" would be sounding like "I don't like battles in civ4" - understandable, but not a reason for money-back. Civ4 has problems described in the previous paragraph...

BTW, russian movie theaters have to care about in-cinema piracy as well... You'll l laugh, but this "screen-made" s**t is so far distributed, that most didn't even see the original DVD quality. Same stands for mp3/CDDA since the day mp3 became available...

Anyway, there is no reason for piracy fears because the copy will suffer same *technical* problems as the original did.

 

[onedreamer]

Expectations are changing, as the User base of Games expands. The expansion of relatively high powered PCs into peoples homes is ever increasing, driven by many factors. [...] An ever increasing proportion of game purchasers will be of the "consumer" end of the market equation. That segment of the market place takes no prisoners, the product has to work or the rumbling starts. They will not understand or care about the perfectly cogent, logical and well expressed reasoning behind the production and testing issues with complex software expressed on this thread. "I paid my money it better work" will be the tenant of feeling. This group will be the significant majority of purchasers - if not now - certainly in the not too distant future..[...]

I disagree completely Zydor, and I'm pretty positive that it's the exact contrary. While it's true that the user base of games has expanded, I can't agree that their "toleration" has decreased because of the newcomers. Instead, compared to the past, now publishers on a regular basis hurry release dates and sell unfinished products with the aim to finish them later. In the past, internet was not so widespread, and once you bought a game, 90% that was the game you would play until the end. There were bugs of course, but never issues that would even prevent a user that met minimum reqs to play a game. I seem to notice that the people who complain the most are exactly these old timers (like me), used to buy a product that WORKED, and not the newcomers that are more used to live with bugs and faulty products.

 

[Harkonnen]

onedreamer
Zydor
My point is in between yours... Yes, in the past we received products as is, like cars (not talking 'bout "modders"). Now we can live with bugs, like onedreamer says. Some time later we will "pour s**t" on everythin we dislike a little bit.

Just look what happened to movies if we take them as an example. When 3D rendering appeared (terminator1 and such, we could forgive minor flaws since it was looking sooo good). Today when there are way too much of them everyone screams "ohhh, that's not worth seeing, that's bad, that's had no actors, blah-blah-blah". Matrix1 was blamed for a lot of visual bugs. I didn't catch any because I was watching it (~5 times), not searching for faults which don't hurt an eye (like hidden cameras, etc...)

Even movies like matrix2/3 were blamed same way, at least among my friends. Though, I liked them, no matter fighting was looking funny - I just understood the power of rendering behind those frames... My friends din't since they had plenty of other movies with nice rendering, so they put their worst words about any single flaw or pixel.

Same thing happens with games now. In Russia piracy is so widely spread, that games are available like kinds of beer - so everyone plays almost everything. And this diversity plays a very bad role in users' opinions. I would avoid playing a lot of games and watching wonderful movies, should I follow public opinions given at forums. They just don't match my own opinion...

Russian gamers don't count today since they rarely pay for any game more than $4 which don't go to developer anyway. Should there be more developers in the real market, prices will drop, and russian-situation-of-bad-opinios-due-to-wast-availability will strike the real market, and things Zydor is talking about will start emerging.

P.S: If we treat great creations as a currency to pay for great opinions, then I'm afraid a big inflation is on its way...

 

[Zydor]

Re OneDreamer
".... not the newcomers that are more used to live with bugs and faulty products"

We are actually almost on the same hymn sheet. The user base is changing, and as was mentioned earlier re the games console - more users from that arena with the increase in PCs at home. The users come from a Consumer base or Consoles, in either case, they are not used to this hassle on release. Their mindset is different, they expect it to work out the box (given the usual caviat on a reasonable spec machine of course). In the same way as you did in your analogy.

Increasingly however, these people will be the Majority buyer - not the hard core (or even occasional) "gamer". If Marketing, Sales & Support dont adjust to this rapidly evolving model, they will catch a cold. This category of user, will not listen to the perfectly valid reasoning of the past re develop & delivery - and however right or wrong that is, they will hold the cheque book. ... they are consumers not Hobbyists.

Equally there will be an impact on Forums as more of this catagory of buyer hits the Forums, blazing that it does not work out the box, searching for answers or someone's "head". Unreasonable? Maybe in terms of the huge complexity involved in the now 3D games, but it is the commercial reality that the Game Industry must evolve to face up to. We cannot have - in the long run - minimal Support, Sales & Marketing involved any longer in the Release process (it must be driven by Marketing and properly co-ordinated by a solid Release Management process driven by the commercial imperitive) or we end up with the intense heat generated by this release.

Its the old story - does Marketing & Sales come first, or Development - the age old "chicken or the egg" scenario often debated in the Tech Industries. I am of the view that unless a Market & Demand is created for a Product, no sane investor (internal or external) will ever invest in the necessary funds to get it going. I am aware, obviously, of the implications for this at developer level, and some of it is not good news for a traditional developer, but its Market reality, and thats what pays their wages.

My view is that this time the balance was not right on Civ IV release. Whatever views are on the level of 'bug' problems, the PR & Marketing side that deals with Customer feedback & responses was without doubt far below standard for todays market realities. There is no quick fix, and I feel for them, but if they drop the ball like this again, the new mix of "consumer/console" customers who cough up the majority of Revenue, will eat them alive.

Regards
Zy

 

[Bain]

WoW has "official" forums, which were totally swamped by complaints and flame wars during the release (which was marred by technical problems, server shortage, and all kinds of other difficulties). There were people basically crucifying the game designers, then burning them, then grinding the ashes to powder, then rolling the powder into small balls and hammering them into the ground again and again and again. With an anvil.

I think this can be seen as a hint that the situation wouldn't have been better if Firaxis had official forums on their site.

I don't know whether WoW had company staff on their forums at this time. I know that Guild Wars has someone specifically attending to the fans (Gaile), and she does quite a job with this. Interestingly, Guild Wars doesn't have an official forum, Gaile is active on several fan sites.

+ every ****** that walks the earth and has access to a computer posts on the official wow forums.

 

[blue3c]

My view is that this time the balance was not right on Civ IV release. Whatever views are on the level of 'bug' problems, the PR & Marketing side that deals with Customer feedback & responses was without doubt far below standard for todays market realities. There is no quick fix, and I feel for them, but if they drop the ball like this again, the new mix of "consumer/console" customers who cough up the majority of Revenue, will eat them alive.

Could the early release have anything to do with showing off for the prospective new buyer? Just a question here. I mean not long after the release the sale was made final. Was that a part of the sales condition. Or was it Take2 coming in and saying you must put this out now. Just wondering.

Yes the gaming industry as a whole needs to look at how and when they are releasing games. I think there needs to be a standards board or something simular.
Kinda like ISO2006. This meets the Nvidia standards or the ATI standards. What about a basic standard. Works with Intel, AMD, these driver sets from both ati and nvidia. Certified to work on this OS.
Something here. We can not leave this to the companies that are releasing the games. Cause as past events have shown they really can not police up after themselves.
So have something like the PC Gaming standards or somthing like that. Something that does not depend on site advertising to survive. Cause we have seen what these so called reviewers do. Play the game for 5 min, say its great cause boss man says it is. And that is that.
Just an idea here folks, what do you think. Will your game meet the PC GAMING STANDARDS?

 

[GIO888]

For what it's worth, I've been CIVing since 1995 and never had any technical issue whatsover until Civ4 -

I think us hardcore CIV fans expect out of the box perfection and regrettably haven't kept up with the times vis early release and then a patch (or several) from the publisher through the internet to fix the buggy first release.

My kids laugh at me for not being satisifed right off, they expect to have to Mod or Patch.

Happily CIV4 works for me thanks to 1.09 and Harkonnen so my only problem is getting sandwiched by Montezuma and Alexander these days!

CIV ON!

 

[Harkonnen]

blue3c
Yeah... and probably by some non-profit organisation like ESRB (15+, mature content, etc...). Though, I think should this trademark appear, it will have to make itself popular and respectable... guess how eventually ending up like "THX" logo for audio which is placed on a wide range of products quality - from cheapest Chinese headphones to NFS:Underground (I don't mean NFS:U is comparable to the 1st item, just THX itself became meaningless).

Actually, reviews were meant to be such regulators. But gaming companies are oftenly richer than reviewers, so it ruined the whole idea. What can make it is something like WHQL driver signing by Microsoft (the company which won't sell these certificates for extra income, it'd rather increase price of certification attempt).

Hey, Idea! Reviewers should charge "reviwands" at the price proportional to official sales, kinda private rule every reviewer should follow or we, readers, stop reading them. I think this'll make benefit for both reviewers and consumers like us.

 

[Salarakas]

This is slightly off-topic so my apologies for that...

This is exactly what's killing the PC gaming industry. Rushing incomplete products out only pisses people off and makes them less likely to buy similar products again. I know people who have been pro-PC and anti-console for their whole lives but have got really fed up with having to wait months for patches in order to play the games properly. Shock, horror... they have bought themselves an Xbox and/or a PS2 and only use their computers for browsing the internet and such. With consoles patching is either very difficult or impossible and therefore the games that are put out are properly tested and actually work. The customer doesn't have to know how to split atoms just to get them working, he can enjoy it the minute he gets it.

The only console I have ever owned was the 8-bit Nintendo (NES) but I'm seriously considering buying the new Xbox or some other console. Getting a new console every couple of years seems to be much cheaper too than upgrading your computer all the time in order to get the most out of the newest games. And you don't have to worry about drivers and all that.

Having played PC games for 15 years or so I'm very sad to see the industry in this shape but they are shooting themselves in the leg by releasing these clearly rushed games.

 

[MadMaligor]

@ Harkonnen -

I actually agree that theatres do have piracy issues they just are no where near the same. The annology I used was to convey that perceptions, expectations, and emotions are different when conventional products and the consumer are compared to media products and the user. There are distinct differences people tend to overlook.

To be more clear, you are not only a consumer when you purchase a piece of software, a book, a movie ticket, a theme park admission. You are a user (or viewer, or reader, etc...). These things are much different than item consumption. For example the annalogy I gave for movies and such was to show that different values are expected and thus different results are expected. If you buy a refrigerator we all expect relatively the same exact thing when buying that refrigerator. We know the color, how it looks, what temp its operational parameters are, how much it can hold, how big the freezer is, does it have good door storage, an egg tray, and so on. We all expect it to work properly and when it doesnt the fixes are relatively easy and controlled (relatively meaning leaving the tech guy coming to your house between 6 am and 10 pm out of it hehehe).

We dont all expect to be able to play a game the same. You cant expect that, its a virtual impossiblity. We know that based on our machines and set up the variables for games to "work" are wide and far ranging. The developer for consoles has it easy. They have 1 system to dev products for. The dev's for a refrigerator are much the same, 1 customer range to dev for.

We must then assume a level of responsibility as a pc game industry customer and take the risks as we see fit. We know when we buy a game off the shelves right after release we are taking a risk. It is the same when watching a first showing run for a movie without reviews. You take a relative risk of having a negative result of some kind. Whether its technical factor or otherwise (crowded theatre, sitting in a seat thats not perfect, having to show up 1 hour early to get in line, etc...).

On another hand, we also dont give enough credit to devs for software games when we should. For instance the open nature of moding Civ IV promotes a community that allows for corrections without having to wait for an official patch. Eventually the community will develop "The Mod" or a package of mods that is a base staple for Civ IV fanatics. In conjunction with official patches and expansions not only will this promote a better Civ experience, but a much more rounded version to please many more customers. Something the refrigerator guy and the console guy have an extremely hard time doing.

So what we have is a very very short term disgruntled set of individuals (myself included btw) who are pissed off at certain aspects of the game we feel should have been already fixed...and rightly so. But lets not loose sight of the goal of releasing PC software. It is not to accomodate every player or ever machine or every consumer. It is to provide a product that is worth playing. Civ IV is worth playing.

Having said that, I do expect them to not sit on their proverbial bottoms and actually fix the problems. I also hope individuals like yourself to keep doing what you are doing and tinkering with the game till we get what we want. That way we kind of have the best of both worlds. =)

 

[Zydor]

"We must then assume a level of responsibility as a pc game industry customer and take the risks as we see fit"

A fair and valid point, and one which still holds true today. I fear times are-a-changing though. The reaction of Salarakas above is not isolated, and is on the increase. I liked your analogy of the fridge, on a 2-5 year view I reckon you can add PC Games to the fridge analogy. I fervently hope Sid & his Civ creators are able to adjust, it really is the game of the decade, and I would be very sad to see it killed off by imperatives outside the creative mind and productive developer. Lets hope Take 2 will step into that arena.

Regards
Zy

 

[Harkonnen]

Yes, the analogy is good. Though, there are not so much systems. If you follow Intel or AMD (recent versions), nVidia and ATi (recent versions), you end up with 4-8 possible most-common configurations. The sad thing is that civ4 fails with them as well...

I'm curios abount one thing... Somewhere I saw announcement that Firaxis is going to bring civ4 onto Mac at the begining of next year. With D3D on Mac? With unfixed D3D under Win32 going to Mac??? Are they going to recode entire thing in OpenGL with so many problems behind with D3D under Win32? Or are they preparing another pump of sales?

 

[Padma]

Harkonnen: Aspyr is putting out Civ3-Complete and Civ4 for the Mac. C3C will be out soon after Christmas (we hope), and Civ4 will be out in April-May. I understand that the graphics are being redone as OpenGL.

 

[blue3c]

openGL, what is voodoo back?