I'm not sure Sid Meier will ever read this, but just in case, I want to say that we are huge fans of Civ and Alpha Centauri. We respect Sid as a game designer. We really do. However, the series has consistently failed to deliver a compelling multiplayer experience.
There are a multitude of fundamental design problems that work great for single player, but fall completely on their face in multiplayer. Take Civ IV. The main problem that manifests itself from the design decisions is that the early game is boring. Really boring. OK, so you've got a couple units to move around, that's pretty cool. Oh wait, you just built a city so there goes one unit, and now it's going to take a bunch of turns to create another. No worries, I can still scout around, I guess that's almost fun when there's nobody around me. And I can just plow through these earlier turns really quickly like I would in single player, right? Oh wait, negative on that.
I guess I'm not the only one this occurred to, because Civ 5 switched completely to simultaneous turns, which had been tried in IV too. Great idea, wrong execution. The design yields precisely the attributes of an RTS that I find undesirable in a 4X game. I am now forced to move my pieces as quickly as possible to gain the upper hand vs. having the time to ponder that I desire. Honestly it feels like a lazy design decision to me, though this is an outsider's perspective, and maybe it is the least not-fun approach out of a hundred that they tried.
OK, that's a bit harsh, but it's been the honest experience of my friends and I. By the time you get to the good bits in the first model you're already bored, and I've clearly pointed out shortcomings with the second approach. Now, it's not my personality to be content with "this sucks." I decided to put my money (and boatloads of time) where my mouth is and do something about it. I've got all the pieces I need to fix the problem: I code and made free games as a hobby in high school that people other than my mom seemed to like, I've got a buddy who does art, and another smart guy with solid game design ideas and the ability to quickly pick up coding. And so one year ago Riveting Games was born.
We're an indie studio, so naturally we can't be everything to everybody, but I think we're onto something that will make some players happy. Early experiments have shown that our approach works. What is it? You take the orders and figure out what happens simultaneously later. This simple approach still allows the player to think about their turn, and they don't need to wait for N other players to play out their turns in order.
I would love to hear what fellow Civ fans think about this and answer any questions.
-Kerey
There are a multitude of fundamental design problems that work great for single player, but fall completely on their face in multiplayer. Take Civ IV. The main problem that manifests itself from the design decisions is that the early game is boring. Really boring. OK, so you've got a couple units to move around, that's pretty cool. Oh wait, you just built a city so there goes one unit, and now it's going to take a bunch of turns to create another. No worries, I can still scout around, I guess that's almost fun when there's nobody around me. And I can just plow through these earlier turns really quickly like I would in single player, right? Oh wait, negative on that.
I guess I'm not the only one this occurred to, because Civ 5 switched completely to simultaneous turns, which had been tried in IV too. Great idea, wrong execution. The design yields precisely the attributes of an RTS that I find undesirable in a 4X game. I am now forced to move my pieces as quickly as possible to gain the upper hand vs. having the time to ponder that I desire. Honestly it feels like a lazy design decision to me, though this is an outsider's perspective, and maybe it is the least not-fun approach out of a hundred that they tried.
OK, that's a bit harsh, but it's been the honest experience of my friends and I. By the time you get to the good bits in the first model you're already bored, and I've clearly pointed out shortcomings with the second approach. Now, it's not my personality to be content with "this sucks." I decided to put my money (and boatloads of time) where my mouth is and do something about it. I've got all the pieces I need to fix the problem: I code and made free games as a hobby in high school that people other than my mom seemed to like, I've got a buddy who does art, and another smart guy with solid game design ideas and the ability to quickly pick up coding. And so one year ago Riveting Games was born.
We're an indie studio, so naturally we can't be everything to everybody, but I think we're onto something that will make some players happy. Early experiments have shown that our approach works. What is it? You take the orders and figure out what happens simultaneously later. This simple approach still allows the player to think about their turn, and they don't need to wait for N other players to play out their turns in order.
I would love to hear what fellow Civ fans think about this and answer any questions.
-Kerey