Interview with Firaxis' Dennis Shirk!

[Jolly Rogerer]

Many of us implies a majority, or certainly a larger group than a minority. I understand the need to identify with a group to justify beliefs, but this is just silly.

No, "many" is one of those terms that can mean almost anything. Most commonly it means a sizable minority. Many people use it to avoid stupid nit-picking replies like yours. You broke the rules, and I just wanted to point that out, because I know pointing out every little infraction of the unspoken rules of argumentation is very, very important to you.

 

[jpinard]

Brian Reynolds is spending his time sleeping in a bed made of money from Zynga, of which he is the founder.

He is not one of the founders of Zynga. That is Mark Pinkus who is the single greatest reason no one should play or support Zynga and their awful/fraudulent way of conducting business. Brian deserves an easy ride and this was it. I only wish he'd get paid a lot and sink Zynga at the same time.

Brian was offered the option to start an additional studio and he took it. I don't begrudge Brian's move, but I will never support that company if Mark Pinkus continues to make a cent from it. I've been spammed to death by their crap, probably had my information sold even though I didn't play their lame games.

 

[Ayt]

Many of us implies a majority, or certainly a larger group than a minority. I understand the need to identify with a group to justify beliefs, but this is just silly.

That sentence doesn't make any sense.

 

[Achilleslastand]

I wonder if dennis has been reading "the dumbing down of america" lately?

 

[Thormodr]

*So* my highlighting some of the things Dennis Shirk said in the interview became a platform for people to say "I TOLD YOU SO". As much as I agree that Civ V is somewhat dumbed down, I think that's a bit excessive. Calm down, peeps. Whining about spilt milk won't make the milk better (esp. if, as Thormondr said, Civ V is "rotten cement" or some such).

I do kind of understand why they aimed Civ 5 at a different audience--casual games are the hot market, and if Civ is ever to touch them in a PC game that "medium gamers" might play--then they would need to streamline the game. Maybe not as much as they did, but I still understand why they took that approach (though I don't see it as justified given how many core elements they removed, thus alienating some of the fan base).

Also, earlier in the thread someone asked if there was anything in the podcast of interest other than the "Civ is streamlined" (not my words) part. Thormondr said absolutely not. I disagree. I think the tidbit about Montezuma's voice acting and the fact that the design team always reads fan forums were interesting.

Constructive criticism might make the game better (we hope), rather than saying "I TOLD YOU SO" with a big unhappy face and a pointing finger. Maybe some suggestions about how they should change social policies? Personally i'd like to see some heavy consequences for shifting social policy tracks--but do let people change them. Also, Free Religion and Theocracy in the same tree is a bit....yeah.

Just my 2 cents.

Annyong haseyo. Waegorae? kkk

First of all, I said I thought the foundations of Shafer 5 were made of rotten cement not that the game was rotten cement.

I also never said that there was nothing of worth in the podcast besides the streamlining comment. I'm not sure where you got that idea from. I found the bit about the Mexican to be interesting too. I like linguistics.

As far as the "told you so's", I agree that it's not productive. People are just reacting to Shirk's comment with a sad realization that our worst fears have been realized more than anything.

Finally, it's not Thormondr, it's Thormodr.

 

[kaltorak]

BtS pleased the hardcore fans, they decided to make 5 appeal more to those who might have loved Rev and wanted something more--but who may not be ready to leap into Civ 4's complexity.

So they admit this now? They did not admit this before we complexity fans had bought the game ¬¬

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Honestly, Espionage in IV did nothing but annoy me, and I was kinda relieved it was gone.

I agree 100%. If it gets reintroduced in Civ V, pray God they make it optional and not default.

Idiocies like the swarming spies in BtS aisde, now that the trap has been honeyed for the Civ Rev fans, let's have some more complexity, please! Perhaps including religion in a less game-breaking way than in Civ IV.

I *like* Civ V. I just miss some of the complexities. And I'd like to see the windmill improvement reintroduced; I loved pondering whether to build a windmill or a mine.

By the way, has anyone else noticed how they used some concepts in old "Colonization" (the REAL "Colonization", the original game), and with good effect? Several posters here suggested minor civs, but the execution owes something to Col, I think. And the natural Wonders that make your people happier (Krakatoa, the Great Barrier Reef and so on) were probably somehow inspired by that moment in old Col when you discovered the Pacific.It had not impact on the game as such, but it was fun. Old Col! (Sigh.) New Col! (Grr.)

Hmm... wonder if they could work in the Fountain of Youth somehow? Preferably with the original melody,

 

[Thormodr]

That sentence doesn't make any sense.

Of course it doesn't make any sense.

A simple check of a dictionary would show you that many was used to simply refer to a large group of people. So, you could say that many people are unhappy with Shafer 5 and that would be perfectly true whether it was a majority or not.

man·y
   /ˈmɛni/ Show Spelled [men-ee] Show IPA adjective, more, most, noun, pronoun
–adjective
1.
constituting or forming a large number; numerous: many people.
2.
noting each one of a large number (usually fol. by a or an ): For many a day it rained.
–noun
3.
a large or considerable number of persons or things: A good many of the beggars were blind.
4.
the many, the greater part of humankind.
–pronoun
5.
many persons or things: Many of the beggars were blind. Many were unable to attend.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/many

 

[Thormodr]

So they admit this now? They did not admit this before we complexity fans had bought the game ¬¬

Well, of course not. That revelation would have cost them a considerable amount of money.

 

[V. Soma]

Well, not trying to stir anything -- but Dennis often makes a point of saying "Jon's vision" and in multiple places says explicitly "Well, I'll have to defer to Jon on the details".

I have no doubt Jon cares about the product -- but I just think he really needed to take off his "expert" glasses when doing the modeling and pre-code architecture. In far too many places, it seems like he essentially took the view of the expert, who would calculate total hammer costs and come up with the "best" solution --- and then he tried to make it "clearer" (by brute force/making the answer on what to buy/build obvious) to the rest of us.

I think that also comes through when Dennis talks about the SP vision, the CS vision, and the elimination of religion vision -- Jon knew what the exploits were... flipping civics... using religion as a diplomatic magic wand... etc -- and he basically took a gordian knot solution to those exploits (as in -- OK, we'll just lop 'em out entirely... voila - exploit eliminated). The problem with that approach is twofold: 1) it presupposes that EVERYONE ALWAYS took advantage of those exploits and felt the game was ruined by their existence... the latter is certainly not true, and I think the former is much less true than people think, and 2) it ends up just creating NEW exploits.

Zonk, I guess you've hit the head of a very important nail here

 

[Psyringe]

I finally found the time to listen to the whole thing. Thanks to the person who posted the link.

The interview confirms that Civ5 was developed with a design vision that simply describes a game that's not very enjoyable for me. I'm not blaming them for that. I actually understand why they wanted a more accessible game this time - it's vital for Firaxis to try to expand its audience and lure new players in, and building on top of Civ4's complexity would've made that very difficult. Still, I'm a bit sad about many decisions which (given the goal of a more accessible game) could have swung either way, and unfortunately swung in a direction that made the game less enjoyable for me. It seems that the current team at Firaxis simply doesn't share my preferences of what makes a good Civ game. That's okay (I didn't expect them to match my preferences as perfectly as they did with Civ4), but still sad.

There's one thing about this interview which I found pretty odd though.

That's the way how Shirk distances himself from Shafer whenever a controversial design issue is talked about. You may have to listen twice to the interview if you don't catch it the first time, but I think it's pretty obvious if you know what to look for. Shirk makes a point that 1upt was something that "Jon really wanted", that having fixed policies instead of civics was something that "Jon wanted" in order to have players "invest" more into the early game, or that "Jon didn't feel" that religion would fit into design very well. However, when talking about less controversial issues, like "1 leader per Civ" (which does get mentioned here and there, but draws far less criticism than the others), then he says that "we wanted" more variety of different cultures. Or, for "hex vs. squares" (another less controversial issue), he says that it was an arts guy who first pushed for that, and then "everyone" wanted it.

I'm not that deep into games marketing to have a good grasp on how other producers talk about such things, but usually I'm hearing either a consistent "we", or the lead designer may be singled out for something that he did really well. I don't recall a producer singling out a developer specifically when controversial design issues are on the table.

If I were Jon Shafer, I wouldn't take this as a good sign ...

Edit: Ah - reading through today's new posts in this thread, I see that zonk also noticed how surprisingly often Shirk referred to Shafer. Though he's coming from a slightly different angle, taking it as a sign of either Jon's inexperience, or Firaxis' perceived failure of balancing this out with experienced team members or more tests. That's another way to look at it of course, but for me that fact that Shirk distances himself from Shafer at all, at this point, was the most surprising.

 

[Thormodr]

I finally found the time to listen to the whole thing. Thanks to the person who posted the link.

The interview confirms that Civ5 was developed with a design vision that simply describes a game that's not very enjoyable for me. I'm not blaming them for that. I actually understand why they wanted a more accessible game this time - it's vital for Firaxis to try to expand its audience and lure new players in, and building on top of Civ4's complexity would've made that very difficult. Still, I'm a bit sad about many decisions which (given the goal of a more accessible game) could have swung either way, and unfortunately swung in a direction that made the game less enjoyable for me. It seems that the current team at Firaxis simply doesn't share my preferences of what makes a good Civ game. That's okay (I didn't expect them to match my preferences as perfectly as they did with Civ4), but still sad.

There's one thing about this interview which I found pretty odd though.

That's the way how Shirk distances himself from Shafer whenever a controversial design issue is talked about. You may have to listen twice to the interview if you don't catch it the first time, but I think it's pretty obvious if you know what to look for. Shirk makes a point that 1upt was something that "Jon really wanted", that having fixed policies instead of civics was something that "Jon wanted" in order to have players "invest" more into the early game, or that "Jon didn't feel" that religion would fit into design very well. However, when talking about less controversial issues, like "1 leader per Civ" (which does get mentioned here and there, but draws far less criticism than the others), then he says that "we wanted" more variety of different cultures.

I'm not that deep into games marketing to have a good grasp on how other producers talk about such things, but usually I'm hearing either a consistent "we", or the lead designer may be singled out for something that he did really well. I don't recall a producer singling out a developer specifically when controversial design issues are on the table.

If I were Jon Shafer, I wouldn't take this as a good sign ...

Edit: Ah - reading through today's new posts in this thread, I see that zonk also noticed how surprisingly often Shirk referred to Shafer. Though he's coming from a slightly different angle, taking it as a sign of either Jon's inexperience, or Firaxis' perceived failure of balancing this out with experienced team members or more tests. That's another way to look at it of course, but for me that fact that Shirk distances himself from Shafer at all, at this point, was the most surprising.

Sounds like they are throwing Shafer under the bus.

I certainly don't like the design decisions he made but I don't hate the guy or anything. He obviously loves Civ and did his best, even if the game doesn't appeal to me at all. I think Firaxis really lacks organization. Something is seriously wrong with that company. It's certainly not his fault that 2K Games forced them to release the game early either.

It's just one big fiasco.

 

[Psyringe]

Sounds like they are throwing Shafer under the bus.

I wouldn't go this far yet. Shirk isn't blaming Shafer for anything, he just takes care to distance himself (and the rest of the team) from some of the most controversial decisions. He also talks about the "hope" that players will adopt them after a while.

But I think singling out the lead developer specifically for the most controversial decisions is unusual enough that it may lead to scapegoating him eventually. Though there's also the possibility that it really was mainly his influence that made Civ5 less enjoyable for many players, we can't tell without knowing internals of the development process. It's possible several team members opted against some of the decisions but were overruled by the lead designer. It's also possible that the whole team made questionable decisions and they are now starting to look for a good scapegoat (Shafer obviously makes a good candidate there as he draws a lot of criticism already).

In the end, it'll probably depend on DLC and expansions sales, plain and simple. If Firaxis thinks that some of Shafer's design decisions didn't turn out so well, then he will get an opportunity to fix it. But if Shafer's vision keeps alienating the hardcore fans (which is a bit paradoxical considering that he is/was one himself, but less so if we realize how many different types of hardcore Civ players and playing styles actually exist), then they'll distance themselves further from him.

 

[JLoZeppeli]

My dream team would be whoever made the CTP games (I don't know the names, I spend my free time playing games not learning the history of the industry). I found Civ 3 and 4 to be a step backwards from those in a lot of ways.

I think one thing I like about Civ 5 is it's trying to reintroduce more "empire level" management descisions like CTP had. Although currently I admit these attempts are currently a bit flawed and unbalanced, but I remain hopeful that they are fixable.

Come to think of it, the game I really want to play is Call to Power with hexes, modern graphics, 1 UPT and ranged combat, culture, unique civs/units, and city states. A Civ V/CTP hybrid.

Call with 1UPT? Please, one of the best features of Call to Power was the army combat system... I strongly hope you are joking....

I'm certainly nowhere near the younger mass audience in age. And again, "dumbed down" != "streamlined".



I've played both Railroad Tycoon and Transport Tycoon. In fact, I even played the Linux port of Railroad Tycoon II from the short-lived Loki Games studio.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed Railroads!

And i hope you are aware that Railroad Tycoon 2 was not from Sid Meyer....

 

[eviltypeguy]

Of course it doesn't make any sense.

A simple check of a dictionary would show you that many was used to simply refer to a large group of people. So, you could say that many people are unhappy with Shafer 5 and that would be perfectly true whether it was a majority or not.

Nonetheless, I assert that the continued implication of a vocal set of individuals here that they are somehow part of some larger group that somehow vaguely represents this community is wrong.

 

[Beamed]

If you truly love complex, deep rich game play then you won't buy any of the DLC or expansions. Consider it a service to this community. We all deserve much, much better in Civ VI.

I believe we've reached the crux of the issue - PC gamers have an enormous sense of self-entitlement.

 

[Thormodr]

I believe we've reached the crux of the issue - PC gamers have an enormous sense of self-entitlement.

Not at all. When people are laying down $50+ dollars for a game and apparently close to $100 in Australia you can damn well bet that they are entitled to a quality game.
It is my and many other people's opinion that we did not get a quality game.

It is time Civ fans stood up for ourselves. After all, if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for everything.

 

[Beamed]

Not at all. When people are laying down $50+ dollars for a game and apparently close to $100 in Australia you can damn well bet that they are entitled to a quality game.
It is my and many other people's opinion that we did not get a quality game.

It is time Civ fans stood up for ourselves. After all, if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for everything.

Bugs aside - for which there is little excuse - the game is plenty a quality game within its own definition of the term. Sure, it isn't as good as its previous iteration, but they weren't trying to make it as good - they were going for something wholly different. Nor did they disguise this in any of the press release. It did what it wanted to do fairly well, again, bugs and balance aside - both of which will, you probably agree, will be fixed in a patch.

This is hardly something worth standing up for. Quit romanticizing your whining about a game not being what you want.

EDIT: I feel the need to elaborate - don't get me wrong, I felt disappointed that I spent $60 on Civ V Deluxe and got essentially Civ IV Lite, but I certainly don't feel cheated or wronged. I don't see how you can - the whole game, engine included, you can tell has had at least as much work put into it as Civ IV upon release - you can't seriously ask more of a company than to try. Maybe their vision's wrong. Maybe their ideas are off. But that doesn't mean they're secretly designing games for a bunch of fat people in suits, snickering evilly as they pet cats and try to steal money from good, caring gamers or whatever you seem to envision.

 

[Thormodr]

Bugs aside - for which there is little excuse - the game is plenty a quality game within its own definition of the term. Sure, it isn't as good as its previous iteration, but they weren't trying to make it as good - they were going for something wholly different. Nor did they disguise this in any of the press release. It did what it wanted to do fairly well, again, bugs and balance aside - both of which will, you probably agree, will be fixed in a patch.

This is hardly something worth standing up for. Quit romanticizing your whining about a game not being what you want.

Whatever. If you want to receive sub standard products after spending your hard earned money then I can't stop you. Easily parted I guess.

The issues go beyond mere bugs. Every game will have bugs so I am pretty understanding on that. Shafer 5 certainly has it's share of them admittedly.

However, the game is horribly balanced with severe problems with some core design decisions and frankly isn't fun at all to play.

A patch isn't going to fix all these things. It's not an easy fix like some on these forums believe and it could take years to get it up to a state even remotely close to cIV. Frankly, we all deserve better than that.

EDIT: I see your edit. Oh well, we don't see eye to eye on everything. I certainly feel your disappointment anyway.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Not at all. When people are laying down $50+ dollars for a game and apparently close to $100 in Australia you can damn well bet that they are entitled to a quality game.
It is my and many other people's opinion that we did not get a quality game.

It is time Civ fans stood up for ourselves. After all, if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for everything.

It was ~$100 on Steam. $40 by mail order.

I just listened to the interview and thought Shirk did really well. He gave the impression there is still a lot to come for this title. I wonder, is there going to be a point somewhere down the line, when suddenly civ5 will turn from what is in your eyes not a quality game, to one that is a quality game? Perhaps the lesson is that you just prefer expansions vastly more than the vanilla games?