Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[Gorbles]

Thanks, so my point still stands.

Never said it didn't. Try to be less pointed with the "patent" comments, try to explore it like an actual discussion.

Look at the theories folks are coming up with. Look at the denigration baked into a bunch of these opinions.

It's no way to solve anything, in my opinion. It's no way to even approach a solution. I'm not even convinced we're getting to the pain points, beyond a grouping of individual opinions. Folks seem more interested in dunking in what Firaxis did than actually looking to make the game better.

 

[firadin]

I assume there is a corporate mandate that looks at the game owners, looks and how long those owners play, sees the majority of casual purchasers have low hours and say “Why aren’t all the owners playing all the time like with GTA Online or Fortnite? We can’t monetize this until they’re playing longer”

It's funny because "make breaks in the game" has to be counter-productive to maximizing play time. Every other industry is doing the exact opposite, which is why Google/Facebook/Reddit have all moved to endless scrolling rather than next-page buttons: just having to press "next page" offers the user a decision point where they can stop using the product. Creating whole loading screens and signaling an "end" to an era has to be a major factor in making players stop pressing Next Turn and call it for the night, it's fundamentally anti-thetical to everything modern engagement metrics are built around. I'm not even saying it's good or bad - I would love games to be focused on fun and interesting gameplay rather than optimizing for engagement and addicting psychology tricks, but it's really interesting to me that when everyone else in the industry is optimizing for seamless infinite content, Civ decided to introduce new off-ramps and create friction.

 

[Core Imposter]

New milestone hit today with the first sub 9,000 concurrent player day on steam.

That's just 1 week after hitting it's first sub 10,000 player day.

Meanwhile the thread here for Civ 4 mod Realism Invictus has over 3 million views.

 

[kaspergm]

While I arguably have not been following your discussion closely, I think you guys are overthinking things a bit. I think a more simple explanation is that someone got the idea that the era-and-civ change would make a cool new feature and decided to make that a core design element of the game, and then once that decision was made, got painted into a corner by all the limitations this design imposes on the rest of the game.

 

[Dreadnought]

I suppose it is possible that Ed Beach was given a list of things he was required to implement.

What I think is more likely, unfortunately, is that he, being a board game designer at heart, simply steered the ship of Civilization closer and closer to that genre, at the expense of the advantages that could be invoked with more intricate depth and immersive elements of the core product.

Era switching, for example, could still have been an interesting mechanic (albeit, perhaps, in a non-Civilization game), but its implementation is clunky. It reminds be a lot of the board game SpaceCorp, which is divided into three parts, and where there is a soft reset in between each. The difference being, of course, that the board game itself is far more immersive than this game seems to be, at least because it seems to naturally divide itself into different eras of space exploration that seem plausible. After all, in the ficitonal world of a Civ game, why would there always be an ancient, exploration, and modern age, always with all of the same presentations?

 

[tman2000]

I suppose it is possible that Ed Beach was given a list of things he was required to implement.

What I think is more likely, unfortunately, is that he, being a board game designer at heart, simply steered the ship of Civilization closer and closer to that genre, at the expense of the advantages that could be invoked with more intricate depth and immersive elements of the core product.

Actually I'm designing a board game by streamlining Civ 7 even more than it already is and introducing a policy/unit/building drafting/deck building mechanic. Discussing the game inspired me, and I'm going to make the true version of the game.

 

[Civinator]

It does seem as though Ed Beach was solving a checklist of problems. It could be that he received a list from somebody. That's no way to design a game. Would explain a lot.

Only a speculation:

As I posted at another place, for me as a Civ 3 modder it is very clear, that Ed Beach used the campaign in Civ 3 Conquests (C3C), where 9 scenarios were bundled and connected by a point score system, as his inspiration to transform that campaign to be the core concept of Civ 7. Ed Beach and Breakaway Games have created that campaign for C3C many years ago. There is a very long lasting cooperation in creating pc games between Sid Meier and Ed Beach (when remembering well, since the game Gettysburg).

I (and every other somewhat experienced Civ 3 modder) could create such a C3C campaign with the Polish hacked Civ 3 editor by Mendax, which made the connections of the scenarios to a campaign visible, as a concept for a "core of Civ 7", too.

The great problem for Ed Beach seems to have been, to find a much better solution for the connection of the different scenarios than the simple point system of C3C. This connection "of stuff, that is otherwise not fitting together" should be handled by the system of ages, and especially the transition between those ages (that should be done by the crises). I think this could have been the general concept for creating Civ 7 based on the C3C campaign.

Now, at least during the vacancies of the lead designer (glassdoor interview), it could be possible that somebody had the order to create suggestions how these simple looking connections of "parts that otherwise are not fitting together" can be achieved in the details (this is a speculation) and that the UI designer had used that list (or my be had to create that list himself) as he needed a base for his work. When the lead designer came back from his vacancies, he had some different ideas and all the work of the UI designer was in vein. This means, that the development of Civ 7 seems to be restarted in its core concept again and again - and the time for tests and for delivering a result for a release became shorter and shorter.

As posted above: Only a speculation.

One fact in my eyes seems sure: While being obsessed by the idea to transform the C3C campaign to become the epic game of Civ 7 by trying to connect things, that otherwise are not fitting together, Firaxis was not able to "see the forest for the trees" and how smooth and easy it would have been to connect things that are fitting together and with that concept a change of rulers and even the names of a civ for a certain territory on earth in different eras would have been possible.

 

[misesfan]

I suppose it is possible that Ed Beach was given a list of things he was required to implement.

What I think is more likely, unfortunately, is that he, being a board game designer at heart, simply steered the ship of Civilization closer and closer to that genre, at the expense of the advantages that could be invoked with more intricate depth and immersive elements of the core product.

Era switching, for example, could still have been an interesting mechanic (albeit, perhaps, in a non-Civilization game), but its implementation is clunky. It reminds be a lot of the board game SpaceCorp, which is divided into three parts, and where there is a soft reset in between each. The difference being, of course, that the board game itself is far more immersive than this game seems to be, at least because it seems to naturally divide itself into different eras of space exploration that seem plausible. After all, in the ficitonal world of a Civ game, why would there always be an ancient, exploration, and modern age, always with all of the same presentations?

To me it feels more like he cobbled together Humankind and History of the World (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/224/history-of-the-world) into this mess of a game.

 

[Elhoim]

What I think is more likely, unfortunately, is that he, being a board game designer at heart, simply steered the ship of Civilization closer and closer to that genre, at the expense of the advantages that could be invoked with more intricate depth and immersive elements of the core product.

Yeah, it was a bad call to keep the same lead. He doubled down on design philosophies that were fine for Civ 6 but were kept in check there. It became less of Sid Meier's Civ 7 and more like Ed Beach Civ 2.

 

[Askia Muhammad]

Yeah, it was a bad call to keep the same lead. He doubled down on design philosophies that were fine for Civ 6 but were kept in check there. It became less of Sid Meier's Civ 7 and more like Ed Beach Civ 2.

I mean - I’m not saying Beach isn’t at fault - but isn’t it a bit premature to blame all of this on him? He doesn’t work alone either so even if these were his ideas, surely someone would have pushed back?

Either way - let’s hope we get a different lead design for the first expansion or Civ 8.

 

[itix]

In the USA, Civ 7 is the 8th best selling game.

2025's Best-Selling Games So Far In The US

Here are the best-selling games of 2025 so far.

www.gamespot.com

 

[Kev1916]

Someone (I think on Reddit) said that they've played hundreds of hours of Rimworld and never once beaten a game (launched the ship). I think that's a really salient point. For some games the goal isn't beating the game, its just playing it. I think Civ is one of those games, and I never felt that my decision to end a game of Civ before the victory screen meant that I wasted my time or played a bad game.

Also the same with Total War games , Ive over 1100 hours and recon Ive only won a couple of long victories and dozen small

 

[Kev1916]

In the USA, Civ 7 is the 8th best selling game.

2025's Best-Selling Games So Far In The US

Here are the best-selling games of 2025 so far.

www.gamespot.com

"
There are some key caveats to be aware of. This list includes physical and digital sales data, but not from every publisher. For example, Nintendo does not share digital sales data. Also of note is that the list is ranked on dollar sales, not unit sales. The list also does not include revenue from sales of any add-ons for games, nor does it account for popularity on a service like Game Pass.

The reporting period below covers January 5, 2025 through April 5, 2025."

 

[itix]

@Kev1916, it strengthens my belief that pre-launch sales were good, but post-launch sales were not.

 

[stealth_nsk]

@Kev1916, it strengthens my belief that pre-launch sales were good, but post-launch sales were not.

Based on indirect data we have, it probably is. On the other hand, there were nothing to spur post-launch sales yet. Civ6 in its first 3 months had 2 discount sales AND Christmas holiday season (the season where the most gifts are bought), one of the sales right before the Christmas. Civ7 had nothing like this yet.

As I see it, Firaxis is working hard to provide better experience with more patches (with mixed success so far) to get some rocket jump in June where patch and next DLC will come together with some discount to grab new players.

 

[UWHabs]

While I arguably have not been following your discussion closely, I think you guys are overthinking things a bit. I think a more simple explanation is that someone got the idea that the era-and-civ change would make a cool new feature and decided to make that a core design element of the game, and then once that decision was made, got painted into a corner by all the limitations this design imposes on the rest of the game.

Yeah, my best guess is that they looked at things, saw that people tend to like the "start" of a campaign, and then you sort of lose focus and trail out once you've gotten past the exploration phase. So they designed the game so that you would more or less get 3 mini-campaigns, in hopes that you can keep interest. It's a bit of the continuation of the short attention span of the modern life, thinking that 3 100-150 turn campaigns is more interesting than one campaign that runs 200-250 turns. I'm a little OCD completionist, so yeah, there's definitely a few games in 6 where I'd sit down for a 3 hour session playing knowing that my game was already won, and that arguably I could just hit shift-enter and save myself some time, except that I still want to play a little.... Those sessions were certainly the least fun of the ones I would play, and I'm sure a lot of less dedicated fans get turned off by needing that to complete the game.

In some ways, the new way does work. Antiquity is similar to ancient era games from the past, your first exploration of the map. And then the Exploration Era, you tend to have a very early rush to discover/settling of new lands. The current game struggles in the modern era because there's not really anything "new" to explore, so it's just a "race to victory". But at least, you have a couple checkpoints, so even if you have a slog to the end of an era, you can still get a little dopamine from "winning" the era. Modern always still struggles that when you've snowballed enough, even with the resets, when I start the era with 500+ science/culture per turn, and 2nd place is at 200, it's just a matter of time.

 

[queenpea]

5400 people playing now on Steam. Reviews have ticked down again towards the negative.

 

[Gorbles]

5400 people playing now on Steam. Reviews have ticked down again towards the negative.

This translates to "better than 6" (Civ VI, presumably).

Mentions of the Age system are actually trending down in general. You even have examples of negative reviews like this one, where the Age system is highlighted positively, but bugs, the UI, missing features, etc, are the reason for the negative review:

 

[evonannoredars]

It's funny because "make breaks in the game" has to be counter-productive to maximizing play time. Every other industry is doing the exact opposite, which is why Google/Facebook/Reddit have all moved to endless scrolling rather than next-page buttons: just having to press "next page" offers the user a decision point where they can stop using the product. Creating whole loading screens and signaling an "end" to an era has to be a major factor in making players stop pressing Next Turn and call it for the night, it's fundamentally anti-thetical to everything modern engagement metrics are built around. I'm not even saying it's good or bad - I would love games to be focused on fun and interesting gameplay rather than optimizing for engagement and addicting psychology tricks, but it's really interesting to me that when everyone else in the industry is optimizing for seamless infinite content, Civ decided to introduce new off-ramps and create friction.

The loading screens between eras is fundamental to how the game is built. Everything era-specific is defined in a different folder, one for each era, plus a base-standard folder for non-era things (eg. leaders). During era transitions, everything new gets loaded in, resources are replaced, etc. This likely lays the groundwork for a future era sometime, as the modular setup means it'd be very easy to add extra eras.

I don't know enough about coding and making games to know the benefits of this modular method of several smaller games versus having everything in one completely seamless game, but I suspect there's a good technical reason why they went with this approach, which they had to factor in as well as considering it from the player's perspective.

I have no strong opinion on if I prefer it or not though. On the one hand, I like having something which encourages me to take a break, but on the other I think the way the transition itself is presented to the player could be improved a lot (eg I wish I could pause my game on the pick a new civ screen!). Agree with what you said about prioritising fun gameplay over engagement tricks; considering that, I don't think the 'seams' between eras are necessarily the issue, it's carrying momentum across them which is. Each next era starting the same way (build some bazaars, send my first free ship into the ocean, etc, etc) I think is the real momentum-killer.

 

[Sagax]

View attachment 731879

This translates to "better than 6" (Civ VI, presumably).

It’s the opposite, actually - “Not as good as [Civ] 6”